Accelerating Climate Service Development for Renewable Energy, Finance and Cities

Wider applications of climate services within the management of climate risks face significant challenges. This paper presents a forecasting approach, to assess the development trends in climate service needs and thereby potential demand in key sectors that are essential to the green solution and will face a general growth in activity and key climate vulnerabilities towards 2050. These sectors are renewable energy, international climate finance, and cities. The geographical scope focuses on Europe, but global trends are included. We here suggest scenarios for growth in future climate services based on baseline development trends and policy scenarios reflecting future low-emission and SDG targets. Barriers and specific needs for climate service development within these sectors are discussed, and alignment of supply and demand within the climate service market is particularly emphasized. We find that several complexities influence the climate service market, including policy frameworks aimed at facilitating climate risk management as well as a lack of fit between the supply and demand sides of the market. Other barriers include uncertainties related to available climate information and socioeconomic climate risk information. Based on the forecasting, we find that substantial benefits can be seen with increased climate service development and deployment across the three sectors.