BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 3. Azerbaijan’s academic and scientific potential in oil and gas industry provides benefits for green technologies deployment, the World Bank (WB) said, Trend reports via WB’s “Azerbaijan: towards green growth” publication.
According to the report, Azerbaijan’s capacities in extraction industry “provide a comparative advantage for venturing into green innovations, including carbon capture and storage, renewables, and hydrogen technologies”.
As the WB noted, Azerbaijani government should encourage the private sector to invest in green enterprises, which would bring multiple benefits and increase the focus on innovation and efficiency.
“The public sector’s role in leveraging private sector financing in green growth includes, among others, low carbon policies and green financing instruments. Following this route will potentially create jobs, increase private spending, and bring economic spillovers to other industries from private green investments, while also bringing innovation and efficiency through private sector engagement. Such an approach could result in scaling up private green investments that, over time, surpass public spending in green growth,” the bank explained.
Azerbaijan’s new macroeconomic policy framework includes changing the medium- and long-term drivers of the economy towards sustainability and diversification, the WB noted.
“The Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) has developed an action plan focused on embedding sustainability and climate risk into public and private financing mechanisms. The macroeconomic framework will also support the implementation of emerging priorities for meeting the national commitments to the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as well as the ambitious targets of the Nationally Determined Contributions to the Paris Agreement. Azerbaijan’s most recent strategic development plans take the global low-carbon development trends into consideration as well as long-term challenges for oil economies,” the report said.
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