Assessing Global Responsibility: Comparative Analysis of Fairness in Energy Transition Between Developing and Developed Countries

Abstract

The increasing recognition of historical emissions and uneven financial capacities among developed and developing nations has highlighted the need to look for equity and fairness in global climate action. This study aims to present a revised method that enables mapping the current state of fairness in the global energy transition, addressing both the contribution to the climate crisis and the burden that different countries face in coping with the climate disasters resulting from it. For this purpose, we revise various methods and indices used to measure the progress of energy transition efforts, as well as existing methodologies to appraise the responsibility for climate change and the resulting financial capacity. We propose changes to the existing methods to allow for a clearer analysis of the fairness of the global energy transition. An exemplary use of the proposed modified methodology is applied to six countries that represent developing and developed countries using publicly available data from renowned sources such as IRENA, EM-DAT, and the World Bank, showing the applicability of the method. The main trends in the results highlight the added value of the proposed method. The progress in the energy transition is evaluated in terms of fairness as a transition index by taking into account historical responsibility and financial capacity. Damage from climate-induced disasters and contribution towards climate financing are added as contextual considerations. The country’s historical emissions, GDP, NDC, financial costs of climate-induced disaster, and financing from the Green Climate Fund are used as the basis for the analysis. The findings underscore the differences in energy transition achievement, as well as the differences in pledged and deposited funds among various types of countries. The results demonstrate a disproportionate burden experienced by lower-income nations and depict the ongoing challenges in translating principles of “common but differentiated responsibilities” into concrete outcomes. This study provides an open-source and data-driven perspective that highlights the need for change in global policy discourse and also advocates for the creation of more nuanced, just, and effective approaches to accelerate the clean energy transition worldwide.

1. Introduction

The growing acknowledgment of historical emissions underscores the disproportionate responsibility that developed nations bear for the current climate crisis, given their long industrial histories. At the same time, the limited financial and technological capacities of developing countries necessitate differentiated responsibilities and support mechanisms to ensure inclusive climate progress. This imbalance has brought equity and fairness to the forefront of global climate negotiations, emphasizing the need for tailored approaches that consider both past contributions and present capabilities. The influence of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions on Earth’s temperature rise was proposed as early as 1938 by Callendar [1], and then in 1955, Plass proposed the carbon dioxide theory for climate change [2]. It was in 1992 that climate change by anthropogenic emissions was globally recognized as a “common concern of humankind” in the Rio Convention [3]. Despite not addressing the funding consequences of the required mitigation efforts [4], this convention acknowledged that the largest share of historical global emissions originated in developed countries, but the protection of the climate system is a global responsibility and is conducted on the basis of equity with “common but differentiated responsibilities and capabilities” (CBDRC) [3]. For this reason, immediate action was emphasized in developed countries (i.e., Annex I countries). This indicates that fairness and justice among countries have already been part of consideration for the required global effort.

Following this convention, the Brazilian delegation proposed an approach for burden sharing based on historical emissions, its consequences for global temperature according to the climate model that they propose, and the “polluter pays” principle [5] (referred to as the Brazilian Proposal [6]). This proposal found the support of many countries from the Global South (which, for the scope of this paper, refers to countries not listed in Annex I of the climate agreements). The Global North, represented in the Annex I countries, rejected this proposal and argued that the climate consequences of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions were not known and they must not be judged by their historical emissions [6,7,8], despite the fact that their legal systems in general ironically adopt the principle of “ignorantia juris non excusat (ignorance of the law does not excuse)” or “objective responsibility” [6,7,8,9]. They pointed out scientific inaccuracies in the proposal and judged it as “biased” [6]. In the Kyoto Protocol, the year 1990 was taken as the basis of responsibility and emission reduction. The proposal indirectly resulted in the establishment of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as a financing mechanism and triggered climate model development [6,7,8].

As of 2024, the remaining global carbon budget to limit global warming to well below 2 °C with a 50% likelihood is 1110 GtCO₂, or equivalent to 27 years based on the 2024 emission level [10]. Among the sources of emissions, energy consumption (including use in transportation, industry, and residential sectors) consistently made up around three-quarters of global anthropogenic emissions [11,12,13,14]. The electrification of energy demands in all sectors mentioned above is a cornerstone of the energy transition. Currently, the energy sector associated with electricity generation alone roughly contributes to around one-third of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [12]. This emphasizes the significant role of the decarbonization of the energy sector in climate mitigation. On the other hand, weather and climate extremes, such as heat waves, heavy precipitation, floods, droughts, and storms, become more prevalent as direct consequences of the warming climate [15], costing developing countries lives and financial resources. This imposes a further financial burden on low- to middle-income countries to share their budget allocations between mitigation and adaptation.

Quantifying the “fair share” in climate negotiations has been demonstrated to be a difficult task and can be highly politicized. This is due to the fact that the perception of what is considered to be a “fair share” varies across different countries [7]. Quantitative indices are a commonly used approach for benchmarking fairness in climate change mitigation. In the context of climate mitigation and adaptation (including energy transition), several indices exist to assist policymakers in keeping track of their target, typically reflected in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). As different indices may be developed for different purposes and help us understand different trends, a consensus on a single index or methodology that focuses on the energy transition in relation to climate fairness is, to our best knowledge, yet to be found. This is perhaps due to the fact that energy decarbonization is considered only one aspect of climate mitigation; hence, it is embedded rather than standing on its own. However, with the emergence of specific funding for the energy transition with a just principle, it is worth looking back at whether this means that both the Global North and South have fulfilled their fair share in the energy transition.

This research aims at mapping the current state of fairness of the global energy transition, addressing both the contribution to the climate crisis and the burden that different countries face to cope with the climate disasters resulting from it. Thus, we intend to fill the gap in the fairness aspect in the evaluation of the energy transition aligned with the CBDRC principle. For that, we first review the existing methodologies for the analysis and quantification of the fairness in the energy transition required to tackle climate change globally (i.e., available indices and methods derived for appraising those trends in the status of the fair transition), identifying their shortcomings and blackspots and presenting methodological enhancements to address those weak points. The proposed methodology enhancements are applied to four countries representing developed, emerging and developing economies, to show its usability and the results of its application in different contexts. In a second step, the financial needs for coping with climate disasters in the six countries selected as proxy case studies are analysed, and the current financial contributions of the six countries are analysed and compared to their responsibility and capacity within the climate crisis. Finally, we draw data-grounded conclusions on the state of fairness in the global energy transition.

2. GHG Emissions, Fairness, and Energy Transition

2.1. Historical Responsibility and Fairness in Emission Distribution

The discourse of justice, equality, equity, and fairness has been part of discussion and debates in climate change issues. Responsibility plays a pivotal role in such discourses. However, according to our knowledge, there is no one single definition of climate responsibility. Here, we consider responsibility in terms of the historic contribution to the global carbon emissions and discuss some of the major frameworks for appraising it. The debate emerged even before the 1997 Kyoto protocol [6,7]. Developed countries (especially the US) demanded the responsibility to be shared, and no country shall be pardoned since developed countries have higher efficiency to generate GDP for the same amount of GHG emissions, while developing countries see the problem of climate change as mainly caused by developed countries, being, therefore, their responsibility [16]. This problem shows the tensions around the basis for emission allocation or ‘right-to-pollute.’

Table 1. Advantages and disadvantages of various emission allocation schemes [16].

Allocation Scheme	Advantages	Disadvantages
Proportional to Area	Border is stable Favorable for large but low population density countries	Discriminative towards small but densely populated countries
Proportional to Populations	Every person has equal rights to emission	Stimulate population growth
Proportional to Adult Populations	Reducing net transfers from rectangular age structure countries to pyramidal structure countries	Discriminative towards children and future generations
Proportional to half per capita and half per GDP	Reducing massive transfer to developing countries	More complicated than other allocation scheme

summarizes four emission allocation schemes that have been proposed as a result of the debate.

The discourse becomes even more sensitive when entangled with the issue of which countries have the responsibility to pay and have the capacity to work for a positive change. Smith et al. [17] suggested a matrix to distinguish between ability (“who can”) and responsibility (“who should”) against the implementers of climate action and payment bearer countries, called a matrix of accountability. The matrix splits the accountability in terms of financial resources, responsibility, and opportunity. As a result, countries can be grouped as “Who can pay”, “Who should pay”, “Who can do”, and “Who should do”. This matrix is helpful, considering some Annex I countries are wealthy but not highly responsible for the current climate state (e.g., Luxembourg and Iceland). In addition, a clear and objective distinction between “who” should do “what” effectively and efficiently can be theoretically made.

Caney [18] uses a different approach to classify methods for the distribution of GHG emissions. The first distribution is called “grandfathering”, in which the countries that historically have large emissions are privileged to maintain their emissions, while the new convention on limiting GHG emissions applies to the remaining countries. The second distribution is the equal per capita distribution, which possess egalitarian views, allocating the same amounts of emission pollution rights for every person. The third is the historical distribution, which views responsibility to climate mitigation as proportional to their historical contribution in terms of cumulative national carbon emissions. The first distribution is clearly unjust and not supported by any moral and political philosopher, the second distribution is deemed to have a partial perspective on climate change, while the latest is regarded insufficient on its own to describe the distribution of emissions [18].

The historical responsibility approach, supported, among others, by the “Brazilian proposal”, is grounded in the fact that the historical emissions can be correlated into a contribution to temperature increase using a climate model [5]. This argument simply says that the consequences of past emissions can be quantified objectively. From a philosophical approach, Zellentin [19] supports historical responsibility through two arguments: (1) the past actions from industrialized countries upon the ignorance of the possible consequences is considered as deliberate action and (2) standards with uncertain consequences are more stringent than that of known consequences. From the environmental activist perspective, this historical responsibility is viewed as “ecological debt” that polluters owe to nature [20,21]. In this study, we use the historical responsibility approach based on the arguments mentioned above. Highlighting those arguments, we build upon the fact that it is the total amount of cumulative emissions in the atmosphere which determines the severity and scope of global climate change and its consequences. Extensive data support the historical correlation existing between the GDP of a country and its carbon emissions (e.g., CO₂ emissions per capita vs. GDP per capita [22]). On that basis, we argue that developed countries benefited from their past emissions, and, therefore, they are in the state of higher ability and opportunity to fund and implement measures for the energy transition and climate mitigation globally. Hence, we frame the principle of “objective responsibility” as legitimate to be applied.

2.2. Fairness in Energy Transition

The definitions of energy transition given in different references are summarized in

Table 2. Definitions of energy transition from various references.

Author	Definition
Smil [23]	The time that elapses between the introduction of a new primary energy source, or prime mover, and its rise to claiming a substantial share of the overall market.
Grübler [24]	A change in the state of an energy system as opposed to a change in an individual energy technology or fuel source.
Hirsch and Jones [27]	A change in fuels (e.g., from coal to oil) and their associated technologies (e.g., from steam engine to internal combustion engine).
Miller et al. [28]	Shifts in the fuel source for energy production and the technologies used to exploit that fuel.
O’Connor [29]	A particularly significant set of changes to the patterns of energy use in a society, potentially affecting resources, carriers, converters, and services.
Fouquet and Pearson [30]	The switch from an economic system dependent on one or a series of energy sources and technologies to another.

. In general, they all have something in common: energy transition is a process that involves changes or shifts from one major source of energy to another source of energy and the associated technologies to yield the benefits from the new energy sources, followed by changes in the support systems. This is usually driven by a certain prime mover, such as economic incentives, policy interventions, technological innovation, or environmental pressures. A minimum threshold is also usually applied to say that an energy system has been transitioned, e.g., 25% [23] or 50% [24]. Historically, energy transitions take decades before a new energy source reaches the minimum threshold [23,25,26], and past energy transitions typically required around 80–100 years [26]. However, in the context of energy sector decarbonization, considering the carbon budget, 25% (or even 50%) transition to clean energy in 80–100 years is clearly not sufficient. Therefore, an accelerated transition with a higher share of a low-carbon energy source is required.

There are several dimensions or aspects that need to be tackled within the energy transition, which vary across the literature (see

Table 3. Aspects of energy transition comparison from various sources.

Author	Fuel Source	Conversion Technology	Energy Utilization	System	Temporal	Social Behavior
Smil [23]	√	√			√
Hirsch and Jones [27]	√	√
Miller et al. [28]	√	√	√
O’Connor [29]			√	√		√
Fouquet and Pearson [30]	√	√		√

Remarks: “√” symbol indicates aspect that must exist for an energy transition to occur according to each author.

). Fuel source deals with the shift in sources of energy (i.e., primary energy) from one to another. Conversion technology deals with changes in the technological device for converting the primary energy into useful energy demands. Energy utilization represents how the energy is used. System defines the change in the industrial energy supply chain. Temporal indicates the time needed in the energy transition. Social behaviour is related to the change in habits of the end user of the final energy form.

While fairness in GHG distribution is readily applicable in the context of the international community, the concept of fairness in the energy transition (or just energy transition) is more commonly used in the context of policy making within the countries [31]. The concept of justice, in this definition, usually refers to equal access to affordable energy including marginalized communities [31]. It has three main properties of procedural, distributive, recognition [31,32,33,34], and some studies [33] add restorative and cosmopolitan (

Table 4. Properties or principles of energy justice.

Aspect	Brief Definition
Distributive	Justice in costs and benefits of energy access to everyone
Procedural	Justice in legal and decision making aspect of energy system to everyone
Restorative	Justice for damage repair and prevention to people and environment
Recognition	Justice in energy towards marginalized community
Cosmopolitan	Cross borders and regional fairness

). This is particularly the case for the currently implemented Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) for the early phasing-out of fossil power plants in South Africa [35], Indonesia [36], Vietnam [37], Senegal [38], and India [39]. While this kind of partnership tries to assist these countries to transition justly, it is also criticized as paying polluters [40].

In the international community context, distributive and restorative justice is what UN conventions, such as the Rio convention, Kyoto Protocol, and Paris Agreement, try to achieve. The Commissions of Party (COP) also serves recognition towards marginalized countries such as Small Islands and Developing States (SIDS) that are vulnerable to climate change. Cosmopolitan is embodied in emission transfer. However, the presence of procedural justice is questionable since all countries are considered on the same level in climate negotiations. The rejection of the Brazilian proposal is an example of the absence of procedural justice that resulted in a failure to meet distributive and restorative justice.

Summarizing the last two sections, this research considers the fair energy transition as a transition in the energy sector from a high to lower, neutral or zero carbon intensity energy source, considering historical responsibility (restorative justice), financial capacity (distributive and recognition justice), and country-specific opportunities (cosmopolitan) to support global climate mitigation efforts. When any of these aspects is neglected, there is a possibility that unfair treatment, either advantageous or disadvantageous, may arise.

2.3. Existing Indices in Presenting State of Energy Transition

An index (also called a composite index, composite indicator, or social indicator) is a measure that is commonly employed to summarize a specific aspect or issue that consists of multiple variables of statistical data [41]. It can be useful to reduce complexity, ease interpretation of the existing data, assess progress of the variables studied over time, facilitate communication to a general audience [42] and useful in medium- to long-term planning [41]. Since poorly constructed or misinterpreted indices can lead to misleading policy, they must be treated as a trigger to initiate discussion and public interest [42]. Climate mitigation, including the energy transition, is a multidimensional and multidisciplinary field with different measurement units and magnitudes; hence, the use of composite indices is justified as common practice.

Six different indices representing climate action related to energy transition include the Greenhouse Development Rights (GDR) framework [43], Green Future Index (GFI) [44], Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) [45], Energy Transition Index (ETI) [46], Net Zero Economy Index (NZEI) [47], and Regulatory Indicators for Sustainable Energy (RISE) [48].

Table 5. Comparison of GDR, GFI, CCPI, ETI, NZEI, and RISE in energy, GHG emissions, and financial capacity aspect in their respective methodology.

Index	Energy Aspect	Financial Capacity Aspect	GHG Emission Aspect
GDR	Not accounted	GDP excluding development threshold	Historical emission excluding emission required to reach development threshold
GFI	Renewable energy and nuclear supply growth Share of RE and nuclear in energy supply	Not accounted	CO2 emission per GDP Annual CO2 emission change in the past 5 years.
CCPI	Current share of RE in energy supply Development of renewable energy supply Current share of RE in energy supply compared to well-below-2 °C pathway 2030 RE target compared to well-below-2 °C pathway Energy consumption per capita Past trend of energy consumption per capita	Not accounted	Current GHG emission per capita Past 5 years trend GHG emission per capita Current GHG emission per capita compared to well-below-2 °C pathway 2030 emission reduction target compared to well-below-2 °C pathway
ETI	Percentage of population access to electricity and clean fuels for cooking and heating Renewable Energy capacity RISE score in energy access, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and clean cooking Share of clean energy in final energy consumption Energy intensity per Power Purchase Parity Energy consumption per capita	Percentage of GDP in Investment in RE Percentage of GDP in energy subsidies Percentage of GDP in net fuel import International financial flows for developing countries	CO2 emission per capita CO2 emission intensity per primary energy supplied CH4 emissions by production
NZEI	Energy intensity per GDP	Not accounted	CO2 intensity per energy supplied CO2 intensity per GDP
RISE	Regulatory framework on electricity access Regulatory framework on clean cooking Regulatory framework on renewable energy Regulatory framework on energy efficiency	Not accounted	Not accounted

shows a comparison of these indices with their consideration in the energy transition, financial capacity aspects, and historical responsibility aspect.

The GDR framework does not consider the energy transition aspect; ETI has the highest number of metrics considering both the technical and regulatory aspects of clean energy, while CCPI benchmarks the metrics to the well-below-2 °C pathway. Then, RISE only considers the presence of regulatory frameworks without any technical metrics. This index judges countries using a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, where countries are motivated to adopt policies being labelled as ‘good’ by RISE. Therefore, Urpelainen [49] criticised RISE as it neglects the context in which policies are implemented as one fundamental aspect of policy. As a consequence, all countries achieve a good score if they have the same ‘good’ policies and do not expect different policy measures to achieve the same positive outcome in the energy transition. This is problematic since the social context may affect the adoption and implementation of a regulation [50].

Financial capacity is neglected by most of the indices. ETI considers international financial flows for developing countries. The GDR framework, on the other hand, is developed with the proposition of “the poor must, at minimum be spared the burdens of the climate transition.” [43] In its method, a minimum financial capacity (called development threshold) is applied before countries are expected to have the capability and share of responsibility in the climate transition.

In terms of GHG emissions, only GDR frameworks include historical emissions; RISE does not consider this element, while the remaining indices use the annual emission level per capita or per energy supplied. CCPI tracks 5-year trends that are representative in evaluating political reign performance but not long enough compared to CO₂ residing time in the atmosphere. Furthermore, the use of annual emission levels normalized to population, energy supply, or GDP is only useful to keep track of annual performance but neglects the historical responsibility of national GHG emissions that have led to the current climate state. This imposes injustice in terms of absolute climate responsibility when scoring GHG emissions. In the GDR framework, on the other hand, the GHG emissions required to achieve the development threshold are disregarded. Since the method weighs historical responsibility and financial capacity on an equal basis (50% weight each), it represents fairer treatment for countries that have either responsibility, capacity, or both as compared to other indices.

Relevant to the countries studied in this research, we present their performance for the year 2023 according to these indices (except GDR framework) in

Table 6. Performance comparison of case study countries according to different indices in 2023.

Country	GFI	CCPI	ETI	NZEI	RISE
Brazil	4.70 (Greening Middle)	61.74 (Medium)	65.9	132.0 tCO2/USDm GDP 3.5 TJ/USDm GDP (High energy intensity) 37.7 tCO2/TJ (Low fuel factor)	79 (Green)
China	5.12 (Greening Middle)	45.56 (Low)	64.9	392.0 tCO2/USDm GDP 5.3 TJ/USDm GDP (High energy intensity) 74.5 tCO2/TJ (High fuel factor)	71 (Green)
Germany	5.92 (Green Leader)	65.77 (High)	67.5	123.0 tCO2/USDm GDP 2.3 TJ/USDm GDP (Low energy intensity) 53.0 tCO2/TJ (Low fuel factor)	91 (Green)
Pakistan	3.72 (Climate Abstainer)	59.35 (Medium)	46.9	Not Applicable	38 (Yellow)
United States	5.39 (Green Leader)	42.79 (Very Low)	66.3	208.0 tCO2/USDm GDP 3.8 TJ/USDm GDP (High energy intensity) 55.2 tCO2/TJ (Low fuel factor)	86 (Green)
United Kingdom	6.12 (Green Leader)	69.3 (High)	66.2	97.0 tCO2/USDm GDP 2.0 TJ/USDm GDP (Low energy intensity) 48.5 tCO2/TJ (Low fuel factor)	87 (Green)

. The reasons for the choice of these countries are explained in Section 3.1. The United Kingdom and Germany are both performing well in all indices. The United States has a very low performance related to the CCPI (very low, due to its GHG emissions, low share of renewable as well as high energy use) and NZEI (high energy intensity). Brazil performs well in GFI, ETI, and RISE, with “Medium” label in CCPI, and only has a high energy intensity problem according to NZEI. China also performs well on GFI, ETI, and RISE but underperforms on CCPI (low; only performs well in renewable energy aspect) and NZEI since it is high in both energy intensity and the fuel factor. Lastly, Pakistan is considered as not performing well in GFI and ETI but medium on CCPI and RISE, while NZEI is not applicable.

3. Methods

3.1. General Approach

The steps followed in this research are shown graphically in Figure 1. As a first step, we carry an extensive literature review (Section 2) on the concept of fairness in the context of the energy transition. In Section 3, we review the methods available and used by academics, practitioners, and organizations actively engaged in climate mitigation and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. Furthermore, we use them as a basis to develop our method. Climate-induced disasters are confirmed, resulting in an increase in cost of capital on government-issued debt in developing countries [51,52]. Since high investment cost is a dominant factor in economical and financial barriers to energy transition [53], climate disasters potentially impose further financial burden on developing countries for energy transition. Financing contribution to energy transition is considered as compensation to determine the sufficiency and fairness in energy transition rate. Since publicly available data of specific contribution to energy transition financing are limited, contribution to general climate financing is used as a proxy.

In Section 4, we apply our method to 6 different countries selected as case studies: United States, United Kingdom, and Germany (representing the Annex I countries), then Brazil, China, and Pakistan (representing non-Annex I countries). The choice of United States, United Kingdom, and Germany also represents early industrialized countries that enjoyed the benefit of fossil-based economic growth. China, in particular, is chosen as an emerging economy with fast pace of economic growth and energy consumption. Brazil represents an emerging economy with a moderately positive GDP growth rate, while Pakistan represents a developing country with very low GDP growth rates [54]. The last two countries are also chosen due to their likelihood of suffering climate disasters in the context of climate change [55]. The chosen countries allow for a comparison on the fairness state of the global energy transition, in terms of historical responsibility, energy transition rate, and economic growth perspective.

3.2. Fairness Indices

There is a great variety of indices for evaluating different aspects of the national energy transitions (see Section 2.3). Many of them (e.g., GFI, CCPI, ETI, NZEI, and RISE) focus on the current state of different variables, e.g., annual carbon emissions or GDP. However, in this study, we follow a definition of a fair energy transition (see end of Section 2.2), aligned with many other scholars [16,17,18], in which current and future developments as well as the historical development of those indicators are of utmost importance. On the other side, the methodology for appraising its fairness shall include a minimum number of indicators in order to increase transparency and communication easiness. The GDR framework [43] (see Section 2.3) fulfils both requirements and is taken in this study as a first basis for analysis with amendments. These amendments include defining energy transition index, since the GDR framework itself is not originally intended to focus on climate change but rather on the general aspects of emission distribution and the associated financing contribution needed from each country. A comparison between this work and the original GDR framework is summarised in

Table 7. Approach comparison between the GDR framework and this work.

	GDR Framework	This Work
Starting year	1990	1800
Responsibility Index	Exclude emission to reach development threshold	Include emission to reach development threshold
Capacity Index	Exclude GDP for development threshold	Exclude GDP for development threshold
Energy Transition Index	Not included	Included

and discussed in detail in the following subsections. RISE’s methodology is not adopted since its primary focus is on regulatory readiness and does not consider any technical metrics such as CO₂ emissions (see Section 2.3). While GFI, CCPI, ETI, and NZEI consider renewable energy shares in a country’s energy mix as part of their methodology, these indices do not consider historical emissions (see Section 3.3).

3.2.1. Responsibility Index (RI)

The responsibility index that we use in this method is ratio of national cumulative to global emissions since 1800 (Equation (1)).

$$RI={\displaystyle \frac{\sum {GHG}_{Country}\left(\mathrm{y}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{r}\right)}{\sum {GHG}_{World}\left(\mathrm{y}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{r}\right)}}$$

(1)

This approach only differs to GDR framework in two aspects: (i) GHG emissions for achieving the development threshold are not excluded and (ii) we use 1800 as the starting year. We argue that our approach is more aligned to the calculation of global carbon budget. This removes unfair treatment by giving advantages to early industrialized countries and advantages to emerging but populous countries such as China, India, and Indonesia. In addition, low- and lower-middle-income countries collectively accounted for 5.9 GtCO₂e or 16.3% of global emissions in 2022 [22], representing a relevant push for further global temperature increase.

3.2.2. Capacity Index (CI)

Similar to the GDR framework, the Capacity Index is defined as ratio of a country’s total GDP deduced by a threshold for basic necessities—called development threshold—to world GDP (Equation (2)). The framework uses 25% above Pritchet threshold of USD 16/day, which translates to USD 7500/capita/year [43]. Pritchet threshold is where classic plagues of poverty begin to disappear and, therefore, has the ability to contribute to climate mitigation [43]. This threshold is found to correlate well with middle class level of the Global South that ranges between USD 3000 and 11,250/capita/year [56].

$$CI={\displaystyle \frac{GD{P}_{Country} \left(\mathrm{y}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{r}\right)-Dev. Threshold\times \frac{GD{P}_{Country} \left(\mathrm{y}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{r}\right)}{GDP per ca{p}_{Country} \left(\mathrm{y}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{r}\right)}}{GD{P}_{World}\left(\mathrm{y}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{r}\right)}}$$

(2)

The implication of this index is that it goes beyond historical responsibility to consider current economic and technological capacity for those countries to be able to respond to the challenge of climate change.

3.2.3. Responsibility–Capacity Index (RCI)

The responsibility and capacity indices are then combined to obtain the responsibility–Capacity Index [43] (similar to the original GDR framework), defined as

$$RCI={\displaystyle \frac{RI+CI}{2}}$$

(3)

The RCI can then be used to calculate the associated financing requirements for climate action.

3.2.4. Transition Index

In this study, we compare four different ways to define the transition index. The share of fossil fuels in a country’s energy supply is used as a basis. This quantity is then used as transition index without any weighing (called simple TI; Equation (4)), weighed to responsibility index (called R-TI; Equation (5)), weighed to its share in global energy consumption (called GES-TI; Equation (6)), and an inverse of GES-TI (Equation (7)). The use of fossil fuel share in the energy mix puts renewable and nuclear energy in the same position due its low to zero carbon emissions. In other words, the transition index in this definition is equivalent to decarbonization index. The use of energy supply, instead of installed capacity, ensures that the considered transition index resulted from the emission of burned fossil fuel, regardless of their capacity factor. This approach avoids the possibility of green washing by high renewable plant capacity installed yet low capacity factor to supply to the grid. The minimum, maximum and the associated meaning and consequence for these transition indices are summarized in

Table 8. Minimum and maximum values and their meaning for each type of transition index.

Model of Transition Index	Minimum Value: 0	Maximum Value: 1
Simple TI	No fossil fuel in energy mix Rate of energy transition is less significant to global effort	Fully fossil based energy mix Rate of energy transition is more significant to global effort
R-TI	No fossil fuel in energy mixed Lower cumulative CO2 emission (responsibility) Rate of energy transition is less significant to global effort	Fully fossil based energy mix Higher cumulative CO2 emission (responsibility) Rate of energy transition is more significant to global effort
GES-TI	No fossil fuel in energy mixed Low share to global energy consumption Rate of energy transition is less significant to global effort	Fully fossil based energy mix High share to global energy consumption Rate of energy transition is highly significant to global effort
IGES-TI	Fully fossil based energy mix High share to global energy consumption Rate of energy transition is highly significant to global effort	Low to no fossil fuel in energy mix Low share to global energy consumption Rate of energy transition is less significant to global effort

.

$$simple TI={\displaystyle \frac{\sum Fossil fuel energy suppl{y}_{Country} \left(\mathrm{y}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{r}\right) \left[\mathrm{T}\mathrm{W}\mathrm{h}\right]}{\sum Energy suppl{y}_{Country} \left(\mathrm{y}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{r}\right) \left[\mathrm{T}\mathrm{W}\mathrm{h}\right]}}$$

(4)

$$R-TI=simple TI\times RI$$

(5)

$$GES-TI=simple TI\times Global Share\left[\%\right]$$

(6)

$$IGES-TI=1-simple TI\times Global Share\left[\%\right]$$

(7)

Despite its straightforward meaning, simple TI puts the transition achieved by countries of lower responsibility or share to the world’s energy consumption at the same level as those with higher responsibility or share to the world’s energy consumption. As a consequence, this method would impose an unfair treatment on lower-responsibility countries. R-TI implies countries with higher responsibility should take more urgent core about their transition and decarbonization, since they have a greater share of the climate change-related emissions in the atmosphere. Although this method may provide justice to lower-responsibility countries and puts more emphasis on higher-responsibility countries, countries with higher responsibility but a lower share of the world’s energy consumption (i.e., early industrialized but small energy consumption) would receive unfair treatment with constant pressure. Another caveat is countries with a lower responsibility index but higher share to world’s energy consumption (late industrialized but growing economies) may take advantage of this ‘opportunity’ to increase their fossil fuel consumption. The advantage of GES-TI and IGES-TI approach by using global energy share is that it does not promote late industrialized countries to ramp up their fossil-fuelled energy supply if their global share is large. This highlights the importance of avoiding future emissions for climate mitigation, while past emissions are naturally slowly absorbed by nature [57].

3.3. Sources of Data

The historical emission data that we use for assessing the responsibility index can be found in [58]. As for the Capacity Index, we use the data of countries’ GDP from the World Bank [59,60]. The energy supply data to assess transition index are obtained from IRENASTAT [61]. Costs of disasters are from [62]. Lastly, the pledged and contributed data are from [63,64], and the required climate finance data are obtained from country’s respective Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) [65,66,67,68,69,70].

4. State of Fairness in Energy Transition

4.1. Costs of Climate Change-Induced Disasters

Developing countries are generally the most affected by the effects of climate change, although they have contributed the least to its genesis. Stranded assets, loss of tax revenues, higher insurance premiums, and reduced economic output are direct implications of climate-induced disasters [51]. These economic costs of disasters add extra burdens and complexity to investments in developing countries in climate mitigation and adaptation.

The determination of the cost imposed by climate-related disasters in Figure 2a sharply outlines the economic impact of climate change on different countries. The data show that while absolute costs from disasters are much higher for developed countries like the United States and Germany, the relative impact on GDP is much higher for developing countries. For instance, a country like Pakistan has faced several extraordinary climate hazards, causing enormous economic loss in the country due to floods and heatwaves. The cost of these disasters [62], when normalized to GDP, is shown in Figure 2b.

In the 1990s, China’s GDP was relatively low (being in the same order as Brazil); hence, climate disasters in this period represented around 2–3% of its GDP. However, with its rapidly growing economy, the financial damage becomes less significant and, in the 2020s, has lowered to about 1% of its GDP. Developed nations, such as the United States, among others, are normally affected by higher absolute costs as their infrastructure is well developed; however, they have a high capacity for shock absorption since their economies are much stronger, as can be seen in Figure 2. This demonstrates that countries from the Global South—e.g., Pakistan—possess much lower responsibility (see Figure 3b) and are less capable of economically funding their domestic energy transition while suffering much bigger economic pressure for funding climate-related disaster mitigation. Therefore, while the energy transition of Global South countries remains necessary, labelling them as “Climate Abstainer” or “Red” while they have to deal with climate impacts and labelling the Global North with higher responsibility as “Climate Leader” or “Green” represents unfair treatment.

4.2. Responsibility, Capacity, and Transition Index

4.2.1. State of Responsibility Index (RI)

As of 2022, the US’ cumulative emissions have reached 426.9 GtCO₂ (responsible for 24.08% of world’s cumulative emissions), followed by China, which reached 260.6 GtCO₂ (responsible for 14.7% of world’s cumulative emission), followed by Germany at 94 GtCO₂ (responsible for 5.3% of world’s cumulative emissions) (see Figure 3a), while Brazil and Pakistan’s cumulative emissions only reach 17.2 GtCO₂ (0.97%) and 5.5 GtCO₂ (0.31%), respectively. As shown, all target countries’ cumulative emissions are increasing at a different pace. While cumulative emissions from Germany, UK, Brazil and Pakistan are increasing relatively linearly, those from China and the United States appear to be exponential. Despite their increase in emissions, the UK, US and Germany responsibility indices (RIs) have passed their peak and are now decreasing (Figure 3b); i.e., their national increase in emissions is smaller than global increases. Brazil, China and Pakistan have increasing RIs, since they are still ramping up their economies.

4.2.2. State of Capacity Index (CI)

Financially, high scores in CI (Figure 4a) show that the US has adequate financial means and technological capacities, far higher than Germany and the UK, to assume the global leadership in low-emission development and to move towards a sustainable energy system. Germany and the United Kingdom also demonstrate a positive CI value, showing good economic and technological backgrounds of these countries to become leaders in global climate efforts. China, within just 3 decades, has managed to flip its Capacity Index from negative to positive values. China reached its development threshold as of 2008, and in the following 5 years, it surpassed Germany and the United Kingdom. However, even though it increased along with its very strong economic growth, it remains below that of the USA; that is, it catches up in the overall ability to invest and be able to carry out large-scale climate solutions. Brazil is just above the development threshold. As of 2022, Pakistan remained just below the development threshold, with negative values for a CI of −0.002, indicating that its economic growth is just enough to keep up with world GDP growth and still needs to meet their development threshold. In addition, when the financial cost of climate-related disasters is considered, countries like Pakistan then have to prioritize their financing to climate adaptation measures rather than mitigation measures, including the energy transition. In order for it to ensure both mitigation and adaptation, foreign assistance is required.

4.2.3. State of Responsibility–Capacity Index

The Responsibility–Capacity Index (RCI) integrates both the Responsibility Index and the Capacity Index to provide a more rounded view of which countries should be taking global leadership in relation to efforts over climate change. The RCI (Figure 4b) shows that despite the slight decrease in RCI, the United States remains the world’s highest in terms of both climate responsibility and capacity. This indicates that the US has a responsibility and the capacity to lead the rest of the world on the issue of climate action.

On the contrary, Chinas’s increasing RCI illustrates a growing responsibility with increasing emissions and its newly developing capability in dealing with those emissions, thrusting it into an important position in this world of climate negotiations. RCI values, on the other hand, for countries such as Pakistan and Brazil are much lower (very close to zero), reaffirming the fact that while they may be under the influence of climate change, they do not hold the capacity to take large-scale mitigation measures independently. These data highlight the need for a just transition with support from the nations with higher CI to those with lower CI.

4.2.4. State of Transition Index (TI)

In this section, we demonstrate the implications of the various transition indices defined in Section 3.2.4. In Figure 5, we present the share of global consumption from the target countries. The United States initially dominated the world’s energy consumption from the 1960s to early 2000s. However, since the early 2000s, China has quickly industrialized and increased its share and currently represents more than a quarter of the global energy consumption. The other case study countries have relatively smaller shares of energy consumption than the first two. This will be relevant to the subsequent transition index result as a weighing factor.

The first method is simply using the country’s share of fossil energy or simple TI (Equation (6)). The result is shown in Figure 6a. This figure shows that all target countries are generally decarbonizing, indicated by the lower simple TI value year by year. However, the remaining formulation of the transition index shows a different result.

The responsibility-adjusted transition index (Equation (7)) result is shown in Figure 6b. This method resulted in the annual index of the US becoming steeper, as compared to the simple TI method. As for China, the index has changed to an increase instead of decrease. This implies that China, despite having the fastest renewable energy installed capacity, is still ramping up its fossil fuel consumption. In fact, its energy consumption accounted for 26.4% of the world’s energy consumption in 2022 (Figure 5). Meanwhile, the US’ energy consumption, despite having the largest responsibility, only accounted for 15.9% of the world’s energy consumption.

We weighed the share of global energy consumption (Equation (6)), and the result is shown in Figure 6c. As compared to R-TI, this model emphasizes that the transition of a country with a higher share of the global energy consumption matters more than that of the lower share to global energy consumption. In this method, Brazil and Pakistan remain close to 0 since their energy consumption represents merely 2.2% and 0.5% of the world’s energy consumption, respectively. Germany, despite having an RI of 5%, amounts to merely 2.0% to world’s energy consumption, therefore being at the bottom of the chart. Meanwhile, between the US and China, this method implies that the energy transition for the US is undone by China. Their GES-TI is shown to cross each other in 2008, so the US’ effort from this year is practically cancelled by China’s fossil-fuelled power plant ramping-up. The inverted global energy share-adjusted transition index (IGES-TI) that follows Equation (7) is shown in Figure 6d. The main message remains the same as in the GES-TI method.

It is shown that simple TI is not a sufficient approach to evaluate the fairness of the energy transition plotted against RCI. This is due to the fact that simple TI simply uses the fraction of fossil fuel from domestic energy consumption and does not weigh with metrics considering its position in the global context.

Lastly, in Figure 7, the resulting various schemes of transition indices (TIs) against the Responsibility–Capacity Index (RCI) from 1990 to 2022 are plotted to evaluate the fairness in energy transition progress made by target countries. The point of the starting year of 1990 and the point of end year of 2022 are indicated in the plot. Additionally, a trendline is shown to indicate the direction. This plot shows how the energy transition state changes dynamically as each country’s change in terms of capacity and cumulative emissions on an annual basis. The result also shows that R-TI has a simpler feature of linearity since the Responsibility Index is contained in both R-TI and RCI.

These plots give an insight that China is going in the wrong direction for the energy transition. Despite the share of fossil fuel consumption being reduced annually, its domestic energy consumption is increasing and, as a result, is ramping up its CO₂ emissions. Brazil and Pakistan are also both heading in the wrong direction for the energy transition; however, their responsibility and share in global energy consumption are small. Despite the small amount, when other small countries with similar profiles remain on the same pathway, the cumulative effect is not negligible. The UK and Germany are both heading in the right direction; however, their share in global energy consumption is smaller relative to the US and China. Hence, their energy transition can become pointless if China remains on its current path. The US is going in the right direction.

4.3. Climate Financing

4.3.1. Financing Required vs. Received

As regards global climate finance, it is important to understand the levels of funding that non-Annex I countries have accessed. Figure 8a shows the aggregates accessed by the applicable non-Annex I countries: Brazil, China, and Pakistan. Brazil has received nearly USD 1.2 billion, followed by China, which has received around USD 600 million, while Pakistan has only received slightly above USD 200 million [61]. This figure is limited to financing received through the Green Climate Funds due to data availability limitations.

That discrepancy in shares should be expected: Brazil is a big player in global climate initiatives, whereas China enjoys a strong but somewhat lesser financial inflow, which might be due to growing economic self-reliance. The lower figure for Pakistan underscores the difficulties that many developing countries face: they are often more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change but less able to attract such large-scale investments.

Figure 8b represents the financial expectations mentioned in the respective Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to climate-related work for different countries. In this case, the climate finance expected for China exceeds others’ expectations, which is far higher than what is expected for the rest of the countries in the chart, such as the United Kingdom (UK), United States (US), Brazil, Pakistan, and Germany. These figures indicate that an extremely large scale of climate-related challenges lie ahead in China, which would need huge financial investments to achieve climate goals. The UK and US are two other instances of developed countries showing a similarly high financial need, indicative of extensive climate action they continue to commit to for the transition to climate neutrality. The much lower figure for countries such as Pakistan and Brazil further emphasizes the difference in financial needs between developed and developing countries.

4.3.2. Pledged vs. Deposited

Figure 9a shows the amount pledged by countries to global climate finance initiatives compared to amounts actually deposited. One striking point to note here is the remarkable difference in amounts between what has been pledged and actually deposited, particularly for big players like the US and UK. For example, whilst the US has pledged over USD 10 billion, it has deposited around only half of that. At the same time, the UK, with a large pledge, has a gap of around 22.7% in deposited funds. A different approach using numeration based on a fair share of the USD 100 billion goal in [71] confirms the similar result: the US only contributes as much as 38%, and the UK has contributed 68%. However, for Germany, it is reported to have contributed up to 173% of its fair share.

This gives rise to concerns that many industrialized countries may not show much commitment in delivering on climate finance, as has been recently seen in the COP29 held in Baku. The US’ fulfilment to its fair share may even become more concerning upon its second withdrawal from the Paris Agreement [72]. This clearly calls for monitoring and accountability mechanisms of critically important standards to ensure funds pledged become funds contributed. This underfunding has serious implications for the Global South, for which these funds are most needed, as shown in the cases of Brazil, China, and Pakistan, whose gaps, though smaller, are still very significant.

An interesting observation is made when the total pledges and deposits made by the selected countries in Figure 9a are seen in contrast with the RCI of countries in Figure 4b. The US, while being in a much higher position than Germany and the United Kingdom in RCI, pledged almost the same as Germany and the UK and deposited even less than the deposits made by these countries. China, emerging as a rising entity in RCI in recent years, deposited very minimal amounts. This shows unfairness in terms of pledges and deposits made by countries.

An adjustment is made to put Germany’s contribution as the baseline for deposits made by the countries. The deposits of other countries are then defined in proportion to their RCI score relative to Germany. The result is shown in Figure 9b. An interesting feature emerged: the UK’s deposits were reduced by a small margin in relation to its actual deposits because the UK sat at a lower position than Germany in the RCI score.

4.4. Implications for Energy Transition Fairness

It is demonstrated that climate-induced disasters disproportionately cost more for developing countries, with significantly higher damage costs relative to their GDP than developed countries. Developed countries demonstrate higher resilience towards climate-induced hazards—indicated by lower damage cost ratio to its GDP and higher ND-GAIN index [73]—that allows them to prioritize mitigation measures, while developing countries have to deal with both adaptation and mitigation measures simultaneously. This insight implies that the importance of a Loss-and-Damage Fund to vulnerable countries not only serves as responsive measures but also indirectly supports mitigation measures, including the energy transition.

Using transition indices (TIs) along with the Responsibility–Capacity Index (RCI), complemented with damage costs from climate-induced disasters and contribution to climate finance, presents a fairer evaluation of energy transition progress. Germany and the UK have contributed their fair share of the energy transition relative to their RCI, complemented with their deposited climate financing. The United States, while making progress in its energy transition, has not fulfilled its fair share considering its RCI and insufficient contribution to climate finance. China, despite having the largest renewable energy penetration [61], has not sufficiently fulfilled its fair share due its fast-growing RCI and small contribution to climate financing. Brazil, whilst having received a huge amount of climate financing, has not fulfilled its fair share in the energy transition. Pakistan can justifiably receive leniency in its energy transition considering its relatively small RCI and vulnerability to climate-induced disasters while having to reach the development threshold.

Improving the fairness will require a complex multifaceted approach. First, countries must align their energy transition efforts with RCI, scaling the clean energy target to their cumulative emission and fiscal capacity. Second, they must use contributions to international climate financing as a trade-off: when a sufficient transition is not possibly implemented, the contribution to climate financing—especially that which specifically funds the energy transition—can be utilized as a compensatory measure. Third, without undermining other mitigation measures, international climate financing needs to prioritize energy transition financing considering its large share and continuously growing source of anthropogenic emissions while taking into account the broader context such as damage from climate-induced disasters. Lastly, international community pressure, including the Commissions of Party (COP), remains important to drive an equitable energy transition, especially from lagging high-capacity and high-responsibility countries.

5. Conclusions

This study provides a comprehensive and data-driven assessment of fairness in the global energy transition, through the integration of metrics of historical responsibility and financial capacity across six representative countries. The countries were selected based on historical emissions, economic growth, efforts towards the transition, and the susceptibility of climate-related crises, representing a blend of developed and developing countries. The analysis of the Responsibility–Capacity Index (RCI) confirms that developed countries—most notably the United States—bear a disproportionate share of both past emissions and present economic capacity to act. China, while rapidly growing in economic terms, continues to exhibit rising fossil fuel dependency, diverging from the expected path of transition. Meanwhile, countries such as Pakistan and Brazil maintain low responsibility and capacity scores but face substantial exposure to climate-related economic disruption. These findings confirm the persistent asymmetries between nations in terms of both contributions to and capabilities for addressing the climate crisis.

In contrast to simple transition measures, the introduction of weighted transition indices, such as the Responsibility-Adjusted Transition Index (R-TI) and the Global Energy Share-Adjusted Transition Index (GES-TI), reveals disparities not visible in traditional indicators. For instance, although all countries appear to reduce their fossil fuel shares, countries with large global energy consumption or high historical responsibility may still negate progress through overall emissions growth. This layered approach offers a deeper view of each country’s role and progress in the energy transition.

This study also examined financial flows relevant to climate action, identifying discrepancies between climate finance pledges, actual deposits, and the funding needs articulated in Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). While Brazil and Pakistan have received significantly less than required, countries with higher RCI scores, e.g., the US and China, have not consistently fulfilled financing obligations in proportion to their responsibility or capacity. Lastly, the economic impact of climate-related disasters—assessed in both absolute terms and relative to GDP—demonstrates the outsized burden borne by lower-income countries. While wealthier nations may absorb such losses more easily, countries with limited fiscal space face compounding challenges in adapting to or recovering from climate shocks.

Taken together, these results underscore the necessity of multidimensional indicators in evaluating fairness in the energy transition. The proposed methodology of this study contributes to the growing field of quantitative justice-based climate metrics by offering a framework that is historically grounded, globally comparative, and sensitive to both structural inequality and national-level responsibility. Future research may be required to refine these indices or expand their application, but this study serves as a foundation for empirically assessing equitable progress in global decarbonization efforts.