Highlight 28/2025: Are Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs) Delivering on their Promise?
Abigail Roels, 6 June 2025
As the impacts of climate change intensify, international climate finance faces mounting challenges. Funding cuts to multilateral organisations, the reprioritisation of budgets towards defence, and an increasingly fragmented geopolitical landscape are just some of the threats that undermine collective climate action. In light of this, the urgent need for innovative financing mechanisms to mobilise funds for climate mitigation has never been stronger.
Accelerating the energy transition, particularly through the deployment of scaled-up renewable energy projects, remains critical. However, due to their nature, significant upfront investment is vital for project success, yet accessible financing is often scarce for developing economies. Although renewables accounted for over 90% of global power expansion in 2024, (continuing the trend of renewable investments outpacing fossil fuels since 2016), this masks stark geographic disparities, as China was responsible for 64% of that expansion, alone.
In response to these challenges, the G7 and the International Partners Group conceived the potentially transformative Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs). Aimed at catalysing the energy transition of emerging economies that have particular relevancy for global climate action, with specific emphasis on coal phase-out and power sector decarbonisation.
To date, four JETPs have been launched with South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Senegal, focusing on energy transition, sustainable development, and primarily supporting a « just transition » -particularly for the communities and workers directly affected by the transition to a clean economy. Although JETPs potential is widely recognised, notably their partnership model, country specificity, mobilising private sector capital, and market transformation – early experiences suggest their social justice dimension remains underdeveloped.
Additionally, JETPs are not immune to the risks of corruption, which the energy sector has long been plagued with. Transparency International’s Climate Governance Integrity Programme has analysed governance processes in South Africa’s, Indonesia’s, and Vietnam’s JETPs, and found multiple risks arising from weak governance structures, non-transparent decision-making, insufficient stakeholder engagement, and underdeveloped oversight mechanisms for fund management. These risks not only undermine climate action but also jeopardise the core promise of a just transition, with the potential risk of JETPs entrenching existing inequalities and impunities rather than dismantling them.
However, the promise of JETPs is not lost yet. If social justice and participation are reprioritised to be core principles in practice, JETPs can still fulfil their transformative potential. G7 countries must strengthen the “just” dimension, ensuring it’s an explicitly integrated pillar for investment and policy plans with partner countries, alongside ensuring civil society involvement. Moreover, institutional capacity in partner countries must be considered within the context of G7 funding. Lastly, a knowledge sharing forum should be developed to advance best practices in a just transition, whilst analysing lessons-learnt from existing JETPs, to strengthen their transparency, credibility, and efficacy.
Although JETPs face many challenges and risks, they remain to be one of the most innovative funding mechanisms available for climate action, whilst delivering equitable, sustainable development within the Global South. Now is the time to reflect, course-correct, and ensure that JETPs do not fall victim to their own potential.
Abigail Roels, Highlight 28/2025: Are Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs) Delivering on their Promise?, 6 June 2025, available at www.meig.ch
The views expressed in the MEIG Highlights are personal to the authors and neither reflect the positions of the MEIG Programme nor those of the University of Geneva.