International Industrial Ecology Day 2021

Global power sector needs to be transformed to low-carbon energy sources for tracking climate change. However, power sector transition’s impact is far beyond climate and can simultaneously affect global/regional environment, social, economy, thus influence global and regional progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Here, we provide an assessment approach in conjunction with Environmentally Extended Multiregional Input-Output Analysis (MRIO), methods for calculating the SDG score, and scenario analysis, to quantify the impact of power transition on global and regional SDGs, under three different scenarios. We find that power transition in line with the Paris Agreement will bring huge SDGs benefits. Developing countries’ power transition determines global SDG trend. However, more than 80% of regions will experience SDG index scores increase while individual SDG (especially SDG 8.5) scores decrease. Our study has an insight for how to carry out power transformation to improve SDGs, which is of great significance for improving the current SDG “dilemma”.