能源转型投资与知识和技能转让：对投资条约设计的影响

International Investment Agreements Energy transition investment andthe transfer of knowledge andskills: Implications for investment H I G H L I G H T S International investment in cleanenergy technology and the transferand diffusion of knowledge and skillsare required to achieve globally agreedclimate targets. Investment needs forrenewable power alone exceed $1trillion annually by 2030. With morethan 80 per cent of renewable energy The impact of IIAs on energy transitioninvestment and the diffusion ofknowledge and skills is not automatic.Treaty design choices and the adoptionof new-generation policies help createa supportive international framework.The role of IIAs in this respect is tocomplement wider domestic and Old-generation international investmentagreements (IIAs), including theirbroadly drafted protection standards,as well as clauses on performancerequirements, may circumscribe New-generation IIAs can supportinvestment in climate technology andknowledge and skills transfers byfocusing modernization efforts on fouraction areas: (i) safeguarding policyspace for domestic and internationalaction; (ii) strengthening the ability Modern IIAs increasingly addressenergy-sector-specific cooperation.They aim to promote flows of energytransition investment, support humancapital development and absorptive I.Introduction Climate change adaptation and mitigation call for the large-scale transition to clean energy systems.The total required capital expenditures for the energy transition are vast.1Considering only renewablepower generation, worldwide annual investment needs exceed $1 trillion by 2030. Internationalprivate investment plays an important role in this context with more than 80 per cent of investment in Yet financing alone will not be sufficient. Countries require access to the necessary technologies,know-how and skills to deploy, operate, and adapt clean energy systems. Moreover, this is nolonger a one-way dynamic with predominantly developed-country exporters and developing-countryimporters of clean energy technology. A cluster of emerging economies is moving up the clean- International investment policies can play a supportive role in this respect. UNCTAD and othershave examined the role of international investment agreements (IIAs) with respect to climate changeand the energy transition (UNCTAD, 2022a, 2022b; APEC, 2024; OECD, 2025). Recognizingthe constraints posed by old-generation IIAs, UNCTAD proposed a reform toolbox for promoting At the same time, this Issues Note does not assume that investment in energy transition technologyand the transfer of knowledge and skills are appropriate objectives of all IIAs. Nor are positive effectsautomatic. Many barriers to energy transition investment and the domestic diffusion of technologyare not primarily legal. They often relate to factors such as the cost of capital, infrastructure and grid Building on UNCTAD’s existing work, this IIA Issues Note describes the limitations arising from thestock of old-generation treaties relating to energy transition investment and the transfer of knowledge II.The relationship between IIAs, FDIin climate technology, and the transfer Most of the over 2,600 in-force treaties that make up the IIA regime were signed in the 1980s, 1990sor early 2000s. As such, they do not respond to policy concerns that have emerged since then,including the urgency of climate action. UNCTAD has long advocated for the modernization of thesetreaties and has put forward important policy guidance such as the Investment Policy Frameworkfor Sustainable Development (UNCTAD, 2015), the Reform Package for the International Investment The transfer of technology on mutually agreed terms refers to the intentional cross-entity transmissionof technological knowledge, know-how, skills or related assets under agreed conditions. Technologydiffusion denotes the broader spread and local adoption of technology, which may result from bothformal transfer and indirect spillovers of knowledge, skills and technological capabilities. Technologytransfer is referred to across various areas of public international law (Box 1). The term encompassesmore than just intellectual property (IP) rights transfers as technology transfer may occur via embodied Figure 1 Technology transfer on mutually agreed terms and domestic technology FDI can be an important channel for the transfer and diffusion of technology, particularly whereinvestment is accompanied by training, supplier linkages and local capability-building. However, theextent of such transfer is heavily contingent on local conditions and requires host-country absorptivecapacity (UNCTAD, 2014b; Andrenelli, Gourdon and Moïsé, 2019). In practice, whether investment In this context, the role of old-generation IIAs remains inconclusive as there is no mono-causal linkbetween the existence of an investment treaty and increased FDI inflows. Modern IIAs may, however,include provisions that aim to improve the over