Pandemic recovery is slightly greener

Fresh data on efforts to stitch clean energy into countries' pandemic response spending shows a slightly greener hue, but it's still pretty faint.

Driving the news: The International Energy Agency's updated "Sustainable Recovery Tracker" finds that governments together have earmarked over $710 billion for clean energy as of last month.

Why it matters: That's a big boost over the last version of the analysis. But it remains a small share of total economic responses to the pandemic. Both trends are shown above.

The big picture: Since the pandemic's early days, IEA, the International Monetary Fund and others have called for using huge fiscal rescue and recovery packages to boost clean energy.

• The results have been limited, but IEA said the latest figures show progress.
• But it's unevenly distributed, with advanced economies devoting earmarking more to clean energy.

What they're saying: IEA executive director Fatih Birol said in a statement that the report shows "promising signs," but far more is needed.

“[T]he world still needs to massively expand its clean energy deployment efforts throughout this decade, first and foremost in developing economies, if we are going to preserve the hope of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 °C,” he said.