Fewer than half of 52 countries surveyed by the NewClimate Institute understood the greenhouse gas reduction options available to them, even though they had submitted carbon targets ahead of the United Nations climate summit in Paris.

That was the conclusion of a study the Institute released in December 8, while the UN summit was under way.

“The study found that policymakers in developing countries have a good grasp of what climate change is and how it will impact them, but they lack information on how to create the capacity to bring in helpful new technologies,” SciDevNet reports.

Ritu Mathur of India’s Energy and Resources Institute recalled one recent instance when an innovative financing mechanism, combined with technological advances, cut the cost of a low-emission lamp by four-fifths. “There are a number of sectors where easy and cheap solutions are needed for making technologies accessible to the people so that they are used at a mass scale,” she told Parvaiz, adding that innovation and technology exchange will be essential for the 50% of the country’s energy infrastructure that has yet to be built.