Scheduled for October 3, the Conference aims to accelerate global efforts to strengthen regional cooperation and integration as a catalyst for scaling up renewable energy and energy efficiency investment, innovation and entrepreneurship in developing countries. Targeted regional cooperation can address some of the barriers for sustainable energy and climate technology markets more effectively and at lower costs than national efforts, create the urgently needed economies of scale and enable more equal progress and spill-over effects between countries.
The Conference will therefore present case studies and lessons learned from the EU, EAC, ECOWAS, SADC, CARICOM, SPC, SICA and the Arab States, and highlight partnership opportunities with the Global Network of Regional Sustainable Energy Centres (GN-SEC). The potential contribution of regional cooperation to accelerate the implementation of the “Green People´s Energy for Africa Initiative” through enhanced entrepreneurship, civil society engagement and domestic financing will also be discussed. Finally, the Conference will highlight the catalytic role of regional programmes and organizations in implementing global efforts and objectives like the Sustainable Development Goals, the climate goals of the Paris Agreement or the SE4ALL initiative.
The Conference will bring together senior officials from EU Member States, selected key players from regional and international organisations, development banks, utilities and regulatory bodies, the private sector and academia with the objective to:
- Present an overview of the current status of regional political and technical sustainable energy cooperation/integration in different parts of the world;
- Create mutual understandings on the benefits and opportunities of a strong regional cooperation in clean energy development;
- Exchange of case studies, best practices, failures and lessons learned from processes, programs and projects in various sub-regions;
- Concrete recommendations to strengthen sub-regional cooperation as a tool to promote SDG-7, SDG-9 and SDG-13;
- Create partnerships on concrete programs/topics to be rolled out on sub-regional level as follow-up.
