A new Global Energy Transition Forum was launched today in the margins of the World Economic Forum, in Davos, by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen along with international partners.
The forum will bring around the table partners across the world, from Brazil to Canada, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Peru, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, and many others, with the objective of reaching for ambitious climate targets at world level and supporting countries for whom the clean transition is more challenging.
President von der Leyen described the three main goals that will guide the action of the forum. First, it will seek to keep the momentum on the world’s energy agreement and ensure that global energy targets find their way into the new set of Nationally Determined Contributions, ahead of this year’s COP.
Secondly, the President highlighted the need that those targets be transformed into concrete projects that benefit people. “Under Brazil’s COP leadership, this Forum will focus on flagship initiatives, for example projects that bring power to underserved communities, or projects that jump-start new clean industries and scale up clean energy globally,” she said.
The third objective of the forum is to unlock more investment, including smart finance with de-risking tools, blended finance, and other creative solutions to attract private capital.
President von der Leyen highlighted the unprecedented levels of world spending on clean energy. “Last year alone, global spending on clean energy hit a record USD 2 trillion. For every dollar invested in fossil fuels, you had two dollars invested in renewable energy. In the power sector, clean energy investments outnumber fossil fuels ten to one. This is a shift we have been working towards for years,” she remarked.
This progress builds on the Global Renewables and Energy Efficiency Pledge spearheaded by the European Commission and launched during the COP28.
Challenges remain, nonetheless: many countries or regions still struggle to benefit from the clean energy transition. Africa, for example, only gets 2% of clean energy investment, despite being home to 60% of the world’s best solar resources, something that President von der Leyen described as unacceptable and unfair. She expressed her conviction that the global campaign ‘Scaling up Renewables in Africa’ which she initiated with South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa last November will close that financing gap.
Furthermore, the President stated that the world needs to move faster and focus also on scaling up manufacturing, so that every region is able to build or improve the grids and the storage capacity that is required. This endeavour will require massive investment that no company or country alone can undertake. That is the fundamental added value of the new forum.
The president concluded saying: “The Global Energy Transition Forum is all about connecting the dots; about making sure that governments, companies, and investors find each other, as they do today here. In these times of harsh geostrategic competition predictability, certainty and reliability matter. I want to be very clear with my message: Europe stays the course and we stand ready to work with all global actors to accelerate the transition to clean energy.”
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Speech by the President at the launch of the Global Energy Transition Forum
