“You say you’re doing okay with the richest of the poor. What are you doing with the poorest of the poor?” asked Greta Bull, CEO of the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), in a question that captured an important tone for the day.

 

The Forum’s closing day, with over 800 attendees present, did not disappoint. On a wide range of issues – energy access finance, bringing clean energy to refugee camps, clean cooking – government leaders, companies, NGOs, and financiers stepped up with new collaborations and commitments to achieve faster results.

 

 

And, with the Forum spurring a whole host of follow-up working meetings taking place in locations across Lisbon, more progress can be expected.

 

 

Rachel Kyte, Chief Executive Officer

and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All

 

“I got the passion. I’m going back to Ghana with that passion,” added the Hon. Hajia Alima Mahama, Ghana’s Minister for Local Government and Rural Development.

 

At the close of the Forum, Kyte and Mahama were joined on the stage by dozens of leaders from government, business, academia, civil society and other groups who over the two days had made new action pledges.

 

     ​  Sustainable Energy in Humanitarian Settings

 

With displaced populations increasing worldwide, the urgency for providing clean energy and clean cooking solutions at refugee camps and other humanitarian settings is growing. “They come, and they are welcome, but we need to provide for them,” said the Hon. Simon D’Ujanga, Uganda’s Minister of the State of Energy, which has 1.5 million refugees, most of whom rely on local firewood for cooking.

 

In a packed session, government leaders, UN officials, foundations and civil society pledged to work together to accelerate gains to bring clean, affordable energy to humanitarian settings. Everyone agreed that replicating success stories, such as solar plants that are now powering two refugee camps in Jordan, is imperative. “We’re still not being serious on this. What difference will you make between now and the end of the year and how can we hold ourselves accountable?” said Andrew Harper, director of the Division of Programme Support and Management at UNHCR, the UN refugee agency.

 

     ​  Spurring Energy Access Finance in Africa

 

More financing and different kinds of financing are critical for supporting and scaling projects and enterprises that are providing energy access in regions with the biggest gaps, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa. The European Union agree to boost spending on off-grid energy and last-mile electrification and off-grid. Provider Mobisol highlighted the significance of $30 million of local currency asset-backed financing.

 

     ​  Government Leadership

 

On day 1 left no doubt that governments, many of them in Africa, are stepping up on leadership in advancing strategies and policies that will accelerate SDG7 gains. “We now have a truly global leadership cohort of countries that have really ambitious plans and have set aggressive targets. We now have that with countries such as Bangladesh, Kenya and Rwanda,” Rachel Kyte said. Among the examples that emerged on day 1 there's Rwanda committed to reduce – from 83 percent to 42 percent – the percentage of its population cooking with traditional biomass fuels by 2024. Uganda and the Smart Communities Coalition agreed to work together to bring clean cooking and other sustainable energy solutions to the country’s growing refugee population. Somalia hosted a multi-stakeholder meeting in Lisbon to advance its efforts to run its economy on clean energy. Togo committed to 60 percent of new power connections by 2030, largely provided by the private sector.

 

During the Forum, the Shine campaign was officially launched with three-dozen groups from the faith and philanthropic sectors making commitments to mobilize financing for energy access efforts. Among others, those commitments included the Wallace Global Fund targeting one percent of its total investment portfolio to energy access efforts in Sub-Sahara Africa and the IKEA Foundation rolling out six new grants totaling over $40 million to support energy access work in Asia and Africa. SEforALL also signed a new Deliver Partnership with leading energy efficiency business, Danfoss. The partnership will focus on the Cooling for All initiative, the District Energy Systems Accelerator and work to continue action on energy efficiency that supports SDG7 goals. A new Middle East Hub was also announced by SEforALL and the Islamic Development Bank which will be hosted at ISDB Headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.  The Hub will raise awareness at the national and regional level of the challenges, constraints, and opportunities available while achieving the three core objectives of SDG7.

 

 

The opening day was a mix of data-driven reality about the challenge ahead and optimism that bigger, bolder gains are more imminent than ever. And, no doubt, attendees at the Forum – a mix of financiers, governments, business CEOs, civil society and community leaders – were the secret ingredient for making the transformative gains happen.

 

 

Rachel Kyte, Chief Executive Officer

and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All

 

Taking Stock on SDG7 Progress: If Rwanda and Bangladesh can achieve exponential growth in off-grid renewables in just a few years, why can’t other countries in Africa and Asia? If Portugal can achieve 100 percent renewable energy, why can’t other advanced economies? This was the reaction to the Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report released at the Forum’s opening session. While the data shows significant challenges in meeting 2030 goals, it also contained some bright spots on energy efficiency, energy access, and renewable energy.

 

 

Among the positive trends: the primary energy intensity of the global economy improved at a faster 2.8% pace in 2015; for the first time in all regions of the world, electricity access grew faster than population growth; in Bangladesh and Mongolia, energy access gains were nearly 10 percent. Far more sobering was the report’s clean cooking access figures as well as slow progress in many Sub-Saharan African countries on all of the SDG7 objectives.

 

 

UN Secretary-General António Guterres, in a video message to Forum attendees

 

So what will it take to get more countries on the right track? Supportive government policies and regulatory frameworks are critical – a point echoed by a half-dozen government ministers speaking about their gains on energy access, energy efficiency and clean cooking.

 

Rwanda’s government has an integrated electrification strategy emphasizing grid- and off-grid solutions. Remote, rural populations far removed from electric grids are a central focus of their strategy. “We want to make sure we connect the entire population,” said the Hon. Germaine Kamayirese, Rwanda’s Minister of State for Energy, Water, and Sanitation.

An inside look at the #SEforALLforum with Rachel Kyte

Static progress on access to clean cooking fuels and technologies was the most sobering trend by far in the SDG7 progress report. The clean cooking access deficit is still stuck at about 3 billion, with gains from 2014 to 2016 negligible gains and only 59 percent of the global population with access to clean cooking. “If we keep up this pace, we’ll only reach 73 percent by 2030. That’s unacceptable,” said Dr. Maria Neira, Director of Public Health and the Environment, at the World Health Organization.

 

No doubt, new, more collaborative strategies are needed, country by country. And all cooking fuels – whether biomass pellets, ethanol or LPG – need to be on the table as a scalable solution. “We need lots of solutions. There is no silver bullet,” Kyte said.

 

A case in point is Cameroon, which is pursuing an ambitious national strategy based primarily on LPG cookstoves. It has doubled its clean cooking numbers since 2006 and about 20 percent of the population is now using LPG stoves; by 2030, it hopes to be at 50 percent. Ghana is also pushing a national strategy based on sustainable biomass and LPG.

 

The international funding community also needs to step up in supporting countries with the biggest clean cooking access gaps. “There’s a massive opportunity to create big markets for clean cooking fuels,” Kyte said.

 

“Funding needs to be incredibly patient,” added Dymphna van der Lans, CEO of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. “This market is not off-grid solar. It needs to have a sense of humility.”

 

Simply put, Rachel Kyte noted, investing in clean cooking is investing in “smarter energy.”

 

“What I’m hearing again and again today is that we’re not just talking about energy as electrons,” Kyte said he her wrap-up remarks. “We’re looking at the health care benefits that will be achieved when we deliver reliable affordable energy. Energy that will help save children’s lives because they’re breathing cleaner air.”

 

Leveraging Women’s Role: Gender diversity and women’s empowerment in the SDG7 movement came up time and time again.

 

A new report produced by SEforALL and ENERGIA, Levers of Change, provides powerful evidence of how women are often not given an equal chance to take advantage of sustainable energy opportunities, such as traditional and mobile money financing that would enable them to acquire home solar systems or clean cooking solutions.

 

At an interactive lunch on gender inclusive investing, Calvert Impact Capital highlighted two key opportunities for enhancing women’s role: first, because women are more apt to live in energy poverty then men, targeting them in investment strategies will have a bigger impact; second, Calvert found its investments perform better when it uses a gender lens.

 

Banner photo credit to Kaia Rose / Connect4Climate

 

Renewable energy is making impressive gains in the electricity sector, although these are not being matched in transportation and heating – which together account for 80% of global energy consumption.  

 

While global trends are disappointing, recent national experiences around the world offer encouraging signs. There is mounting evidence that with the right approaches and policies, countries can make substantial progress in clean energy and energy access, and improve the lives of millions of people. 

 

Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report, launched at the Sustainable Energy for All Forum in Lisbon, is the most comprehensive look available at the world’s progress towards the global energy targets on access to electricity, clean cooking, renewable energy and energy efficiency.  

 

 

The following are some of the main findings of the report. Findings are based on official national-level data and measure global progress up to 2015 for renewable energy and energy efficiency, and 2016 for access to electricity and clean cooking. 

 

         One billion people – or 13% of the world’s population – still live without electricity. Sub-Saharan Africa, and Central and South Asia continue to be the areas of the world with the largest access deficits. Almost 87% of the world’s people without electricity live in rural areas. 

       ​  The number of people gaining access to power has been accelerating since 2010, but needs to ramp up further to achieve universal access to electricity by 2030. If current trends continue, an estimated 674 million people will still live without electricity in 2030.

       ​  Some of the strongest gains were made in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, which all increased their electricity access rate by 3% or more annually between 2010 and 2016. Over the same period, India provided electricity to 30 million people annually, more than any other country. Sub-Saharan Africa’s electrification deficit has begun to fall in absolute terms for the first time.

       ​  Tens of millions of people now have access to electricity through solar home systems or connected to mini-grids. However, these remain concentrated in about a dozen pioneering countries where penetration of solar electricity can reach as much as 5-15% of the population.

 

Clean Cooking 

       ​  Three billion people – or more than 40% of the world’s population – do not have access to clean cooking fuels and technologies. Household air pollution from burning biomass for cooking and heating is responsible for some 4 million deaths a year, with women and children at the greatest risk.  

       ​  Parts of Asia have seen access to clean cooking outpace growth in population. These positive outcomes were driven largely by widespread dissemination of LPG or piped natural gas. In India, Pakistan, Indonesia and Vietnam, the population with access to clean cooking technologies grew by more than 1% of their population annually. 

       ​  In Sub-Saharan Africa, however, population growth in recent years has outstripped the number of people gaining access to clean cooking technologies by a ratio of four to one. 

       ​  Clean cooking continues to lag the furthest behind of all the four energy targets, due to low consumer awareness, financing gaps, slow technological progress, and lack of infrastructure for fuel production and distribution. If the current trajectory continues, 2.3 billion people will continue to use traditional cooking methods in 2030. 

 

       ​  There is mounting evidence of the uncoupling of growth and energy use. Global gross domestic product (GDP) grew nearly twice as fast as primary energy supply in 2010-15. Economic growth outpaced growth in energy use in all regions, except for Western Asia, where GDP is heavily tied to energy-intensive industries, and in all income groups. However, progress continues to be slow in low income countries, where energy intensity is higher than the global average.

       ​  Globally, energy intensity – the ratio of energy used per unit of GDP – fell at an accelerating pace of 2.8% in 2015, the fastest decline since 2010.  This improved the average annual decline in energy intensity to 2.2 % for the period 2010-2015. However, performance still falls short of the 2.6% yearly decline needed to meet the SDG7 target of doubling the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency by 2030.

       ​  Improvement in industrial energy intensity, at 2.7% per annum since 2010, was particularly encouraging, as this is the largest energy consuming sector overall. Progress in the transport sector was more modest, especially for freight transportation, and is a particular challenge for high-income countries. In low and middle-income countries, the energy intensity of the residential sector has been increasing since 2010.

       ​  Six of the 20 countries that represent 80 percent of the world’s total primary energy supply, including Japan and the US, reduced their annual primary energy supply in 2010-15 while continuing to grow GDP – indicating a peak in energy use. Among the large energy-intensive developing economies, China and Indonesia stood out with annual improvement exceeding 3 percent. 

 

       ​  As of 2015, the world obtained 17.5% of its total final energy consumption from renewable sources, of which 9.6% represents modern forms of renewable energy such as geothermal, hydropower, solar and wind. The remainder is traditional uses of biomass (such as fuelwood and charcoal). 

       ​  Based on current policies, the renewable share is expected to reach just 21% by 2030, with modern renewables growing to 15%, falling short of the substantial increase demanded by the SDG7 target. 

       ​  Rapidly falling costs have allowed solar and wind to compete with conventional power generation sources in multiple regions, driving the growth in the share of renewables in electricity to 22.8% in 2015. But electricity accounted for only 20% of total final energy consumption that year, highlighting the need to accelerate progress in transport and heating. 

       ​  The share of renewable energy in transport is rising quite rapidly, but from a very low base, amounting to only 2.8% in 2015. The use of renewable energy for heating purposes has barely increased in recent years and stood at 24.8% in 2015, of which one third was from modern uses. 

       ​  Since 2010, China’s progress in renewable energy alone accounted for nearly 30% of absolute growth in renewable energy consumption globally in 2015. Brazil was the only country among the top 20 largest energy consumers to substantially exceed the global average renewable share in all end uses: electricity, transport and heating. The UK’s share of renewable energy in total final energy consumption grew by 1% annually on average since 2010 – more than five times the global average.

 

Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report is a joint effort of the International Energy Agency (IEA), the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), the World Bank, and the World Health Organization (WHO).  

 

 

 

Dr Fatih Birol, the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA)

 

 

Adnan Z. Amin, IRENA Director-General

 

 

Stefan Schweinfest, Director of the Statistics Division of UN DESA

 

 

Riccardo Puliti, Senior Director for Energy and Extractives at the World Bank

 

 

Dr Maria Neira, Director, Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health, at the World Health Organization (WHO)

 

 

 

Rachel Kyte, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and CEO of Sustainable Energy for All.

 

It is the fourth edition of this report, formerly known as the Global Tracking Framework (GTF). Funding for the report was provided by the World Bank’s Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP).

Organizers of the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS) taking place this September in San Francisco have provided new evidence of how cities, states, regions, businesses, and investors are taking climate ambition to the next level. In this way, they are helping to build momentum for a successful outcome for the UN Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland (COP24) at the end of the year.

 

Specifically, 11 new commitments from Mahindra, among India’s largest business houses, push the number of major global companies with science-based targets to over 400.

 

The summit in San Francisco will be hosted by the Governor of California, Jerry Brown; the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Climate Action, Michael Bloomberg; the Chairman of the Mahindra Group, Anand Mahindra; and the Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change, Patricia Espinosa.

 

Speaking to delegates and journalists on the margins of the ongoing UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Anirban Ghosh, Chief Sustainability Officer of the Mahindra Group announced that business had taken an important step forwards today. In total, 13 of its companies have now committed to cut their emissions in line with the Paris Agreement goals by signing-up to a science-based target.

 

 

Patricia Espinosa, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary

 

To date, over 700 leading businesses around the world have made strategic climate commitments through the We Mean Business coalition’s Take Action campaign. Collectively, these companies represent 2.62 gigatons of emissions, which is equivalent to the total annual emissions of India.

 

The announcement by the Mahindra Group responds to one of the five “Summit Challenges” being presented to sub-national governments, business and civil society worldwide in advance of the Global Climate Action Summit.

 

Its commitment falls under the second of the five challenges – Inclusive Economic Growth – and means that so far 400 companies have positively reacted to this particular “call to action,” which aims to sign on 500 companies by the conclusion of GCAS in September.

 

 

Anand Mahindra, Mahindra Group Chairman

 

In addition to adding critical momentum to the COP24 negotiations in Poland this December – when governments of the world will meet to signal their readiness to enhance ambition – the GCAS will build momentum for a strong outcome at the Climate Summit convened by UN Secretary-General António Guterres in 2019 and to elevate climate action plans – Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs – by 2020.

 

 

Nick Nuttall, Global Climate Action Summit Communications Director

 

The 2018 Global Climate Action Summit, hosted in San Francisco September 12 to 14, will bring together state and local governments, business, and citizens from around the world to showcase climate action taking place, thereby demonstrating how the tide has turned in the race against climate change and inspiring deeper national commitments in support of the Paris Climate Change Agreement.

 

To keep warming well below 2 degrees C, and ideally 1.5 degrees C—temperatures that could lead to catastrophic consequences—worldwide emissions must start trending down by 2020.

 

The Summit will showcase climate action around the world, along with bold new commitments, to give world leaders the confidence they can go even further by 2020.

 

The Summit’s five headline challenge areas are Healthy Energy Systems; Inclusive Economic Growth; Sustainable Communities; Land Stewardship and Transformative Climate Investments

 

A series of reports are set to be launched over the coming months and at the Summit underlining the contribution of states and regions, cities, businesses, investors and civil society, also known as “non-party stakeholders” to national and international efforts to address climate change.

 

Many partners are supporting the Summit and the mobilization in advance including Climate Group; the Global Covenant of Mayors; the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group; BSR; We Mean Business; CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project; the World Wide Fund for Nature; Mission 2020

 

For more information on the Summit, please visit globalclimateactionsummit.org.