Global Workshop to Accelerate Energy Efficiency: Challenges, Opportunities and Roadmaps

Energy efficiency is widely accepted as a fundamental factor for improving energy security and making it affordable and accessible to all. It is also a key option for global climate change mitigation. In addition, the UN Sustainable Energy for ALL (SE4ALL) initiative’s objective of doubling the global energy efficiency improvement rate by 2030 requires action on various fronts and involvement of countries, cities, policy makers, the private sector, financial institutions and a variety of other stakeholders.
Copenhagen Centre for Energy Efficiency (C2E2), as the energy efficiency hub for SE4ALL is committed to providing technical and analytical support to global, national and city level actions in speeding up energy efficiency improvement. As part of its country level initiatives, C2E2 had engaged four regional partners to review the status of existing energy efficiency policies and priorities in countries within each region. The four regions and the regional partners included:
Bariloche Foundation in Argentina – for the Latin America and Caribbean Region;
Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand – for the Asian Region;
Centre for Energy Efficiency (CENEf) in Moscow – for the Commonwealth of Independent States Region; and
The Energy Research Centre at the University of Cape Town in South Africa – for African Region
A total of twelve countries, four from each region, were studied in the initial phase of this initiative, and a consolidated report on the status of energy efficiency in each region was prepared by the respective regional partner. C2E2 envisages providing support to the chosen twelve countries in accelerating energy efficiency. As a first step in this direction, it was decided to hold a capacity building workshop – Global Workshop to Accelerate Energy Efficiency: Challenges, Opportunities and Roadmaps from 9-12 November, 2015 at UN City in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The Workshop brought together energy officials and experts from the chosen twelve countries, representatives from development banks and leading businesses, as well as international and regional energy research institutions. It included presentations and discussions on innovative strategies adopted by countries, businesses and financial institutions to implement energy efficiency measures. It also provided opportunity for countries to engage with the SE4All Global Energy Efficiency Accelerator Platform, which is a public-private partnership (PPP) programme that aims to scale-up energy efficiency activities and investments worldwide. The Platform provides governments with a clear path for a multi-stakeholder engagement on critical energy efficiency goals across various sectors. In addition, the findings of four regional energy efficiency studies were presented and disseminated. The Workshop also had capacity building sessions on energy efficiency measures, instruments, policies and programs for core economic sectors. In the break-out sessions that followed, the focus was on arriving at the broad contours of a roadmap for capturing the available energy efficiency potential in respective countries. In particular, by the end of the Workshop, each 7 participating country had not only prepared a skeleton draft of their roadmap for enhancing energy efficiency, but had also identified the nature and scope of the possible technical assistance and support that the countries would like to have in their quest for improving energy efficiency in respective countries.