Leaders focus on renewables on UN sidelines By Reuters

By Valerie Volcovici and Simon Jessop

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A coalition of some of the world’s biggest companies, financial houses and cities urged governments on Tuesday to adopt policies they said could unleash $1 trillion in clean energy investment by 2030.

The Mission 2025 group, backed by Britain’s Energy Transition Commission, said policies such as setting new capacity targets and offering tax credits or long-term electricity contracts would boost the industry’s case for investment.

Countries are speaking this week on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. With global energy demand increasing, countries will need to use more renewable energy to avoid burning more fossil fuels.

Leaders from Kenya, Barbados, the European Union and other nations were set to discuss their countries’ efforts to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 – a key commitment made at last year’s COP28 summit in Dubai.

Separately, US President Joe Biden is set to address the UN General Assembly for the last time as president, and a separate event will discuss his administration’s clean energy efforts under the $360 billion Tax Cuts and Inflation Act. adopted in 2022.

“What he will show is how the United States has fundamentally changed the playbook — not focused on doom and gloom, focused instead on massive economic opportunity, a chance to build U.S. manufacturing and infrastructure, and a chance to build the American middle. class,” White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi.

Sounding a somewhat hopeful note, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday that the goal of tripling clean energy capacity is within reach – but it will require a big effort to unlock bottlenecks such as permits and grid connections.

The agency warned that increasing renewables alone would not reduce energy prices or fossil fuel use without “a concerted push to build and upgrade 25 million kilometers of electricity grids by 2030”, along with around 1,500 GW of storage capacity energy.

African leaders are particularly anxious to find ways to grow their electricity portfolio, both to fuel development and to reach the hundreds of millions of people who still lack access to electricity.

The presidents of the African Development Bank and the World Bank spoke on Monday about their project to expand access to electricity to more than 300 million people on the continent, for which the banks were seeking $30 billion in private sector investment.

“You cannot really grow the global economy without energy,” African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina said during an event hosted by the Global Alliance for Energy for People and Planet on Monday.

“You can’t industrialize in the dark.”