Overview   Energy

Clean cooking and energy efficiency were in the spotlight at DEVCO Environment & Climate Week

Over 100 colleagues from 83 EU Delegations and EU Headquarters in Brussels attended DEVCO Environment and Climate Change Week to discuss the new European Commission policy priorities and how to strengthen environment and climate change dimensions in EU external cooperation, in particular in light of the next programming phase.

Further news items on climate, energy and forest-related issues. It's been a busy few months!

Working across sectors is key to successful delivery of Sustainable Development Goals

A new guidance note is available for staff and delegations, to aid with programme planning.

The Africa-Europe High Level Platform on Sustainable Energy Investments working groups have met 4 times this year in preparation for the Africa Investment Forum in Johannesburg in November.

Hosted by Guinea and the European Union, the Forum will focus on how to boost sustainable energy investments in Africa. An entire day (12 June) will be dedicated to Business-to-Business and Business-to-Government sessions.

The EU hosted the first meeting of the technical working groups of the Africa-Europe High-Level Platform for Sustainable Energy Investments (SEI) under the leadership of the African Union and the European Union, the latter represented by Stefano Manservisi, Director-General for International Cooperation and Development and Dominique Ristori, Director-General for Energy. The meeting was chaired by Kandeh Yumkella of Sierra Leone, former UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Representative of the Secretary-General and CEO of Sustainable Energy for All.

Eighty cities and municipalities convened at a workshop in Yaoundé in February to discuss how to integrate energy and climate in their future development plans.

The DESFERS project is part of the EU-funded EUR 18.1 million 'Women and Sustainable Energy' initiative, which promotes women’s energy entrepreneurship in 10 countries, nine of them African.

The launch of the High Level Platform on sustainable energy investments in Africa will take place at the Africa Investment Forum (7-9 November) in Johannesburg on 8 November 2018. The session will gather high-level European and African public and private sector representatives to exchange views and information on how to boost sustainable energy investments in Africa. This EU-Africa joint initiative is part of the "Energise Africa" strategy, presented in an EU Communication on 4 May 2017 in the run-up to the AU-EU Summit in Abidjan in November 2017 and is in line with the recently launched EU External Investment Plan (EIP) and Africa's Agenda 2063.

Warning on climate change; renewable energy potential for desert vegetation; dam threat to orang-utans; elephant killings in Botswana

The Covenant of Mayors in Sub Saharan Africa (CoM SSA), an initiative funded by the European Union (EU) and led by the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR), organised a course in early September on “Climate Response and Sustainable Urban Development in Africa” in Senegal, gathering about 40 civil servants from 18 cities and municipal associations that are signatories parties of the Covenant of Mayors for Sub Saharan Africa.

Providing electricity to the most vulnerable in remote areas of Haiti. Helping people in Timor-Leste to manage water resources. Supporting cities to tackle climate change impacts such as flooding. These were some of the EU-funded activities presented at the well-visited Sustainable Energy and Climate Change Panel at the Rimini Meeting on 22 August 2018.

The European Commission co-hosted an event to review progress towards sustainable energy goals at the High Level Political Forum in New York in July.

The Global MTCC Network has been created by a European Union-IMO project to combat climate change in the maritime sector

In line with the new European Consensus on Development and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the European Commission’s DG for International Cooperation and Development (DG DEVCO) is committed to supporting sustainable energy in developing countries. Most development cooperation programmes in the energy sector focus on promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency, thus making a significant contribution to climate change mitigation.

The EU is committed to spending 20% of its total budget for 2014-2020 on climate change. This article presents the state of play with regard to actual financial contributions by the European Commission’s DG International Cooperation & Development (DEVCO) to climate change and other environmental objectives over the past four years (2014-2017), based on data from the Environment and Climate Change Mainstreaming Facility (DEVCO C2-C6), with particular attention to the energy sector.

The meeting of the high-level political forum on sustainable development in 2018 convened under the auspices of the Economic and Social Council will be held from Monday, 9 July, to Wednesday, 18 July 2018.

EDD 2018 will focus on ‘Women and Girls at the Forefront of Sustainable Development: protect, empower, invest’, and will take place on 5-6 June in Brussels. Read more: https://eudevdays.eu/