Two Major Institutions Team Up To Boost Renewables In Latin America

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) are teaming up to promote renewable energy investment in Latin America and the Caribbean, backing the energy transition in the region.

IRENA and the development bank will support each other’s energy investment in Latin America as part of their initiative to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, the agency said in a statement.

The parties will facilitate renewable energy investment and development in the region, backing initiatives to create favorable market conditions for these.

“Both institutions are committed to scaling up renewable energy ambition and deployment to support the realisation of economic and climate goals in the region,” IRENA said.

“At the IDB, we are convinced that the post-pandemic recovery must have a focus on sustainability and green growth,” the development bank’s president Mauricio Claver-Carone said.

“Renewable energy investment needs to double to if we are to align with a climate-safe path,” said IRENA’s Director-General Francesco La Camera.

The bank and the agency have already partnered under the Renewable Energy Latin America and Caribbean initiative (RELAC), which aims to promote cooperation among countries in the region, targeting 70 percent of renewable installed capacity for power generation by 2030.

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Earlier this year, Fatih Birol, the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said that massive investments in renewable energy in the developing economies, which are set to produce most of the global emissions in the coming years and decades, will be necessary to achieve global climate goals.

“Our energy and climate future increasingly hinges on the decisions made in emerging market and developing economies,” Birol wrote in an article in January, part of The Davos Agenda for the World Economic Forum. 

According to Birol, if the world were to meet the accelerated emissions reduction goals of the IEA Sustainable Development Scenario, the share of clean energy investment needs to rise to around two-thirds of total energy investment by 2030. Of this, almost 60 percent would be needed in developing economies, he said.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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