The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) have signed a critical partnership agreement that will help drive the transition to cleaner sources of energy in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), inline the Paris Agreement to bring global temperatures to 1.5 Degrees Celsius.
According to the IDB, the partnership is built around knowledge-sharing in the context of promoting regional integration, renewable energy investment, finance, and risk mitigation in the Latin America and the Caribbean. In particular, the two parties will support each other’s initiatives such as IDB’s Energy Hub and the IRENA’s Climate Investment Platform – a multistakeholder initiative established at the United Nations Secretary General’s Climate Action Summit in 2019.
Specifically, IDB and IRENA will work to enhance access to sustainable finance in the region by supporting the creation of market conditions that are conducive to renewable energy investments and that facilitate the development of renewable energy projects. Both institutions have indicated that they are committed to scaling up renewable energy ambition and deployment to support the realisation of economic and climate goals in the region.
“We’re thrilled to partner with IRENA to promote our region’s transition to a sustainable energy future at a critical time,” said IDB’s President Mauricio Claver-Carone. “At the IDB, we are convinced that the post-pandemic recovery must have a focus on sustainability and green growth”, he added.
Francesco La Camera, IRENA Director-General, in an invited comment said that renewable energy investment needs to double if the world is to align with a climate-safe path. La Camera said that the IDB is an active investor in Latin America and the Caribbean’s energy transition while adding that he believes through this partnership, both can strengthen efforts to put the region at the forefront of the decarbonisation agenda.
It should be noted that the IDB and IRENA have collaborated in the past, coordinating knowledge exchange activities and technical workshops on renewable energy and energy integration, and most recently, have partnered under the Renewable Energy Latin America and Caribbean initiative (RELAC). This initiative aims to promote cooperation among the LAC countries towards a regional target of 70 percent of renewable energy installed capacity for power generation by 2030.
