The IAEA has presented a sustainable energy planning toolkit to the G20, as part of its contributions as an organization invited by the Brazilian Presidency.
The new document outlines the modelling tools and other capacity building support the IAEA offers to countries looking to enhance their long-term energy planning strategies, for nuclear and non-nuclear energy sources.
The toolkit’s publication comes amid efforts by the G20 Brazilian Presidency to promote broader international cooperation in this area.
Decarbonization of the energy, transportation and industrial sectors by 2050 is a formidable challenge, and getting there will require significant use of nuclear power. But whether nuclear power figures into a country’s future energy mix or not, rigorous planning is needed to determine the clean energy composition that will work best depending on country-specific factors.
The publication, entitled ‘From Knowledge to Action: IAEA Toolkit for Sustainable Energy Planning’, was presented during a side event held on the margins of a meeting of the G20’s Energy Transitions Working Group in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
"Energy planning is crucial for reducing the investment gap for the clean energy transition because it provides transparency in the decision-making process, making it one of the most powerful tools in de-risking investment,” said Thiago Barral, Secretary of Energy Transition and Planning in the Ministry of Energy and Mines of Brazil.
The event underlined the crucial role that comprehensive energy planning plays in shaping well-informed investment plans for the clean energy transition.
“Countries across Latin America and the Caribbean have experienced fiscal limitations and there is a need to attract technical and financial resources and other support to continue advancing the energy transition,” said Carlos Jose Echeverria Barbero, Regional Lead Energy Specialist from the IDB.
“Building better energy infrastructure requires strengthening key pillars like financing, technology and skills. It also needs supportive policies and regional collaboration,” said IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi.
“Planning is key when it comes to providing more energy and more low carbon energy around the world. The IAEA assists its Member States with their energy planning, whether they plan to include nuclear or not.”
The toolkit describes how the IAEA can enhance national and regional capacities for energy system analysis and planning for emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs), including through capacity building activities such as expert missions and trainings as well as by providing energy planning tools. These activities aim to bolster knowledge and strengthen skills that many EMDEs currently lack, facilitating informed decision-making and policy development.
Having extended these services to more than 140 countries over the last 40 years, the IAEA collaborates with international, regional, and national institutions, as well as academia, to cultivate local expertise for sustainable energy development.
The toolkit also showcases successful applications of its methodologies through case studies, illustrating the positive impact of integrated energy planning on the creation of national policies and achieving sustainable development goals.
The side event was organized by the IAEA together with the support of the Brazilian Ministry of Mines and Energy and in partnership with the International Energy Agency (IEA), the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Latin American Energy Organization (OLADE).
During the event, the IEA presented the concept for the ‘G20 Clean Energy Investment Roadmap for Emerging Markets and Developing Economies’ currently under planning. It will consist of an outline of solutions for key stakeholders to increase clean energy investments in emerging markets and developing economies sixfold by 2035.
With inputs from the IAEA, IRENA, OPEC as well as development banks and other key organizations and experts, the roadmap will map clean energy investment and finance flows and identify de-risking solutions and innovative financing instruments to unlock capital at scale.
Background
The IAEA is presenting a series of deliverables to the G20 Energy Transitions Working Group highlighting the key role that nuclear plays in the clean energy transition. After the inclusion of nuclear energy in the first Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement, this is especially relevant for the G20, as 14 of its members operate nuclear power plants and six have pledged to triple nuclear capacity by 2050. The Agency’s contributions to the G20’s work are aligned with the group’s priorities as defined by the group’s current Brazilian presidency, including the just and inclusive energy transition and how to accelerate financing. The first document of this series was presented in April.
