Delegates and visitors at Adipec 2024 gathered on Wednesday, highlighting the urgent need for accessible, available, and affordable capital to drive a secure, equitable, and sustainable energy transition.
The inaugural Finance & Investment Conference at Adipec 2024, the world's largest energy event, brought together multilateral stakeholders from both the Global North and South, including top financiers, policymakers, and energy executives. The conference aimed to explore sustainable and innovative finance structures essential for a pragmatic and inclusive energy future. Collaborative initiatives like the UAE Leaders' Declaration on a Global Climate Finance Framework are working to mobilize capital and reduce investment risks, but challenges such as high borrowing costs, investment risks, lack of creditworthy off-takers, and regulatory uncertainty in developing economies persist.
Conference panellists from Irena, MUFG, Houlihan Lokey, and Amundi emphasized that the global energy community must tackle these issues to attract and secure necessary funding. Gurbuz Gonul, director of country engagement and partnerships at Irena, noted, 'Regional discrepancies in funding energy transition projects pose significant challenges. Developing countries face tougher financing terms, undermining the affordability of technology deployment. While governments should create conducive investment environments, we also need to explore better financing terms to reduce this gap. Currently, we rely largely on bilateral climate finance, but philanthropy is increasingly becoming a new player.'
Senior executives from Bank of America, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, OMV, and Fertigro participated in a panel titled 'Bridging the gap: energy and financial cross-sector collaboration to advance new projects.' The discussion focused on how investors and banks can collaborate with the energy industry to deliver the required investment for the energy transition. Massimo Falcioni, chief competitiveness officer at Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, highlighted that governments look for energy projects contributing to local GDP, compliance with ESG rules, and employment to ensure sustainable economic development.
Building on its 40-year legacy of energy leadership, Adipec will reinforce its commitment to an inclusive energy transformation by gathering diverse voices to find collective solutions through its new one-day Voice of Tomorrow Conference on Thursday. Key topics include opportunities for in-country growth in African nations, expectations for the Global South's energy sector at COP29, the importance of diversity and inclusion in the energy transition, and how NGOs, IGOs, and industry can help communities prepare for a climate-resilient future. Notable speakers include representatives from ADNOC, the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Group, the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia, the Oil and Gas Climate Fund, and the Global Impact Coalition.
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