Clean power is the most affordable and reliable option for all countries to meet their power needs efficiently by 2030 – Power Breakthrough Goal

1. Donor governments, working with key institutions and funds, should ensure that international support is available at better terms, including grants at early investment stages for higher-risk projects. That includes creating de-risking mechanisms, tailored to the country’s respective contexts – particularly for EMDEs – and technical assistance for finance and regulatory reforms across all clean energy technologies. This should focus on avoiding lock-in to high-carbon power generation, and instead aim to streamline its phase-out, all of which can help to mobilise private sector investments. Overall provision of resources should be significantly increased, particularly for technologies that have not achieved commercial maturity. International finance institutions should provide technical guidance to countries that explains and simplifies the breadth of financing streams available to stakeholders.
2. Donor governments and MDBs should work together to more strongly align development funding with targeted support for local jobs, skills and investment, for the repurposing of fossil fuel assets, economic diversification, and for environmental restoration, in fossil fuel-dependent regions and communities. Efforts should be made to ensure consistency with regional priorities and needs, and to ensure new clean energy infrastructure benefits and creates value for local communities. Clearer, more transparent, and fully independent monitoring, including progress reporting on social outcomes, should be incorporated within Just Energy Transition Partnerships, to build mutual confidence in implementation. Institutional capacities should be reinforced to be able to absorb the social components of clean energy finance programmes. Civil society, governments and industry should contribute to creating international centres of expertise on the just transition, within existing institutions.
3. Governments should work through relevant initiatives to accelerate the identification and implementation of suitable demonstration projects across a broad range of power systems contexts, with a greater focus on deeply decarbonised systems that require long-term energy storage and balancing. Governments should resource these demonstrations appropriately and ensure high-quality knowledge-sharing structures are put in place. To facilitate knowledge-sharing among a wider set of countries and stakeholders, close collaboration with regional research and innovation networks will be required.
4. Governments should work together to reassess the opportunities for cross-border and regional power interconnection, increase their engagement with international efforts to identify top regional priorities, and focus on reaching new agreements to realise these opportunities. Countries should engage a much broader, whole-of-society coalition of public and private stakeholders to successfully appraise these opportunities and develop regional interconnections. Countries should also work together on the joint planning of grid infrastructure, supported by improved permitting processes, and speed up discussions on the alignment of regulation and markets for electricity and system services, including power pool integration.
5. Countries, in consultation with industry, should collectively agree to more ambitious Minimum Energy Performance Standards for energy-consuming appliances, including appliances for heating and cooling. Countries should also agree on interoperability and digital standards, which could be supported by awareness campaigns, improved labelling, or appliance retrofit programmes at the national level. Improved technical assistance should facilitate the implementation of effective standards in developing economies.