Singapore International Energy Week

The Singapore International Energy Week (SIEW), organised by Energy Market Authority (EMA) Singapore, is an annual platform for global stakeholders to discuss key energy issues. SIEW aims to facilitate the exchange of ideas and discussions on pertinent energy-related issues, as well as to provide a platform to showcase innovative products and solutions in the energy marketplace. IRENA attended SIEW, where it also organised a roundtable on the Global Energy Transformation.

The theme for SIEW 2019 is Accelerating Energy Transformation, which calls on global energy stakeholders to collaborate and accelerate efforts towards a more sustainable energy future. Policy makers, industry leaders and other stakeholders will gather to address the challenges associated with recent trends, such as the rapidly expanding energy demand, especially in Asia, and the increased electrification of transportation, industries and buildings.

At the same time, there continue to be concerns over climate change commitments, even as renewable energy investments hit record highs. Since 2017, IRENA has released a series of reports focusing on long-term decarbonization of the energy consuming sectors with specific emphasis on the technical feasibility and socio-economic benefits of a global energy transformation.

The 2019 edition, Global Energy Transformation: A Roadmap to 2050 underscored that renewable energy, energy efficiency and electrification are the three cornerstones of such transition to drive down energy-related CO2 emissions in line with the Paris Agreement climate goals. Technically feasible and cost-effective solutions for decarbonising end-use sectors such as heating, cooling and transport demand have also been underscored. This reports also highlight the socio-economic impacts of such energy transformation in terms of GDP growth, employment creation, and human welfare improvements. These impacts have found to be positive at the global level while that on individual countries and regions depends not only on the level of policy ambition, but also on the degree to which they leverage and enhance their domestic capacities.