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Delivered by Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

08 December 2022

ESCAP ES

Distinguished  participants, ladies and gentlemen,

It is my pleasure to welcome you to the first in-person meeting of the Green Grids Initiative Asia-Pacific Working Group.

ESCAP is proud to have been part of the Green Grids Initiative (GGI) since its launch at COP26 in Glasgow.

With COP27 recently concluded and the end of the year approaching, it is an appropriate moment to take stock of what we have achieved over the past year and consider what we hope to accomplish in the years to come.

The ongoing recovery from COVID-19, current geopolitical tensions and the increasingly felt effects of climate change have created an overlapping set of challenges for the Asia-Pacific region and the world as a whole.

These challenges have certainly been felt in the energy sector, which has been greatly affected by rising prices.

These challenges have had significant effects on all countries in our region, but unfortunately, the most vulnerable countries are the ones often bear the highest burden.

ESCAP is committed to helping our member States build back better from these crises.

We are so pleased to be part of this important initiative and to co-host this meeting with our partners, the UK government, Wilton Park and the GGI Secretariat.

This meeting has brought together stakeholders from across our region and the globe to discuss a critically important yet often overlooked solution to help address the challenges we face: cross-border connectivity and green grids.

Accelerating progress on the energy transition means accelerating the development of interconnected grids that link together renewable energy sources.

The GGI has adopted a phrase that I feel truly sums up this sentiment: “there can be no transition without transmission.”

Asia and the Pacific is the largest and fastest-growing region, and it is therefore critically important in the fight to achieve Sustainable Development Goals .

In this context,  collaboration, including energy connectivity, is the only way forward.

I hope that by bringing together this group of experts to deep dive into the challenges of accelerating connectivity, we can find solutions to accelerate the needed progress in the Asia-Pacific region.

We will continue to support power system connectivity through the implementation of the Regional Roadmap on Power System Connectivity and by actively participating in and providing a platform for important initiatives like this one.

I wish you all a productive and fruitful meeting

Thank you very much.

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