Energy Working Group
Energy Working Group
Contributing more than 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions, the energy sector plays a dominant role in causing climate change. It is also instrumental for creating climate-compatible societies and thus a crucial focus of the design of low emission development strategies. Providing reliable, affordable, and clean energy for all is a universally agreed UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG-7). Achieving it will be essential for many other social, economic, and environmental objectives.
The Energy Working Group supports the deployment of innovative and climate-compatible development strategies in the energy sector. Launched in 2011, the Energy Working Group is GCAP’s longest standing work stream, bringing together over 1100 practitioners from national governments, multilateral institutions, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector. The Energy Working Group assists countries around the world through advisory services and technical support, as well as peer-to-peer learning, knowledge sharing and other capacity-building initiatives. A key focus of our work is the advancement of Communities of Practice that bridge our activities from in-country technical assistance to group learnings to broad dissemination of knowledge products. Our services are offered free-of-charge to practitioners.
Priority Areas
- Advancing reliable, affordable, and sustainable energy solutions
- Designing energy solutions with the greatest sustainable development benefits
- Raising the ambition of NDCs in the energy sector
- Derisking and financing clean energy investments
- Engaging local communities, including youth, and empowering women
- Supporting developing countries programs to build back better through SDG-stimulating instruments
- Integrating energy needs and solutions with those of other sectors, in particular transport and agriculture
How We Work
On the global scale, our activities involve hosting webinars, disseminating relevant tools, providing targeted trainings, and drafting written knowledge products for all members of the Energy Working Group.
On the regional scale we work through three Communities of Practice: Mini-Grids, Grid-Integrated Renewable Energy, and Bioenergy. The regional Communities of Practice organize closed meetings and public webinars; develop policy guides and best-practice case studies; provide direct technical assistance to individual members; and organize country exchanges so that our members can learn from each other.
Communities of Practice
Communities of Practice are spaces for members interested in a specific topic to regularly learn from peers, exchange knowledge, connect with others, pilot ideas, co-design solutions, and receive technical assistance. Communities of Practice are demand driven and evolve dynamically to meet their members’ needs.
Building an enabling environment for mini-grid deployment in African Countries through peer-to-peer learning for state and non-state actors.
Net-Zero pathway planning, distributed energy resources and battery energy storage systems, and innovative financing for renewable energy deployment.
Integrating bioenergy in national energy and climate policies and linking bioenergy projects with financing through capacity building, peer-to-peer learning, and technical assistance.