(Part 3) 11th Multi-stakeholder Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation for the Sustainable Development Goals

I call to order the third meeting of the 11th Multi-stakeholder Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation for Sustainable Development Goals.
Good morning.
I now invite the forum to begin thematic session two on powering sustainable development through clean energy technologies for affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all.
Energy lies at the heart of sustainable development.
I think we all know that it is closely linked to progress across multiple SDGs, including climate action, industry, and sustainable cities.
Yet major challenges remain over 700 million people still lack access to electricity and billions lack clean cooking solutions while global energy systems remain heavily dependent on fossil fuels.
At the same time, advances in SDI are expanding the possibilities for transforming energy systems.
Renewable energy technologies, decentralized systems, storage, smart grids, and digital platforms are creating new pathways to scale clean energy solutions and support sustainable economic development.
We've structured this session into two panels.
Our first panel will focus on scaling affordable and clean energy technologies for inclusive development, particularly in regions facing significant energy access gaps.
The second panel then we'll explore innovation in energy infrastructure, industry and cities, highlighting integrated approaches across sectors and systems.
Across both discussions, we will examine the policy, financing and technological innovations needed to accelerate energy transitions as well as the trade offs and system level challenges involved from infrastructure bottlenecks to growing energy demand from digital technologies.
I encourage you to consider how we can align innovation, investment, and policy to deliver clean energy solutions at scale, while ensuring affordability, resilience, and equity.
We will first to get us wound up, we will first hit three innovator pitches.
The presentations will give us insight into breakthrough, scalable solutions for low resource settings.
I'm pleased to introduce our first innovator, Mr.
Augusto Diaz from Argentina, who will present solar Sheet.
Distinguished delegates and fellow innovators.
Good morning.
I'm Auto Dias, co founder of HD photo dikes.
Right now, the biggest hurdle in the energy transition is reaching the last mile, off grid locations where traditional grid expansion is simply too slow and too expensive.
Scaling energy to remote areas and decarbonizing heavy industry seem like two entirely different challenges, but they share similar bottlenecks.
Limited infrastructure and high deployment capex.
Traditional solutions are fantastic, but they have limitations.
We're trying to tackle this.
We are developing a polycarbonate solar roof with three advantages.
First, it weighs only a quarter of conventional solutions.
Second, it requires se additional mountain infrastructure because it replaces the roof itself.
And third, by eliminating all the heavy steel and it dratically lowers embodied carbon footprint of the projects.
This is how a lightweight plug and play solutions designed for the last miles translates directly into resilience, large scale infrastructure for heavy industries as well.
We have really powerful tools at our disposal.
Now, we just need the courage, the collaboration, and understanding to better deploy them where they are needed most.
Thank you.
Welcome thank Mr.
Diaz and now invite Mr.
Abdul Basid Bashir from Nigeria to present Rehab.
The floor is yours.
In attendance, Mr.
Krull.
Good morning, distinguished delegate, ladies and gentlemen.
Across many on the surf communities in Nigeria, over 80% household and small businesses still rely on kerosene lamp, candle, and small generator for energy.
W discarded electronic waste and batteries are piled up with no safe way to use them.
At Revnix Energy, we developed the renewable energy hub model, where we transform discarded electronic waste into affordable power solutions.
We collect a waste, safely refurblish component, and deploy clean energy access to household and small businesses in off grid and on the surf community.
So far, we've diverted over 5,000 kilo of electronic waste from landfill while providing reliable electricity to more than 500 households.
Our work contributes to some of the sustainable development goals such as affordable and clean energy, responsible consumption and production, and climate action.
We invite you all to join us at Rednex Energy.
Together, we can turn waste into power for millions.
Thank you.
I thank Mr.
Bashir and now invite Mr.
Keys Krul from the Netherlands to present sustainability reports.com.
The floor is yours.
Thank you, distinguished delegates, fellow innovators.
To achieve the sustainable development goals, we need to understand how companies as critical actors are contributing to them.
Yet, corporate sustainability data is still too expensive, fragmented, and difficult to access.
As a result, many students, researchers, NGOs, and policymakers and especially those in low resource settings are excluded from the information they need.
Sustainable reports that CoV was created to change that.
We provide open access to sustainability reports from around the world in a single global platform.
This makes company disclosures easier to find, use, and compare.
Our next step is to use artificial intelligence to extract structured data points from these reports, the so called EST data.
In practice, that means turning complex PDF files into structured usable data at a fraction of the cost.
In just three years, the platform has grown into the largest online platform for sustainable reporting.
We currently serve over 20,000 monthly users, and we support over 50 institutions globally.
Recently, we have also launched a scholarship for students working on corporate sustainability.
My message to the United Nations is simple.
Achieving the SATs requires not only courage and ambition, but it starts with open and inclusive access to sustainability data.
Thank you very much.
I thank Mr.
Kroll.
Yesterday, we heard from the Deputy Secretary of Zambia that he started an agricultural business just using his mobile phone and open access data, so you may have already had a very great impact.
I now invite delegations to join in on a round of applause to all our innovators.
I mean, you did so, but we can do it again.
All.
With this, we now proceed to panel number one, focusing on SDG seven and in particular, scaling affordable and clean energy technologies for inclusive development.
I'm now pleased to welcome our distinguished guests, speakers, and participants, as well as the moderator of this panel discussion, Mr.
Vladimir unovich, founder and Director of the Bioscience Institute, and Professor of Computer Sciences at the University of Novizad in Serbia.
I now hand over the meeting to the moderator and look forward to an interesting discussion.
F is yours.
Thank you, Mr.
Kessler, co chair.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for attending this session.
We have interesting topic, powering sustainable development through clean energy technologies for affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all.
And today's discussion will be about critical challenges, how science, technology innovation can help to accelerate progress in this field and hopefully achieve the goals of SDG seven.
In the beginning, before I give the word to our distinguished panelists, let me give a short personal view.
I'm as Mr.
Co chair said, I'm Director of Research and Development Institute, bioscience that works at the crossroad of information technology and biosystems.
We established the Institute ten years ago and energy was not our primary focus at that time.
Today, we are processing terabytes and terabytes of satellite data for remote sensing in agriculture, in environment, and our data center is consuming huge amount of energy every day.
Also, we are working on development of biosensors with nanotechnology.
Clean rooms for that are also huge element in overall consumption of energy.
Only science and R&D is already consuming energy, not to mention other things.
So my personal impression after looking through all SDGs, maybe SDG seven is the most present and influential in other SDGs.
Let's just mention a few.
In one and two, food and poverty, we boil down to agriculture and fertilizer production or coal chains are enormous factor in energy consumption.
If we go to SDG six water, we get to the problem of irrigation that we were listening yesterday about and desalinization.
A huge contributor.
SDG 11, which we will mention today, sustainable cities, they account for a huge part of global primary energy use, mostly for building and transport.
Of course, SDG 13 climate, we don't need to mention that, but just interesting figures that I got to this morning.
2024-2025, we can be optimistic because global electricity generation by source is going in good direction.
We have the growth of 850 terawatt hours globally and out of that, 636 abat hours the growth comes from solar.
Also, the wind has increased by 204 bat hours gas, which is not good, but it's a small contribution, 38 nuclear 34.
We managed to do in one year the reduction of oil by 12 and coal by 76.
I think that raising awareness about SDGs and all these things are finally making some sense.
Of course, SDG nine, which is also one of the domains for this discussion today, manufacturing infrastructures are responsible for over 40% of global energy use.
So that everybody talks about in this part and there is a huge increase are data centers.
So my personal reflection, I was at the same place two years ago and I was trying to raise the question of putting AI and growth of data centers under global control.
We see where we got after two years now, we have increase in global construction from ear to ear only in 2025 by 190%, $78 billion compared to 27 billion in 2024.
U, only North America has the increase of 43%.
Hyperscalar like Google, Amazon, and Meta are coming with 12 to 14% of annual increase.
That converts to surge in electricity demand.
It's 17% that we have the increase only from these sources.
What's also interesting to say that pre leasing activity is enormous.
Demand is so high for energy, that nearly 75% of data center capacity that are currently under construction is already leased years in advance.
This is only talking about the data centers that we all use through different assistance from AI in everyday life.
Also, it's interesting that most of these figures are made by using AI, so we're spinning in the circle.
Finally, something that I would like to mention about the next big thing and where energy is having influence, if we take a look at SDG three about health, energy is not the first thing that would come to our mind.
But the next big revolution is personalized medicine and genetic sequencing is the main cornerstone of that.
We have now the potential to sequence every human genome, probably in five years from now, we will have this in the medical record, and this is also huge contributor to the use of processing power in data centers.
This is still to come and these things that I have raised now will be the discussion of today's panel, and we will approach it in two parts.
First, scaling clean energy for inclusive development, especially where access gaps remain significant and second, the innovation in energy infrastructure, industry, and cities.
So as a motivation for the first panel, over 600 million people still lack access to electricity, nearly 2.1 billion lack access to clean cooking.
While the share of renewables remains below 20%, the energy revolution is, I would say, unstoppable.
This is what I tried to illustrate with these few figures a few moments ago.
The question is not only what technologies are available, but what it takes to make them affordable, reliable, and equitable.
Let us begin with our first panel, scaling SDG seven for inclusive development.
I Here, primarily we focus on decentralized solutions, the barriers to their scale and the institutional conditions needed to make clean energy systems sustainable over time.
By saying that, I will give a word to our first panelist, Mr.
António Jose Roque Silva, to give us his view of Mr.
Roque Silva, one of our guiding questions asks which decentralized energy solutions are already proven in scale.
From your perspective, what needs to be built around these decentralized system in terms of materials and systems so that they can support sustainable development over time.
Please.
Okay.
Thank you, Mr.
Moderator.
Actually, as you were speaking, I was thinking of the technological evolutions and the need for energy, and we're talking about almost 1 billion people without electricity at all.
The examples you gave are amazing.
Genome sequencing data centers, AI, and the solutions for this kind of problems are very different from what we're talking about, which is a lot of people without electricity at all.
The centralized energy systems are already a proven solution, so you can actually find them installed to expand the clean energy access at large scale.
Solar mini grids probably are very, let's say, uh, common distributed storage systems, as well as local bioenergy solutions are no longer a simple experimental technology.
In many parts of sub Saharan Africa, they are already delivering electricity to communities that would otherwise remain excluded from reliable energy access.
But scaling clean energy is not only about deploying technology.
It's about building the systems that make energy sustainable, productive, and resilient over time.
Access to electricity is essential, but sustainable development ultimately depends on whether energy systems can support productive activity, local industries, healthcare, education, digital connectivity, and resilient local economies and whether these systems can be operated, maintained, and adapted over time.
So as you have mentioned, uh health basically every activity needs electricity, so we need to actually be able to build something that is not just to light our houses, but allow the systems and the economies to actually grow and people to have access to healthcare and et cetera, and transportation as well.
This is where many of the current barriers emerge, energy access remains highly uneven and hundreds of millions of people still lack reliable electricity and clean cooking solutions.
At the same time, many decentralized systems risk remaining fragile and low productivity, unable to support sustained industrialization or long term economic transformation.
Structural barriers, including infrastructure gaps, financing constraints, limited technical capacity, and institutional fragility continue to undermine long term sustainability.
There is also a broader risk that the global energy transition itself may reinforce inequality if high quality, reliable, and adaptable energy systems are not broadly accessible.
In this context, I would like to highlight three priorities.
First, we must invest not only in infrastructure, but in sustainable capability.
Energy transitions require long term local capacity in science, technology, engineering, maintenance, and system operations.
Without local capability, decentralized systems cannot remain sustainable over time.
Governments and UN systems should therefore move beyond access targets alone and explicitly support institutional capacity for operation, maintenance, and adaptation.
Research institutions, universities, and scientific infrastructure should be recognized as strategic actors in this process because they provide training, testing, environments, technical validation, and continuous learning.
At the end is not simply deploying technology.
Is mostly preparing also people and training them and building, let's say, institutions that can actually continue the technology and development.
Second, decentralized energy systems should not be treated as isolated assets.
They must be integrated into broader economic, industrial, urban, and territorial development strategies.
Decentralized energy becomes truly sustainable when it's institutionally and economically integrated into local systems.
This means aligning energy policy with industrial development, agriculture, urbanization, and local public services.
It also means creating conditions for the private sector to engage not only installation, but in the long term operation and adaptation of the systems.
So the system needs to be flexible enough to actually as you grow, you need to be able to actually increase and adapt the system that has initially been installed.
Third, we need to reduce not only financial risk, but also systematic and operational risk.
This includes supporting institutions capable of testing, validating, adapting and improving technologies on real local conditions.
This brings science and materials research directly into the SDG seven discussion.
The future of decentralized energy depends heavily on advances in batteries.
Durable solar materials, power electronics, catalysts for bioenergy and recyclable materials adapted to harsh operating environments.
Let's remember that things that are developed for, let's say some places in the United States and Europe will not necessarily work in the environment in Africa.
You need to be able to actually do local research and development to actually adapt them to, let's say, local situation, large scale scientific infrastructures.
Therefore have an important role to play in the clean energy transitions ecosystems.
Institutions like the CNPM in Brazil, the one I am the director, illustrates how advanced research infrastructures can support both frontier science and applied technological development connected to sustainability challenges.
This also opens an important opportunity for Brazil, Africa cooperation or countries cooperations.
Brazil has accumulated relevant experience in tropical agriculture, bioenergy, renewable integration, and sustainable innovation ecosystems under conditions that are often closer to those faced by developing countries.
I believe south south cooperation can therefore contribute not only through technology transfer, but through co development and scientific capabilities, institutional capacity and locally adapted innovation ecosystems.
Perhaps this leads to one central question for discussion.
How can investment in institutions complement technology deployment so decentralized energy solutions can evolve in sustainable systems over time.
Because ultimately energy access is a necessary starting point, but durable development depends on building energy systems that societies can continuously operate, maintain, improve, and govern over the long term.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr.
Da Silva, for this interesting and comprehensive statement.
A number of times you mentioned the building capacity in underdeveloped countries for science, technology and innovation.
For that, we have to rely on cooperation, interactions, and scientific diplomacy.
That's good to come to our second panelist, miss Motoko Kotani from Tohoku University.
Could you please tell us a something about the role of the science diplomacy and what it can play in moving promising technologies from research to actual deployment.
Please.
Thank you, Chairman for the introduction and good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm very happy to join this session.
Today I would like to share a perspective on what I call implementation led science diplomacy, which was discussed as the advisory board to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and why it matter for the energy transition.
A 2030 approaches, the bottleneck has shifted from preparing Beta plan to turning those plan into system that can be deployed, governed, financed, and trusted.
In energy and related infrastructure, this gap is essentially visible.
Promising technology exists, but far fewer reach the scale and reliability that the transition requires.
Technology do not run on neutral ground.
Effective deployment requires more than hardware transfer.
The decisive policy question for Any imaging technology is not whether it works in principle, but where and at what scale it can be deployed in a way that are socially useful and economically rational.
As advisory board, we introduced a notion of implementation red science diplomacy, which consists of three pillars, trusted technology packages.
It's very important to have a package, not as a simple technology and flagship project because it's not in principle, but to make it work.
And minilateral cooperation.
I know United Nations is a very important multilateral cooperation platform, but sometimes minilateral cooperation is very important because SDGs is related with social and economical state and you have a common target challenge, which you can discuss among a small group, then extend it somewhat general setting.
So Asia Z Emission community is one of the example.
It's a platform for cooperation toward carbon neutralization or net zero emission in Asian region involving partner country from 11 nations.
But I can explain more about these three pillars in principle in general setting.
But today, I would like to use a very, very concrete imagine technology related with energy transition and to explain what are these three pilar mean in this concrete example.
The technology I would like to discuss today is dynamic wires power transfer or DWPT, which is a completely new way to charge electrical vehicle in modern motion through coil embedded Venus road surface.
It is moving out of a research place, but research phase with corridor scale demonstration underwear underway in France, Germany, Sweden, Korea and Japan, including plant integration into Urban City, where the coordination of mobility and energy system is being tested at a scale of a real urban environment.
DWPD illustrates the three pillar in concrete form.
It cannot be transferred as hardware above.
It works only as a packages of load infrastructure, grid integration, vehicle interoperability, safety standards, and operational governance.
Also effective scale several kilometers of corridor or one urban district fits a flagship model precisely.
Because international standardization for power output, frequency, safety, and data handling are still being formulated, this is a moment when mini later correlation can shape in operative rule before fragmentation safety.
I would like to emphasize the role of mathematical analysis according to doctor ud Homer and his career through optimization.
Just 1.6% of urban load lengths can support a continuous electrical vehicle operation, even with a battery as small as five to ten kilowatt hours demonstration that qualitative design makes implementation governance.
It's very important insight because it proves that it can be used for the very inclusive energy transition.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, miss Kotani.
And based on what you said with different examples, I would like to pass the floor to miss Bibi Konuri.
Professor Konduri, clean energy interacts with food, water, and biodiversity.
Irrelevant which area we are talking at, which Meridian.
And could you tell us your view on how can decision makers better identify synergies and manage trade offs so that these pathways are equitable, implementable, and probably the most important can be financed.
Okay? Distinguished delegates, fellow panelists, I'm really happy to be joining today.
I co chaired the global SDR, the Sustainable Development Report that is coming out in 2027.
This report comes out every four years, and it's the flagship Scientific document for Sustainable Development of the UN.
It is also used as a basis for the deliberations of the high level political forum on Sustainable Development.
Our mandate in this report, and I will connect it to the energy transition, is to identify evidence based systems transformations that will allow the whole of the world to get on a sustainable pathway to implement the SDGs, and we need to find ways to do this, to actually implement the SDGs in a way that accelerates progress in a way that is fair, in a way that accountability becomes very, very prominent.
This is our mandate, and of course, we are going to discuss the beyond 2030.
Is it a good framework for our future? Do we need to revise? Do we need to redesign? With regards to energy systems now, which is, of course, as our fellow panelists already identified, one of the major SDGs, not because the other SDGs are not important, but because energy is needed in each and every sector of the economy, in each and every sector of the society, and influences nature, Earth systems, and influences and needs infrastructure.
So at the moment, we know that we have achieved a lot with regards to the SDGs.
196 countries have signed, 196 countries have signed, 193 countries have submitted voluntary contributions.
We had extensive revision of policy frameworks to align with the SDGs across the world and on top of this, we have achieved 20% average implementation across the SDGs, across the globe.
Energy is one of the well performing SDGs.
SDG on affordable and clean energy is not on track, but it faces moderate challenges and it's definitely on a trend that is upward slopping.
However, in order to achieve to accelerate and scale the energy transition, we need to be clear on what we need.
And what we need is to move away from single project logic.
We need to understand that we need to identify in detail the portfolios of investments.
We need to understand that capital will flow to bankable, risk adjusted portfolios of investments.
Now, The first step is to identify these portfolios of its investments.
Again, this is a systemic, a very integrated holistic exercise.
Ephoria Research Centers, which I founded and an SDSN Global Climate Hub that I have the honor to chair works on a big digital AI ready infrastructure that collects all the data, different forms of data and makes them interoperable.
Then using this data and mathematical modeling that allows you to optimize the transition to those SDG commitments, For each and every country between all the sectors of the economy, energy sector, food, water, land use sector, marine use sector, transport sector, health sector, we optimize these integrated sectoral systems according to objectives of cost efficiency, fairness and inclusivity, time efficiency, and country regional security.
The optimization also works in a digital twin logic where nature Mama infrastructure, society and economy are in an interplay, are in conversation and are always together on a sustainable pathway.
The final step, of course, is to make the transition pathways.
These are dynamic pathways, and spatial pathways and tell you what each and every country needs to do in terms of investments and changes in policies that will allow the country to get on a sustainable development path, including the energy transition sustainability, including the full alignment with SDG seven.
At this point, two things are important.
To get all the stakeholders on board on the co design ownership and shareholding of the transition pathways, and then to understand the language that capital speaks.
As I said before, capital needs investment of portfolios It needs the optimization results from the digital twin that will identify the different energy sources, the investments on the grid, the need to be explicit with regards to storage, the need to be explicit with regards to infrastructure.
Once you have the investment portfolio, the next step in order to get it financed is to identify and measure the risks.
There are political risk, there are technological risk, there are risks that have to do with the local capacity of skills and knowledge in order to implement.
There are currency risks in the countries.
There are natural disaster risk like climate change extreme events.
You need to identify the risk, you need to measure the risk, and you need to identify ways to de risk your portfolio of investments.
If you live in a country that has fiscal space, this risking can be done through your fiscal space and that can work as a catalyst to attract private investment because private capital needs guarantees and needs to have explicit information on flows and returns.
Now, If you're not in a rich country, if you're not in a country with fiscal space, that you need multilateral finance from multilateral banks, for climate funds, from philanthropy money, donors money.
And it is this money that needs to be enough to derisk your projects.
Derisking your projects means that you actually have project preparation, financing, you have technical assistance, you have data systems, you have regulatory capacity, you have credit enhancement, you have a local currency financing, you have blended finance on the ground.
So the big question for the developing world, for the countries that are default or bring or default or they don't have enough fiscal space is whether we have enough multilateral money.
The answer is no.
Multilateral money and I'm finishing the moderator is not enough.
Is a small amount, smaller than we need.
It is not long run enough, is very expensive, So we need a serious restructuring of global financial architecture in order to make available low cost long run SDD stimulus finance in order to get on sustainable pathway all the people, all the countries, all the systems that are there.
Importantly, This stakeholder engagement through making sure that finance that is made available is fair, the solution pathways are fair, they support the vulnerable, they support those that do not have the means in the social structure is crucial, but it can be done.
We can create packages of measures of subsidies and grants a capacity building in order to get everybody on board.
Will close by saying that we need to realize that all the public money in the world are not enough to finance the huge SDG transformation.
Blended finance is important.
We need to convince private capital to come in and invest with public money.
Thank you.
Thank you, Professor Conduri for this enlightening and comprehensive presentation.
If I can summarize in one sentence.
We are talking here about science technology innovation, but it boils down to financing in the end.
Somebody has to find the funds to go forward.
The financing is led by science.
That's important.
Yes.
Thank you for that.
Now we are switching to video intervention from Mr.
Ramos Cabo.
B, since we were speaking about financing, now to watch a prerecorded video on how clean energy can become a driver for inclusive economic opportunity in Africa.
Good afternoon.
Good evening.
I am Amos Kaag of International Relations at the University of Energy and Natural Resources.
I also bring you greetings from our Vice Chancellor professor and Bedo Anand.
I want to thank the organizers for giving me the opportunity to share on this important topic, scaling affordable and clean energy technologies for inclusive development.
I bring highlight on a number of examples to illustrate these key points.
The first example is the Pan African Union's Great Green Wall Initiative, which aims to restore over 1 million hectares of land across Sahel region.
This is an important program with enormous potential to create jobs, especially for young people.
However, in order to generate and sustain livelihood needed in the areas being reclaimed, it is essential to integrate smart agriculture into the framework.
Critically, solar energy integration into this pipeline will be indispensable.
Financial mechanisms such as Green Climate Fund and should be leveraged to support this vision.
Another compelling example is the grant Ethiopian nonsense Dam, one of the continent's green infrastructure initiative that relies on localized financial models to drive this development.
This project will significantly boost the East African economy and offers a replicable model that other regions, including West and North Africa and Southern Africa could stadium attach.
The next is our own Ghana.
Ghana presents a remarkable success story with electricity access rising from 44% in 2000 to approximately 85% by 2024, a transformation driven largely by sustained policy led investment.
However, there's still much to be done.
Across Africa, solar meaning grids represent a critical frontier and governments must invest accordingly.
Equally important is ensuring that smaller household scale solar units are affordable and accessible to individual families.
This is fundamental to achieving genuine equity in energy access.
Energy for the digital economy is critical.
A dimension of this conversation is a growing energy de associated with digital infrastructure across the continent national AI data centers and high performance computing facilities are being established to drive digital economies.
This development require enormous amounts of energy.
This underscores why the topic before us today is so vital.
Energy access underpins all the other sustainable development goals.
Without it, we cannot speak meaningfully of job creation, poverty reduction, or sustainable develops.
Energy access in the African youth is essential and as a result, Africa has, of course, a lot of young, a growing population.
Expanding energy access is critical to providing meaningful employment opportunities for degeneration and steering young people away from unsustainable practices such as the use of wood for foil, the use of mining issues that contribute to land degradation and environmental harm.
On that note, I want to thank all of you for your listening.
I look forward to further discussions in this section, which will generate and welcome any questions and correspondence by Hb.
Thank you.
After this interesting video presentation, we are moving on to our high level respondents for this first panel.
It will be the first one is Mr.
Liu Ha, Deputy Director General of International Atomic Energy Agency.
Mr.
Liu, as a suggestion for your presentation, what policy are needed to support innovation systems, including nuclear energy as a clean option and its compatibility with renewables.
I would just kindly ask you because we are a little bit tight on time to stick to three to 4 minutes.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Moderator.
Excellency, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm pleased to contribute in this panel as we explore concrete solution for clean energy.
Let me outline three main points.
First, nuclear energy is a 24 hours seven day clean energy source for deep decarbonization.
Nuclear power is a proven low carbon source that can deliver clean energy at high temperature, heat exactly when and where it's needed.
Advanced reactor, including small modular reactor, can power industry harbors, produce clean hydrogen at scale, and directly supply data centers and O emitting zero greenhouse gases during the operation.
Currently, nuclear power contrib but one culture of world, low carbon electricity.
Through our atom four net zero initiative, the IAEA help countries access their energy system and build the regulatory and safety infrastructure to integrate the nuclear solution into their clean energy portfolio.
Second, integrated nuclear power as a part of standard energy mix will allow us to have a smarter, more resilience energy system.
Nuclear is not a competitor to other source of energy.
It's an essential partner.
Variable renewable sources like solar and wind need a firm dispatchable power to keep green stable.
Nuclear provided exactly right, stable, weather independent, carbon free baseload, enabling high share of renewable without compromising reliability.
The solution is to stop seeing energy source in silos.
Governments should design integrated clean energy system where nuclear and renewable reinforce each other, delivering energy for all, including to the 700 million people who still lack access of electricity.
Third, scale up innovative finance partnership, so let nuclear energy become a real option for all countries that choose to pursue it.
For too long, nuclear power was out of reach of many developing countries because of high upfront capital cost and the exclusion from the multi development finance.
This is now changing.
The IAA has forged a groundbreaking partnership with international financial institution.
Starting with the World Bank and other regional development bank like Asia Development Bank, Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, European Development Bank, and OPEC Fund to open considerable nuclear energy as a variable tool for energy security and sustainable prosperity.
We are providing specialized technical advice and the capacity building to support to bridge the gap between the national ambitions and international financial institutions requirements.
The IEA code to action is that let's build on this momentum.
Development bank, government, the UN system, and the private sectors work together to design blended financial finance instruments, the risking mechanism, and the capacity building package that make clean nuclear energy bankable and accessible.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Mr.
Liu, for giving us view on this potentially very, very important source of energy.
Now we will have another video intervention.
But before that, I want to ask participants for Q&A session which will follow after the video to press their microphones if they want to speak and also to prepare in advance to stick to 2 minutes.
We go to video intervention.
Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
It's my distant honor to address you today at the 11th United Nation multi staakeholder Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation for the Sustainable Development Goals.
While a big e to join you in person in New York, I amtly pleased to contribute to this prestigious gathering.
Science, technology and innovation are not supporting actors in the any transition.
They are the engine and increasingly the geopolitical determinants of who leads and who leads.
This year's forum meets at this moment for SG seven, our global goal for affordable and clean energy.
The question before us is not whether the technology exists, but how we scale them fast enough, equitably and across that enable inclusive development.
Arenas Natta tells an encouraging story at a global level.
In 2025, the world added 6,692 gigawatts of new renewable capacity.
Solar and wind reached record cost, 85% of new utility scale renewals were cheaper than the cheapest fos of fuel alternatives.
Technology has done its part in making clean energy the most competing option available.
Policy, finance, and deployment must now catch up.
But competitiveness at a global level has not yet translated into energy access at a global level.
608 million people remain without electricity.
Over 2 billion households still cook with fuels that damage their health.
China and developed economy currently receive up more to 15 times more renewable energy investment per capita than the least developed country in San Africa.
If we let address it, this gap risk time in the any transition into historial technological progress of social exclusion.
This is precisely where science, technology and innovation must now deliver, not only by expanding the frontier where is possible, but by accelerating deployment of what is already works, where it is needed most.
Etrification remains a central pillar of the global energy transition.
Expanding greets, storage, deploying smart infrastructure, and accelerated electrification across buildings, industry, and transport are not optional elements of our agenda.
They is backbone and innovation is what makes them faster, cheaper and more inclusive.
Beyond access, clean energy is also a catalyst for economic transformation.
Reliable electricity enable small means to grow, support local manufacturing, and allog product we use in agriculture, service, industry.
Achieving energy access is not only a social objective, it is an economic strategy for economic growth.
Distributed renewable energy technologies are perhaps the clearest illustration of science, technology and innovation serving inclusive development.
In the last years, distributed renewable system accounted for 55% of new electricity connection across Africa, making them one of the most effective tools to scale energy access across the region.
These are technologies that are modular, rapidly deployable, adapted to local conditions, and issued from the supply chain vulnerabilities that system.
Yes, despite progress proven solution, deployment remain contained by well known barriers, high cost of capital, limited access to affordable finance, weak grid infrastructure, and regulatory uncertainty.
These are not technological constraints, they are systemic ones.
Innovation in storage, mini grid, artificial intelligence, as smart energy making case, smart energy management is making this system increasingly cost effective, bringing not just life, but productive energy use, economic opportunity, and energy security to community that decentralized system have not yet reached.
At the same time, we must be clear about what electrification alone cannot be delivered.
For communities where extension remains years away and for the sectors that electrons cannot easily reach, modern bioenergy, sustainable fuels and green on derivatives are essential complements, not alternatives, but necessary addition to electrification transition.
Under arenas, we want to advise set the scenario.
Sustainable fuels must reach 10% of global energy consumption by 2030.
Science, technologies, and innovation are what will make the pathway possible, scalable, and inclusive, particularly for uns population.
The transition will be electrified and to be truly inclusive must also be diversified and globally accessible.
Ladies and gentlemen, technology exists, science is clear and innovation is rapidly evolving.
The role of this form is clear to shape the policy ancing architecture that allows science, technology and innovation to travel farther and faster, particularly to the community and countries where its impact will be greatest.
This requires clear policy frameworks and the risk investment, including stable regulation, transparent procurement mechanism, and support for distributed solution.
It also requires scaling band finance, reducing capital c in the market, and building pipelines of available projects.
That means directing up to 30 trillion in renewable energy investment to remain on track for our UE consensus objective to triple renewable capacity and double energy efficiency globally by 2030.
It means the risk deployment in the new land economies.
We must ensure that the benefits of science and technology are shared global inheritance, not a privilege for João.
SG seven is not simply one goal among many.
It is the foundation that makes all achievable.
It is the foundation upon which so many others depends such as health, economic growth, and climate resilience.
Electrification supported by the full breadth of renewable engine innovation, what can make it is universal.
The technologies are ready.
The economics are proven.
The question is whether our system can deliver them at a speed and scale that justice requires.
I wish you a successful and productive forum.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Thanks.
That was a video address from Mr.
Francesco La Camara and now we are moving on to interactive discussion.
We have so far eight reported.
That means that our panelists managed to raise some interest on this topic.
Please keep interventions to 2 minutes because we are a bit short on time.
The first Kazakhstan.
I Yes.
Hi there.
My name is Mohammed Amir Khan.
I represent the nonprofit from New Jersey and from several different countries.
My question here, you basically have several different technologies, which you have talked about it.
My question is, did you ever have tried to tap into a different technologies which is better than the solar technology and the civil nuclear technology.
Are you guys open to looking to different technologies? Okay.
Thank you for that question.
The next is International Organization of employers.
Excellencies, Distinguished colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm giving this statement on behalf of the Business and Industry Group and the International Organization of employers.
It must be recognized that businesses are the backbone of all economies, creating jobs, delivering essential services, and driving productivity and growth.
Small and medium sized enterprises account for over 70% of employers in the global South and beyond.
Businesses are seeing firsthand how access to reliable energy are positively transforming lives and economies.
As a result, employers view clean energy as a pathway to higher productivity and industrial competitiveness.
This is especially important for SMEs that depend on affordable and reliable power to innovate, scale, and create decent jobs, provided that this transition to clean energy remains predictable, affordable, and investment friendly.
For many countries around the world, infrastructure gaps, including uncertain access to reliable electricity or affordable Internet is continuing to discourage the adoption of automation and new technologies, which is increasing costs for companies and lowers their competitiveness.
Clean energy technologies can offer emerging and low income economies a chance to leapfrog systems and adopt new and improved business models at scale.
These new industries and jobs will be created primarily through companies, marketman targeted investment.
For this to take place, these investments have to be done in skilling and reskilling, especially for technical competencies.
For this, educational systems will need to adapt for this to be possible by placing a strong emphasis on vocational education and training.
Ensuring a close cooperation between governments, educational institutions, and businesses will be crucial to ensure workers are equipped for a more competitive labor market that leans further into clean energy technologies.
We want to focus on enabling environments for businesses to thrive, especially through investment.
Thank you for that.
The next is South Africa.
Please try to stick to 2 minutes.
Thank you very much, Chairperson, thank you to the panel.
I'm making a statement on behalf of the group of friends on science for action and I'll try to be brief.
The point here from our perspective, is not whether the science exists, it does exist.
The question is whether our policy and financing systems, I think, which we have heard, are built to deploy it at scale in the places where SDG nine SDG 11 will be decided.
In the infrastructure or infrastructure industries and cities, especially in the global South, so we proceed from the proposition that the urban areas where the promise of SDG nine must be ultimately redeemed, resilient infrastructure, sustainable industrialization, innovation, and these do not exist in the abstract.
They manifest or they fail to manifest in the transport networks that connect neighborhoods to the opportunities out there, the buildings and industrial capacity of fast growing urban centers and the air that residents breathe in the energy systems that underpin all of these.
So SDG 11, from our perspective, is not a companion to SDG nine.
It's a proving ground.
And this forum has a particular responsibility in this regard.
Just to highlight that decentralized infrastructure, city led innovations across energy, transport, buildings, and air quality, and integrated approaches for urban planning, industrial policy, and financing are not theoretical possibilities.
What is lagging is not the knowledge alone, it's the policy architecture.
I'm going to leave it at that and thank you again for this very helpful panel.
Thank you so much.
The next is Representative of Mexico.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Moderator.
Scaling clean energy technologies requires us to look beyond conventional pathways and consider the full range of available solutions, particularly those that remain underutilized despite their significant potential.
One such area is ocean based renewable energy.
Marine energy technologies offer important opportunities to diversify energy sources, strengthen energy security, and support decarbonization efforts.
In Mexico, we recognize the strategic role that ocean energy can play as part of a just and sustainable energy transition.
This is reflected in our national policy for the sustainable management of seas and coasts, which promotes the development of renewable ocean energy sources as a means to reduce dependence on fossil fuels while advancing research, innovation, and investment in this sector.
These technologies also open opportunities for integrated solutions.
The combination of renewable energy generation with activities such as aquaculture or their potential contribution to sustainable water production in coastal regions highlights the value of approaching energy not in isolation, but as part of interconnected systems that respond simultaneously to climate, water, and development challenges.
Excellencies.
The scaling of clean energy is not only about expanding supply, but also about enabling systems transformation.
Innovation makes an effective contribution to inclusive development, supporting industrialization, creating opportunities, and expanding access to affordable and reliable energy.
Mexico reiterates its commitment to advance these efforts and to contribute to a more diversified, inclusive and sustainable global energy transition.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
That was perfect timing.
We are moving to stakeholder 12, Global Forum of communities discriminated on work and dissent.
G Food.
Thank you, Excellencies, I delivered this statement on behalf of the Global Forum of CWADs and the MDCI.
As we talk about clean energy and sustainable development, I want to bring attention to communities who are too often missing from this conversation, those facing discrimination based on work and descent.
For many of these communities, the issue isn't lack of electricity or modern energy.
It's about longstanding social barriers that make access to basic and fundamental resources, including water, education, and opportunities much harder.
Even when new technologies are introduced, they don't always reach those who need them the most.
As we advance the global agenda of power and sustainable development through energy and technologies, we must confront a crucial question.
Sustainable for whom? For millions living in the margins of society, especially those facing work and descent based discrimination, be it the Roma in Europe, the Dalits, and the Bram in Asia, the Hurtans and others in Africa, and the Colombola in Latin America.
Energy poverty is not only about lack of infrastructure, it's reinforced by deeply rooted social hierarchies that limit access to land, resources, education, and participation in decision making.
Those communities are disproportionately represented in hazardous low paid and stigmatized occupation.
Ironically, many are engaged in labor that are directly intersect with environmental management, waste picking, sanitation, and informal recycling, yet they are excluded from formal green economy and denied the protection and opportunities it offers.
As we move forward with clean energy, the question is not only how fast we transition, but whom this transition is designed.
From the lens of communities discriminate on work and descent, we know that inequality is not incidental, it's structural and deep Thank you.
Next one is Representative Turkey.
Distinguished co chairs, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Grand National Assembly of TA, and as a member of IPU Science and Technology working group, I'm happy and honored to be address this forum.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are meeting at a time when countries face shared challenge in expanding energy access, strengthening infrastructure, and building more sustainable and inclusive cities.
Energy transition is not only about access to electricity, but also about enabling development.
Industrial growth, and climate resilience.
Innovation and resilient infrastructure are now at the center of sustainable development.
In this regard, decentralized and city led clean energy solutions are already practical tools delivering faster and more inclusive results on the ground.
TurkA is actively advancing its renewable energy transition, infrastructure modernization, and sustainable urban development agenda and places great importance on sharing experiences and strengthening international cooperation in these areas.
We also value the important role of the United Nations Technology Bank for least developed countries located in Gebse.
Türkiye is a concrete and pioneering initiative supporting the implementation of the sustainable development goals, particularly SDG nine and SDG 17 in helping least developed countries strengthen their science, technology and innovation capacities.
In conclusion, science, technology and innovation will determine the future we are able to build.
The solutions are already within our reach.
What is required now is the urgency, scale, and collect political will.
Actually, we must move from commitment to implementation and move from ambition to real impact.
Our shared responsible be so clear.
Thank you.
We are moving to the next representative world World Federation of Engineering Organizations.
Distinguished Chair Excellency, colleagues.
I am pleased to speak on behalf of the World Federation of Engineering Organizations, representing a global engineering community of over 30 million engineers.
I'm the Chair of the Women and Engineering Committee, and engineer, doctor A Pener and Executive Director of the Garner Institution of Engineering, which is hosting the Secretariat of the Women Engineering Committee.
Engineering must lead the delivery of SDG seven affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all.
The global energy transition will be shaped not only by technological innovation, but by how effectively engineering systems are designed, deployed, and scaled across diverse contexts.
Engineers are already contributing to this transition through renewable energy systems, grid modernization, energy efficiency, clean cooking technologies, and resilient infrastructure.
Yet persistent gaps in access show that technological solutions must also be inclusive and context responsive.
A practical example is the role of women in energy systems.
As household energy managers, women influence adoption, efficiency, and sustainability, yet remain underrepresented in engineering and energy leadership.
Integrating this perspective strengthens system performance and accelerates uptake, aligned with WeFEOs objective to promote ethical, inclusive, and responsible engineering practice.
Our committee is advancing STEM pipelines, innovation, global partnerships, and gender deaggregated engineering data to inform policy.
We feel and women in Engineering committee stand ready and willing to support member states to embed inclusive engineering dedicated financing and accountability mechanisms across SDG implement.
That was almost on time.
We are moving to another stakeholder, 15, Center for Gender Economics Initiative.
Distinguished co chairs, Excellencies, and colleagues, I'm honored to speak on behalf of the increasing renewable energy investments for empowerment of women in sustainable agriculture and mining, Ireland project.
This implemented by Center for Gender Economics in partnership with NOPA and Ziva Community Initiative.
We are implementing this across Nigeria and Ghana to advance inclusive clean energy solutions.
Achieving SDG seven and SDG nine requires not only expanding energy access, but also ensuring that clean energy systems are inclusive, affordable, and gender responsive, particularly for women in undeserved sectors who remain on the front lines of energy poverty.
Based on our working agriculture and mining value chains, three priorities are clear.
One, we must scale financing for the de centralized renewable energy solutions that directly support productive sectors Women led enterprises need access to affordable energy for irrigation, processing and small scale production.
Two, we must embed gender responsive policies and data systems in energy transitions.
Without them investment risk, reinforcing existing inequalities rather than closing the gap.
Third, we must strengthen coordination among government, the private sector, financial institutions, and civil society to deliver integrated solutions that combine energy as with financial technological and enterprise support.
At CG Africa True ERA Initiative, we are demonstrating that when renewable energy investments are aligned with women's economic activities, they unlock productivity, build resilience, and drive inclusive growth.
We therefore call for sustained commitment to gender responsive energy financing, policy reforms, and multi stakeholder partnerships that ensure no one is left behind in the clean energy transition.
Thank.
Thank you.
Before we proceed, I would like to ask our panelists because we are short on time to prepare one sentence for conclusion.
We are moving to next representative of Ghana.
Thank you, Mr.
Chair.
Ghana is committed to using science, technology and innovation to advance the 2030 agenda for sustainable development through our IDR policy 2017 Ida agenda.
However, illegal mining, known as locally Galamse is severely polluting our rivers and threaten water security for millions of Ghans.
This undermine public health, environmental sustainability, and long term economic development.
But we believe that science, technology and innovation offer practical solutions, including water monitoring and radiation technologies to scale these solutions.
We need stronger partnership with the private sector and sustainable support from the UN to mobilize technology transfer and investment for capacity building.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next is the representative of FAO.
Distinguished chairs, Excellencies, delegates and colleagues, the FAO Chief scientists providing a statement on behalf of the Food and Agriculture Organization.
Clean energy technologies are critical for agri food systems transformation and food security.
Agri food systems consume 30% of global energy, mostly fossil fuel based, a major source of greenhouse gas emissions.
But this is equally a humanitarian crisis.
2.3 billion people, women and children in rural communities still cook on open fires causing millions of premature deaths a year.
Transforming agri food energy is central to SDGs two, three, seven and 13.
Technologies are ready, solar irrigation, agri voltaics, cold storage and biogas from agricultural residues can decarbonize the value chain from field to kitchen.
In Rwanda, agricultural bioenergy can expand clean cooking access by 33%, over 400,000 households freed from the open fire, but isolated technologies are not enough.
Transformation happens when clean energy for rural communities is bundled with digital services, improved agricultural inputs, cold chain and finance deployed as a package farmers can adopt.
These bundles only work where rural energy infrastructure exists, mini grids, storage, last mile connectivity, reliable enough to anchor a livelihood.
We must be honest about the trade offs.
Ungoverned solar irrigation can deplete aquifers.
Bioenergy is most sustainable when residues, not food or crops are the feedstock, food energy, climate, water nexus, where governance is the enabling condition.
Designed well, our agri food systems can become energy contributors, feeding biogas to grids, offering irrigated land as flexible load, anchoring rural micro grids that serve whole communities.
This requires financing that reaches smallholders, governance and manages trade offs and gender responsive design because rural women bear the heaviest energy poverty burden and must lead the transition.
FAO continues to work with its member states and its partners in building clean energy pathways for food security, climate and the 2.3 billion people awaiting clean cooking.
Thank you.
Perfect timing.
Thank you.
One more intervention.
Last but not least, Gambia.
Thank you, Kosher.
Excellence, this distinguished delegates.
The Gambia experience demonstrates that clean energy access can support economic diversification, strengthen local enterprise, and unlock new opportunities for productive economy.
In line with the energy sector roadmap 2021 to 2040, the Gambia has been expanding electricity and modernizing national energy infrastructure through the electricity restoration and modernization project.
Implemented in partnership with international institutions.
We are investing in grid expansion, renewable energy integration, and digital utility management and rural electrification.
A major component of this initiative is the construction of a 23 megawatts for a pack with eight megawatt hours of battery storage, which has strengthened national generation capacity while reducing dependency on energy imports.
These investments are these investments are accelerating the Gambians transition towards clean energy while expanding access to reliable electricity across on the surf communities.
The 23 megawatt solar facility marks as an important step in diversifying the national energy mix and reducing dependence on fossil generation.
Through the Renewable Energy and electrification Program, approximately 292 communities are being connected to the grid helping expand national electricity access towards 90% and benefiting an estimated 52,000 households.
Overall, the initiative is expected to benefit more than 8,000 people, including 1,000 schools and 100 health centers.
Beyond improving energy access, these investments are strengthening livelihoods, expanding access to economic opportunities, and improving quality of life, particularly for women and vulnerable communities.
However, like many developing countries, the Gambia continue to face challenges related to high energy costs, outdated infrastructure and dependence on imported fils.
In light of the growing impacts of climate vulnerability on infrastructure resilience, energy security, Thank you.
We now close these Q and the intervention sections and I would like to ask our panelists, as I have announced with one sentence, to conclude all these.
Panel scaling affordable and Clean Energy Technology for inclusive development.
We go in the order of how we started.
Mr.
Da Silva, The floor is yours, one sentence.
One sentence.
The future of sustainable energy will depend not only on deploying technologies, but as we saw here today on building together the institutions, financing models, and the risking frameworks that allow societies to innovate, adapt, sustain development over the long term, and reduce inequalities through a more inclusive energy transition.
Fantastic.
This is exactly what they want sentence.
Fantastic.
Miss Boko Cati your sentence, please.
First, I apologize.
I may use more than one sentence because I can't compose a long sentence as my next neighbors.
So the I Yeah.
When you install a new system, even though it's outstanding technology, you are afraid of investment.
How much investment you need to install the new system, they make it affordable and also from the transition from existing technology to new technology, you must find how you can transit by using hybrid system.
But that the mathematical analysis is very important.
In the example I showed, although it's a completely new system to charge Ebo, the investment is very, very small and it's very important for inclusive development.
The um It's not only technology, but intelligent placement and system level design is very important.
But more important is science diplomacy because it doesn't test in the community and find the standardization, it doesn't work in the maker transit.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, miss Motor Kotani for this slightly longer sentence.
Finally, the privilege, Professor Kunduri to close this with one sentence.
We need a global commons where science and stakeholder we co design systemic transformations towards the implementation of the SDGs with energy system being a priority.
This collaboration between science and stakeholders will provide the portfolios of investments that need to be de risk and make bankable and scalable in order to accelerate the fair implementation of the SDGs.
Fantastic.
That was clear.
We are now closing this and I'm giving back the session to Mr.
Kessler to conclude this panel.
Thank you, moderate, Dear Vladimir Trowic for skillfully guiding and tightly managing the time management of this first panel.
We are strict in time management, but I am kindly asking for your big applause for all our panelists.
I thank all the speakers and participants for their contributions.
I now very briefly pause the meeting, but before you run out, please stay seated.
We will just make a rearrangement here at the podium and we will resume with panel two right away.
Thank you.
You leave in.
Excellencies, distinguished participants.
The forum is now as announced, going to proceed to panel number two, focusing on SDGs nine and 11, in particular, innovation in energy, infrastructure, industry and cities.
I kindly ask you to stop your conversations.
Thank you.
I'm pleased to welcome our distinguished guest speakers, and participants.
I'm also pleased to welcome back.
Not a big surprise, our moderator of this session, again, Mr.
Vladimir Turnovic I'll hand the meeting back to the moderator and I look forward to an equally interesting discussion of panel number two.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr.
Kessler.
I will do my best to keep it interesting.
We turn now on the wider systems shaping the transition, infrastructure, cities and digital systems, clean energy industrialization require construction and construction requires materials.
We will have experts on these topics to present their views on the topic of this panel.
This panel looks how we move from pilots to real integrated systems.
I would start by giving the word to Mr.
Magnus Anderson from Marlbourne University.
From your work on economic geography, how can urban planning and transport system support energy transitions while also advancing air quality and local development.
Related to that, specifically, how can satellite imaging because this is your zone of interest, allow us to better understand the role of small scale enterprises in providing building materials.
The floor is yours.
Thank you very much, Chair, excellences, distinguished delegates and colleagues.
Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this discussion.
I would like to put quite a simple proposition.
Clean energy transition cannot be planned effectively if we don't know how cities and the built environment are actually growing.
Energy demand is not abstract.
It's embedded in buildings, transport corridors, industrial zones, informal settlements, public infrastructure, also cooling needs, water system, and also starting to be embedded in data centers and digital systems.
To plan clean energy transition, we need to understand the physical form of cities, where urban expansion is happening, where densification is occurring, where infrastructure is missing, where people are exposed to heat, to pollution, and where future construction and material demand will emerge.
This is where remote sensing and Earth observation become essential.
Satellite data allow us to observe cities as measurable built systems.
We can combine land cover and built up extent.
We can combine it with building footprint, building height, and volume of buildings.
We know the population distribution, also climate exposure, emergent information on construction material, and also building archetypes.
Together, these layers allow us to move from a flat, two dimensional view of urbanization to a three dimensional view and a material aware understanding of the cities and built environment.
This is not just a technical improvement, this is a governance improvement.
Many rapidly growing cities, especially in data poor context, are changing fast with conventional planning system, but also we have cadastral records of the building footprint that might be outdated.
We have building stock inventories that might be incomplete.
We have a informal and small scale construction sector that might not appear in official statistics.
Yet, these are precisely the places, the data places where decisions on energy access, transport, housing, water, and cooling and infrastructure needs are most urgent.
Earth observations here or satellite imaging provides us with a consistent, scalable evidence base.
It can help us to show where agricultural or open land is being converted into urban use.
It can help us to see where settlements it's expanding horizontally, where building are rising, the building heights are getting higher, where we have vegetation loss, heat exposure, and infrastructure needs that overlap.
In this sense, remote sensing help us to make urban demand, urban risk, but also urban opportunities visible.
First, remote sensing can help cities to distinguish compact growth from sprawl.
Second, remote sensing can guide building sector energy transition by using building footprint, height information that can estimate floor space proxies, density and volume of buildings.
When we combine this information with information about construction material and archetype information, it can help us to identify and develop retrofit program, passive cooling, rooftop solars, clean cooking, and efficient low carbon construction materials.
To point is not only to know how many buildings that exist, it's also what type of urban fabric form they form and what energy and material demands that follow from that fabric.
Third, it can also help us to improve the remote sense it can help us to improve resilience.
We can combine built environment indicators with heat, with flooding, with drainage, with vegetation, and other things such as slopes and dark covered data.
Fourth and last, earth observation can improve investment targeting.
Here we can connect the public demand, the demand from the population to the private sector, and investments from the private sector.
Public and private investors and authorities, they need credible evidence on where demand is growing, where risks are concentrated and where intervention can generate the highest social returns.
So satellite divide indicators can support municipality project preparation, climate finance applications, green bonds, resilience bonds, and blended finance mechanisms.
This takes us to the need for a sustainable industrialization.
I would like to address three main recommendations.
First, cities can build interoperable data platforms that combined satellite data with cadastran records, with census data, with infrastructure networks, energy access data, climate risk information with local engineering knowledge and local building traditions.
Second, Climate and finance for construction of infrastructure and housing should support not only clean energy technologies, but also the spatial intelligence that we need to target these needs effectively.
Better data is not a luxury.
It is a precondition for better and more equitable investments.
Third and last, governments and development partners should integrate Earth observation and remotely sensing based built environment indicators into urban energy planning and SDG 11 monitoring system.
Here, there is a strong need to bridge and to create partnerships, not just between countries, but also between the public and the private actors.
Here I see an important role for the United Nations and I would say more precisely for organizations that we deal with space, remote sensing and Earth observation.
I see the UN Office for Outospace Affairs as an important actor to coordinate and to develop the use of remotely sensed information on Earth observation.
From space, we can see where cities are expanding.
With the right institutions and the right partnerships, we can turn that visibility into more affordable, resilient, low carbon, and inclusive urban development.
Thank you.
Thank you, Professor Anderson, for this interesting talk.
Our next panelist is Professor Karen Scrimer for EPFL.
I should say that they are both Professor Scrier and Professor Anderson part of ten member group.
I expect her presentation to be smooth connection to what we just heard.
Professor Scrier, you've noted that construction materials, mainly cement based, form the physical foundation of this transition.
How should cities think about the built environment as part of the clean energy transition to avoid locking in high carbon infrastructure.
Thank you, Mr.
Moderator.
Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this panel.
As you said in your introduction, we've been talking these last two days about all the things we need in terms of clean energy, data centers, et cetera, and all of these need to be actually built.
So when we build things, we need to consider the materials we're using, and in the main, this is coming down to cement.
Although this is a very maligned material, it's the second most used substance of the water which we talked about yesterday.
So we need to pay more attention to how we use it and making sure that we do this in the most efficient way possible, because of course, it's impossible to replace something used in such huge quantities with anything else.
And I think the last few decades really have shown us what happens when we're really unaware of the importance of materials.
Last four decades have seen the very rapid and concentrated development in China, which of course has lifted many people out of poverty, but at the same time has meant that the use of cement has increased incredibly such that China today now uses half of this material.
But now things are changing again.
Already in China, consumption of cement is decreasing dramatically, so we need to anticipate where growth is going to occur, and this will be in India and Africa will be the main most important places.
If we want to make sure that in these regions we can have growth with minimal climate impact, these are the regions in which we need to concentrate.
We estimated that about 75% of the future use of cement will be in developing countries.
But at the same time, we have many solutions to reduce the C two impact.
We have available technologies which can reduce emissions by even of the order of 70 to 80%.
So it's very important that we see how this can be done.
We actually calculated that by using just three levers, better design, use of clinker substitutes like calcine clay and producing concrete more efficiently, countries could increase their use of cement in line with their expectations of GDP development while at the same time actually decreasing Co two emissions.
So these aspects need to be coupled with planning ahead using the satellite data, et cetera that my colleague talked about beforehand.
I've been very appreciative of the opportunity to participate in this ten member group because this has really opened new possibilities for multidisciplinary collaboration.
Now we see the possibility to form a global hub for the sustainable built environment in order to better coordinate what we can do from materials research, from remote imaging, and also from information systems modeling.
We need to develop local capacity, develop simple metrics for efficiency.
In this way, we can make sure that we can achieve the SDGs and at the same time not irreversibly damage our climate.
I'd like to thank you for your attention and we'll see the following.
Professor Skrner, thank you for your statement and this nicely shows how it's connected with the previous statement from Professor Magnus Anderson.
Now, before we move to high level respondents, we have one video intervention from Mr.
Satoshi Matsoa towards global sovereign AI for sustainability, connecting digital infrastructure to our energy goals.
Toshi Matsooka, Director of R and RCCS, the premier flagship supercomputer in the Center of Japan.
Now, over the past four or five years, we have developed and are operating this massive supermuter Fugaku which embodies 160,000 those have been instrumental in solving COVID crisis, et cetera Over the years of operation, we've been able to reduce the carbon footprint by 50%.
Have we solved the problem? Why actually not? Because a sustainability and global growth is not a long term C two emission problem.
A data stands are static energy load and can easily be driven with clean energy solar wind the nuclear fusion in the future.
If a science industry helps to resolve the global energy and CO two crisis, it is worthwhile energy investment for the long term.
What are the problems? The problems are short term buildup causing massive imbalance in energy profile, high cost, investment, and labor imbalance.
As a result, only countries who could afford such imbalance can advance AI and benefit from its growth.
Let me show you a few videos generated by AI itself to hone in on the point.
The temporal mismatch, data centers build in under two years, but new power lines can take a decade.
This forces stopgap reliance on gas, adding 44 million metric tons of CO two by 2030s.
These fast deploy aero derivative turbines are being rushed in as a temporary fix, but they lock us into decades of fossil fuel dependence and massive CO two emissions.
That's not the only problem.
Problems are economy and also labor, et cetera, which are societal problems.
Electricity rates are skyrocketing, straining communities.
Construction brings temporary jobs, but few permanent ones.
Meanwhile, a massive talent gap looms with thousands of electricians retiring, this massive talent gap creates a hidden bottleneck.
Communities face soaring electricity costs while the skilled workers needed to build and maintain the infrastructure are disappearing.
While construction creates a temporary surge of 1,500 jobs, the finished data centers deliver only 30 to 50 permanent operations roles.
This imbalance Electric.
As a result, the countries or companies that can only afford these imbalances can excel in AI and enjoy its benefits.
The AI divide is stark.
The US and China captured nearly 65% of global AI investment while Africa has 1% of data center capacity.
The solution sovereign AI built on shared infrastructure and pulled regional can.
Through shared sovereign infrastructure, AI becomes an energy maker, powering a more equitable and sustainable global future.
AI divided.
As the video indicated, it's not wise for each country to have its own unique sovereign AI effort.
Rather, the entire world should get together and compute an AI infrastructure and data.
And be able to create, just like the Internet, just like open source software, just like Linux, et cetera, to create a shared global commons AI and thus allowing all nations to better equally and enjoy its advances to attain global growth.
Thank you.
We are moving to high level respondents for panel two, Mr.
Ralph Bedell from Unido.
The guiding question would be what innovations in material science, digital system, energy industry, and transport infrastructures are most promising for accelerating energy transitions.
Please Okay.
All right.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Moderator, panelists, Excellencies, distinguished participants.
To accelerate the energy transition, we need practical innovations that can be applied at scale.
I would like to highlight three key areas where innovations in industry can help.
First, digitalized energy systems.
Global electricity demand is rising rapidly while more solar and wind power are being added to the system.
This creates new challenges for grids.
Smart grids can monitor what is happening in real time.
AI tools improve forecasting of renewable energy.
This makes it easier to balance supply and demand and maintain system stability.
In industry, energy management systems can identify inefficiencies and optimize o toy operations.
Allow me to share here that together with the Sustainable Development Solutions Network of Jeffrey Skunido is leading the Council of Engineers for the Energy Transition and Advisory Body to the Secretary-General.
There's one publication by the Council that appeared recently which estimates that digital technologies could enable up to 20% of reductions in C two emissions by 2030.
My second point relates to innovations in material efficient technologies.
Obviously, the energy transition requires critical minerals used in batteries, grids, and clean technologies.
The challenge is not necessarily geological availability, but whether supply can expand quickly given concentrated supply chains and processing bottlenecks.
Innovation can substitute scarce materials with more abundant ones or eliminate the need for certain materials altogether.
This can lower supply risks and support affordability.
We already see this in batteries.
Lithium iron phosphate batteries are now widely used in electric vehicles because they avoid the use of scarce materials such as cobalt and nickel.
So third and last, smart electrification of industry.
Electrification is becoming a major shift in global energy systems, especially in industry.
In 2024, industry accounted for nearly 40% of total growth in electricity demand.
At the same time, significant potential exists to electrify low temperature heat and steam processes, which represent about 70% of global industry energy consumption.
Many of the required technologies already exist.
Electric boilers and industrial heat pumps can replace fossil fuel based systems.
Innovation is also opening new pathways for high temperature processes, such as in steel and cement production in the cement sector was already mentioned earlier.
But electrification must be planned together with grids.
If well managed, it can accelerate the energy transition.
If not, it will place additional pressure on already constrained systems.
Excellencies, the priority now is to scale some of these innovations quickly.
But let's also be clear, technology alone will not deliver the transformation we need.
Progress depends equally on innovation in policy, regulation, market design, and business models, and above all, international cooperation.
At Unido, we stand ready to continue supporting our member states in implementing practical solutions in all these areas and we look forward to working with all of you.
Thank you very much.
This is the list.
We are now moving to interactive discussion, Q and A.
Thank you for this presentation, Mr.
Brittle.
F is open now.
The first is Learning Planet Institute.
Please your 2 minutes.
Thank you, Mr.
Moderator, Your Excellency's distinguished guests.
My name is Ra Armagan and I am an under 18 youth fellow with the Learning Planet Institute and part of the Learning Plan Youth Ventures Program.
I would like to thank the Institute, UNSCO, and the United Nations University for this opportunity and also recognize the other youth delegates here today.
I'm also the founder of Terawah Global Associations, a youth led initiative developing an off grid washing machine for low resource, remote, displaced and climate vulnerable communities.
Tawash started in Guyana through work connected to Amerindian communities where access to reliable infrastructure, electricity, water systems, and basic services can be limited.
In February of this year, we completed prototype testing in Santa Mission, Guyana, and in the next three to five months, we are preparing for pilot deployment.
Tera wash began with a simple observation.
For many women and girls, laundry is not just a household task, it is a source of time poverty.
Hours are spent washing clothes by hand, that time could instead be dedicated to education, pursuing opportunities, rest, income generation, and participation in community life.
By addressing this every day, every day but often overlooked challenge, Tarwah connects hygiene, water access, gender equality, and resilient infrastructure.
It shows how practical innovation can support communities where centralized systems may be limited or unavailable.
So far, we have worked alongside the Ministry of Emory Indian Affairs in Guyana and the United Nations Country team in Guyana.
For me, TRWAh reflects the purpose of the SI forum, using science, technology and innovation to create community driven solutions that improve daily life and advance the sustainable development goals.
Thank you.
Fantastic.
Perfect timing.
Since we don't have much interventions in this Q&A session, I just want to warn our panelists that they will not have one sentence, but it will be longer discussion.
We are moving to OECD.
The floor is yours.
Excellencies colleagues, allow me to mention concrete examples on OECD work on SDG nine and 11.
On SDG nine, our work on energy productivity and critical minerals shows that efficiency improvements remain among the largest and most immediate sources of emissions reduction potential in energy intensive industries.
An OECD study published last year revealed the substantial untapped potential for productivity and emissions gains through diffusion of best practices, technology, and management skills.
Looking specifically at innovation and policy support, SDG 11 and coordination with all levels of government are key.
The OECD has therefore established a program on a territorial approach to the SDGs, helping cities and regions develop, implement, and monitor strategies aligned with local realities.
Integrated urban policy on housing, transport, energy efficiency, and green infrastructure delivers co benefits across climate action, health, equality, and economic growth.
Science, technology and innovation are key enablers of this integration.
Yet progress remains uneven.
On air quality, there has been encouraging progress.
The share of OECD cities meeting clean air targets rose from 34% in 2015 to 44 in 2022.
But housing affordability and sustainable mobility remain major challenges.
Housing prices in large cities have increased by nearly 68% over the past decade.
Looking ahead, together with UN Habitat, the OECD is developing a global measurement framework Thank you.
The next intervention is Indonesia.
Your 2 minutes.
Thank you very much, Excellency.
I would like to begin by expressing appreciation for the briefers for their insightful presentation.
Indonesia, welcome to the discussion to highlight STI's role as key enablers for excelerting clean energy systems that support sustainable development.
In this context, expanding de centralized and integrated energy solution remains Indonesia focus, particularly to improve energy access across its archaeologic geography.
As of early 2026, electrification has reached over 99% nationwide, supported by innovation such as mini grids and rooftop solar systems in remote island.
At the same time, Indonesia is advancing large scale renewable energy development, including the 192 megawatt floating solar power plant in Chirata, the largest floating solar plant in Southeast Asia.
In our urban areas, Indonesia is also developing smart grid system and energy efficiencity, initiative to optimize energy use and reduce emission.
However, challenges remain, particularly in ensuring affordability and mobilizing sufficient financing to scale this innovation equitably.
Addressing these gaps requires stronger multilateral partnerships, as well as enhanced transfer and capacity building efforts.
This will ensure STI Driven energy solution remain inclusive, accessible, and sustainable.
To close, allow me to pose a question to the panelists based on your experience.
How can we leverage STI to better connect governments, industry, and communities to accelerate energy transition.
Thank you.
Thank you for perfect timing and the questions for the panelists.
The next is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for Electrical Engineers, well known as I AAE.
Please, the floor is yours.
Yes.
Thank you.
Distinguished Chairs, Excellencies, and all participants of the Science Technology and Innovation Forum.
I'm Bruce Hecht, and I'm pleased to be here from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, known as IAA, the largest professional technical organization in the world committed to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.
IAA is pleased to contribute to the discussion on the sustainable development goals and for power, energy, and clean water and infrastructure and to highlight the essential role of international standards in their implementation.
Science, technology and innovation are central to solving global challenges, but innovation alone is not enough.
To achieve impact at scale and to meet local and contextual challenges, we must work to ensure that technologies are interoperable, reliable, and deployable.
Across diverse conditions.
Technical standards play a critical role in improving water quality, expanding access, strengthening system resilience, as we've heard today.
For example, IAE standards support the development and deployment of advanced sensing technologies, data interoperability, frameworks, intelligent infrastructure systems, real time monitoring of resources, early detection, and optimized management of distribution networks.
Equally important, standards help reduce fragmentation and lower barriers for innovators, particularly in developing regions by developing a common foundation for technology development and for deployment.
An open and inclusive standards process ensures that solutions reflect both global best practices and local realities.
We would also like to emphasize the importance of inclusive and open standards development processes that bring together stakeholders from industry, academia, government, including voices from developing regions where challenges are most acute.
IAA stands ready to collaborate with the international community to strengthen these standards.
Thank you, chairs for the time today.
Thank you for this.
With this statement, we have exhausted our list of interventions in Q&A session.
I would give the word back to our panelists before I ask the question.
I would like to get up.
One more.
Turn off.
Maybe to answer the question from Indonesia.
So when it comes to targeting specific locations, I think that is one of the aspects that we need to work more with in order to support local medium, small scale actors that use traditional solutions.
Again, this is the type of information that we can derive from remotely sensed information.
I think Indonesia is one of the geographies where the potential of remotely senseed information is very high because it's a very scattered large country, small islands, many remote locations that are prone for climate change.
All.
I think it always comes down to this question of improving the use of materials efficiency and integrating the value chain.
So this depends on forward planning.
Indonesia is actually a country which currently has a huge overcapacity in cement production, and this is a major problem because it doesn't encourage people to use it more efficiently.
I think we have to move down the value chain as Marcus has said, We have to look at who's doing the construction on the ground.
Often this can be in quite informal sector.
We're seeing that in many countries just producing concrete blocks can be consuming as much as 80% of the cement.
Making this more efficient and lower climate impact while at the same time going for higher quality and lower price.
This may seem a difficult nexus, but I think it's really achievable if we find what we know we have better formulations, but then how can we communicate to these very small and medium sized enterprises? How can we help them to grow their businesses more efficiently because they are the people who are supplying the local market and are the main people who can deliver this um dual challenge of being able to build more while at the same time impacting the climate as little as possible.
I think it's how we bring together these things.
Then of course, this overview we can have through remote imaging can be very valuable For example, even seeing where these small and medium sized enterprises are located.
We made a study visit to Ghana a few months ago and you find these block makers are literally on every corner.
They're not official, they don't know they're there, but they're everywhere.
These are the people who are actually consuming on the ground and where we can make these big gains in lowering our demand for materials and lowering the C two impact this has.
Thank you, Professor Skrner.
Obviously, the discussion is interesting, so we have a reiteration from Q&A session.
We have Azbij for two minute intervention, please.
Thank you so much, Mr.
Moderator, Mr.
Co chair, ladies and gentlemen, we welcome the focus of this session on advancing sustainable development through clean energy technologies and innovation across infrastructure, industry, and cities.
Accelerating the deployment of affordable and reliable clean energy systems is not essential for achieving universal energy access, but also for driving inclusive economic growth, strengthening resilience, and supporting sustainable urbanization.
Azerbijan attaches great importance to these priorities and has been actively advancing clean energy and smart urban development at the national level.
Our post conflict reconstruction efforts are guided by the concept of smart cities and smart villages where digital technologies, renewable energy, and sustainable infrastructure are integrated from the outset.
Regionally, Azerbijan plays an important role in promoting energy connectivity and green energy corridors.
Azerbijan has long been a reliable energy partner for many countries contributing to energy security and stability across regions.
Through partnerships across the Caspian region and beyond, we are contributing to the development of cross border energy infrastructure and facilitating the integration of renewable energy into wider markets.
In this context, Azerbijan is also advancing the Black Sea submarine electricity cable Initiative, which will enable the export of renewable energy to Europe and strengthen into regional energy connectivity.
At the international level, Azerbijan continues to advocate for strengthened cooperation on sustainable development, including through support for technology transfer, capacity building and innovating financing mechanisms.
In this context, we look forward to the World Urban Forum in May 2026 as an important platform to advance dialogue on sustainable cities and share best practices.
I thank you.
Thank you for that.
We still have quite a lot of time.
I wanted to pose one question from my side since I have also expertise in remote sensing and AI, we can see the revolution, I can see it.
Better to do that right away.
Q&A, we have Mexico, please, your 2 minutes.
Thank you very much.
Thanks.
In a context marked by the intensification and greater frequency of phenomena associated with climate change, the development of resilient infrastructure is a strategic priority, particularly for coastal areas.
It is thought that around 2.4 billion people, approximately 40% of the world's population live fewer than 100 kilometers away from the coast, which underscores the magnitude of their exposure to risks such as storms, floods, and rising sea level.
In this regard, strengthening the resilience of infrastructure is not just a development issue, it's also a question of human security and climate adaptation.
As part of this approach, nature based infrastructure is emerging as one of the most cost effective and efficient solutions to reduce risks and to increase resilience.
These solutions include ecosystems such as mangroves, wetlands, and coral reefs and they make it possible to protect, manage, and restore the natural environment at the same time as generating social, economic and environmental benefits.
In that regard, I would like to put a question to the panel.
How can technology be used to improve and strengthen nature based infrastructure, particularly in order to strengthen climate adaptation in coastal areas? Thank you very much.
Thank you for the intervention and questions for the panel.
Panelists, please, Professor Anderson.
I can start because my answer will relate a bit to what we have talked about when we talk about cities.
We are talking about the need to know where to make interventions.
The need to know where we need to to strengthen, for example, the nature based solutions.
Here again, we can we have tools, we have innovations within Earth's observation and satellite imagery to highlight to monitor where we have to improve and to target these geographies, these places.
Again, it relates also to what we mentioned about the large country of Indonesia, which has a lot of islands and coastal communities.
Monitoring and then taking correct decisions.
Professor Srira, would you have a comment on this? I think the main comment is that it comes back to combining approaches and what we need to think about is how we can best give people the housing and infrastructure they need while not encouraging sprawl, allowing along coastal areas, the maintenance of these nature based solutions like mangroves swamps, et cetera So I think it comes back to encouraging intelligent development.
It's well known, for example, that if we can have buildings maybe three or four stories, this allows a good level of densification without sprawl, so we don't take up so much land area while having buildings that can be integrated with things like solar panels to supply their own energy need.
So I think it's very much a question of planning.
But what I'd also like to add that we need to combine top down with bottom up solutions.
It's no good just having a global plan and expecting everybody to stick to it.
We have to look at what people really want on the ground and how they're fulfilling their own needs.
And help them to do this better in a way that has lower impact and allows reforestation, maintenance of coastal areas, et cetera I think again, it comes back to this question of integration of multidisciplinarity and knowledge sharing.
Thank you for this.
We have some more time, so I will misuse the opportunity to ask one question from my side.
I expect that in the next three to five years we will have quite strong advancement in remote sensing where the resolution and accessibility of images will be improved substantially to go to submitter resolution, which will provide the possibility not to see if there is some construction, but to see the size of the bedroom.
So a For Professor Scrivener, how much they take into account the success and AI that can process all these images, how much it would be useful for further getting deeper insights with your expertise for cement and construction materials to estimate this consumption of cement per capita and other elements if you get access to this data and processing capacity? That's a very challenging question.
I think first of all, we have to juxtapose the overdevelopment that has taken place in the global North.
We see in many countries in Europe, nearly all construction has really gone to increasing the living area per person, which in now many countries is really quite excessive.
But then people say, well, we should stop constructing, but that's a meaningless statement because we look at most of the world's population, which has total inadequate living conditions, and in many countries in Africa, we see absolutely huge demand for affordable housing.
This is a a challenge to be addressed.
I think remote sensing has its role, but it's not really prying into people's bedrooms.
It's a question of seeing how we can aggregate this data and have a good planning.
For example, when we look at the demographics, particularly in Africa, because most regions of the world will see a peak in population within even by 2050, whereas Africa, which is, bear in mind that the population of Africa today is similar to the Indian subcontinent in China while the area is much, much bigger.
The population there will keep growing at least till 2,100.
And this means that we need to think now where we need the factories or the small enterprises that will produce the materials that people use.
In fact, even though population may increase to 2,100, the factories that produces the blocks or the bricks or whatever will need to be built in the next 20 odd years.
That's where we need to act because if we act there to implement low carbon technologies, that will have a lasting benefit for the next 100 years.
As I said, we were unaware of, I mean, we weren't unaware, but we had this huge development in China with a lot of lock of embodied carbon in buildings.
We can't undo that now, but we can try to make sure that we anticipate where demand is coming next and make sure that we make available low carbon solutions, which can also be high quality and low cost.
Thank you for that.
Professor Anderson, please, may I add a few things in relevance to what Professor Sir mentioned.
Remotely sensed information, satellite image, needs to be accessible.
They need to be able to be used by the population, by the geographies where they demand for, for example, better planning and better monitoring.
I want to highlight that we all need to work in partnerships to guard the open access for these new emerging technologies.
Very good message, I support fully.
Should we consider these as your closing statements or you would want to have one sentence each? Maybe one sentence is to reiterate again that it's all about integration.
It's about coming out of our silos and communicating, not thinking that a single magic solution exists at one level, but realizing that answers to these challenges really involve lots of different approaches in parallel and knowledge sharing.
To add to that, I really see during the two days that we have been here, the positive spirit in developing partnerships to address these issues.
Without these partnerships between countries, but also between private and public sector, we might not find the best solution, increased partnership between countries and public and private sector.
Thank you so much.
I would like to close and to thank our panelists and all the participants in the discussion and maybe to have one, two sentence conclusion, we have seen from both panels that one message is clear in order to achieve SDG seven, it is fundamental to address development, climate, and security.
Science, technology and innovation enables rapid transformation of energy systems towards sustainability and resilience.
Scaling up investments, there was a lot about investments in innovation and building local capacity will be of critical importance to ensure all countries translate energy transitions into lasting social and economic benefits.
I would close from my side here and hand over to Mr.
Koch, please.
Thank you so much.
Again, as before I move on to my summary, please give a hand to our panelists.
Who did some extra work with some extra questions.
We have now reached the end of Session two.
Also thank our dear moderator who helped us through both sessions.
A few thoughts at the end.
I think we have learned that achieving SDG seven requires not only accelerating technological innovation and many of you contribute to that vividly, but also to address structural, especially financial and policy barriers.
I think the financial and investment component was particularly, um, visible.
We've also heard about promising solutions, hopefully always, and ranging from decentralized renewable energy systems to innovations in storage, digital platforms, actually quite a bit on digital platforms and may I add open access in this context.
Um, and integrated urban energy systems or broader urban systems that have an impact on energy consumption.
At the same time, the discussion also highlighted the importance of ensuring that energy transitions are inclusive, equitable, and aligned with broader development goals as challenging this may be.
Again, coming back to the finance issue.
Um, I think we've also learned quite a lot, especially from our two tier panelists on remote sensing and how this will be a very immediate, short future, let's say, impact technology and also on cement production and because it has not only a massive impact on carbon on CO two output, but also on planning this according to demographics.
Um, as we move forward, scaling such solutions will require coordinated action across governments, industry, and international partners as well as sustained investment and innovation.
Before I close, I take the liberty to remind you of two opportunities you have now over lunch.
More housekeeping aspects, maybe.
One is that in this room, there will be a side event which is not co sponsored by us, but it's a side event in this room.
If you have any things, it's probably smart to take them with you for the break.
Then there is a second side event now co sponsored by the two co chairs, Zambia and ourselves, Austria.
And it's a side event involving UNOSa and Unido in the Ecosoc chamber at 13:15.
Herewith, I give you back 26 minutes of your lifetime, which is great.
The forum will reconvene this afternoon at 3:00 P.M.
In this conference room and the meeting is herewith adjourned.
Thank you.