The Clean Energy Transition Partnership (CETP) Secretariat and UK Government team carried out a fulfilling, engaging and thought-provoking trip to Australia, focussing on the implementation of the CETP, Australia’s clean energy transition and the key role of public finance.
Convening officials from across the Australian government and public finance agencies, the team led an interactive workshop on the implementation of Australia’s commitment to the CETP. Within a year of signing the CETP, all signatories are required to publish a CETP-aligned policy on how they will shift international public finance away from fossil fuels and scale up support for the clean energy transition, which they are encouraged to publicly set out. By sharing learnings from the UK Government’s implementation of their own policy and how other CETP signatories have met the commitment, the workshop focused on supporting Australia in this policy development phase, including how they could integrate the CETP into broader Australian climate leadership objectives.
The workshop was also an opportunity for departments across the Australian government, including the Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Export Finance Australia and the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP), to present Australia’s readiness to deliver on their CETP commitment and to highlight the important work already underway to deliver clean financing for the Pacific region and beyond.
Thanks to the support from the British High Commission Canberra, the team enjoyed a full agenda of government, non-state actor and private sector meetings with energy transition experts across Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. Discussions included how the opportunities and challenges that come with Australia’s domestic energy transition is shaping conversations about the just transition, financing of renewables and local to national-level engagement, and how the breadth of engagement and action taking place to accelerate the renewable energy transition is affecting the Asia-Pacific region. Parallels between the UK’s own experience of reducing fossil fuel dependency in the energy system and managing at-scale renewables rollout, lend support to the critical role international partnerships on climate can play to enable the global transition.
The CETP will continue to support Australia in its development of a CETP-aligned policy, due to be published before December, and welcomes the support of Australian partners in enabling a central role for public finance in the energy transition.