New speakers and program announced for 2018 Sustainable Energy for All Forum

The first round of speakers for this year’s Sustainable Energy for All forum, the landmark event celebrating the sustainable energy movement, has been unveiled and once again, women leaders from government, business, civil society and international organizations will be a powerful force at the gathering - being held May 2-3 in Lisbon, Portugal.

Hosted by Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL), this year’s Forum is held under the theme Leaving No One Behind. The two-day program will address how a significant number of people worldwide are still missing out on education, health, jobs and broader economic opportunities because they do not have access to affordable, reliable, clean energy. Closing these energy gaps — especially for those traditionally thought of in the ‘last mile’— is the Forum’s imperative.

This year’s Forum will feature keynote speeches and disruptive insights from a wide array of experts, as well as deep-dive discussions on scalable success – and remaining, critical challenges – in meeting Sustainable Development Goal 7 on time.

Women leaders speaking at this year’s Forum include: Rachel Kyte, CEO and Special Representative to the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All; Greta Bull, CEO, Consultative Group to Assist the Poor; Audrey Desiderato, Founder & COO, SunFunder; Bessem Enonchong, Country Director-Cameroon, Global LPG Partnership; Kristina Skierka, CEO, Power for All; Elizabeth Littlefield, Senior Counselor, Albright Stonebridge Group; Nthabiseng Mosia, Co-Founder and CFO, Azimuth/Easy Solar; Damilola Ogunbiyi, Managing Director, Nigerian Rural Electrification Agency; Rebecca Pearl-Martinez, CIERP Research Fellow and Head of the Renewable Equity Project, Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Tufts University; Nithya Ramanathan, CEO & Co-Founder, Nexleaf Analytics; Carola van Rijnsoever, Director of Inclusive Green Growth and Ambassador for Sustainable Development, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands; and Cathy Zoi, Co-founder and President, Odyssey;

Other featured speakers include: Howard Bamsey, Executive Director, Green Climate Fund; Felix Bikpo, Chief Executive Officer, African Guarantee Fund for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises; Jürgen Fischer, President, Danfoss Cooling; Andrew Herscowitz, Coordinator for Power Africa, U.S. Agency for International Development; Amadou Hott, Vice-President, Power, Energy, Climate and Green Growth, African Development Bank; Michael Keating, UN Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, Somalia; Philippe Miquel, CEO Western & Central Africa, ENGIE; James Irungu Mwangi, Executive Director, Dalberg Group; and Sam Parker, Director, Shell Foundation.

The full list of speakers is available here.

Now in its fourth year, this year’s Forum comes at a key moment for accelerating progress on global sustainable energy goals. Specifically, how do we achieve a clean energy transition that delivers universal energy access, but in the context of the Paris Climate Agreement, which calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to limit climate warming to below 2 degrees Celsius.

Taking place at the Convento do Beato in central Lisbon, Portugal, May 2 – 3, the Forum will be a marketplace for government, business, international finance and civil society to come together to showcase success, interrogate failure and identify what’s needed to achieve faster, broader gains towards this transition that can provide clean, affordable energy for all.

Read the program in full on the Forum website here.

To confirm, your place at this momentous event, please follow the registration link here.

You can get the latest information about the Forum by signing up for the Forum newsletter, by following #SEforALLforum and @SEforALLorg on Twitter, or by visiting the Forum website.