“Time to get going” to finance sustainable energy goal

On the historic day when the new Sustainable Development Goals were gavelled in the United Nations General Assembly, SEforALL got right down to business with a special event on “Implementing Sustainable Development Goal 7: Financing Sustainable Energy for All”. “It’s time to get going,” said Rachel Kyte, the World Bank Group’s Vice President and Special Envoy for Climate Change, who will take over next January as Chief Executive Officer of SEforALL and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General. The event, hosted at the International Institute for Education near UN headquarters in New York, gathered together leaders from government, the financial sector and civil society. “SEforALL is a cutting-edge model for where we are going in the next 15 years,” said Kathy Calvin, President and CEO of the UN Foundation. An expert panel moderated by Chad Holliday, Chair of the Board of Royal Dutch Shell, examined how to tackle the challenge of generating the level of investment needed to achieve SDG 7 on sustainable energy for all. These include the risk of political and economic instability and the high up-front investment required, with the difficulty of assuring long-term paybacks. A summary of the event is available here.