As prepared for delivery.

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

This Ministerial Forum on Energy has seen leaders and stakeholders come together and take a leap forward in commitments to a green energy transition on the road to the High-level Dialogue on Energy this September.

Five Working Groups presented detailed recommendations for what is needed, at what scale and by when. This offers us a clearly defined global path forward.  

After my Co-chair and I called for bold commitments to accelerate the pace, scale and fairness of the energy transition less than one month ago, over 30 commitments – or “Energy Compacts” - were announced or previewed this week:  

• For instance, the Rockefeller Foundation and the IKEA foundation stepped forward with a $1 billion joint investment to tackle climate change and energy poverty.  
• India announced ambitious new renewable energy targets of 450 Gigawatts of installed capacity by 2030 at an unprecedented pace and price.  
• Germany pledged to reach a 30 percent share of renewable energy in gross final energy consumption by 2030.
• Denmark expects 100 percent of its electricity consumption to be from renewable energy by 2028.  
• Together, Colombia, Chile, Dominican Republic and the Inter-American Development Bank announced a regional compact to reach at least 70 percent renewable energy in their power mix by 2030. 

As our focus now turns to the High-Level Dialogue on Energy this September, let us recognize it as the historic moment it will be: The first High-Level Summit on Energy in 40 years, with the potential to serve as the global turning point in our efforts to bring forward to energy revolution.

The new standards set this week are yet another signal to the world that the energy revolution has indeed begun. Everyone will need to transition.  How fast and how fairly this happens though is the fundamental challenge we face.  

We know we are not on track to deliver access to clean, affordable and reliable energy for all.  

759 million people remain without access to electricity and all the opportunities – and the dignity - it brings.   

Nearly 1 in 3 people in the world – 2.6 billion – don’t have access to clean, safe methods to cook, heat or light their homes, costing nearly 4 million lives a year. 

At the heart of our thinking and planning must be people.  For the children born this year, under the shadow of COVID-19 but who will inherit the earth of our decisions, what will life look like for them in 10 years’ time?  

In Denmark they’ll be celebrating their 10^th birthday in a country that has entirely shifted its electricity source to clean and renewable energy.  

For babies born in regions without reliable electricity to power its hospitals, in 10 years they could be doing their evening homework by the light of renewable, clean energy.  

These Ministerial Thematic Forums have filled me with great hope for the future. This week alone -- 30 countries and corporations committed to cleaner, greener, more sustainable futures.

Momentum is everywhere. The groundbreaking strides we have made this week demonstrates that this historic challenge is possible to address. 

And we must acknowledge it would be an abject failure of the global community, of our generation, if we allowed this possibility to slip away.  

As co-chair of UN-Energy, I promise that we will mobilize the entire UN system help support countries in making their commitments a reality, and I call on everyone -- leaders, idealists, pragmatists, entrepreneurs, and everyone anywhere who wants to look to the future with hope --- to join us at the front of the energy revolution.

In September, working together, we can make history by setting the pace and scale of the energy transition on a trajectory that is fast enough and fair enough to offer a sustainable future for all. 

Thank you.