Panel Discussion: Climate Finance in the MENA Region Challenges vs Opportunities

The CEBC Clean Energy Annual Summit is our flagship event of the year where experts and industry leaders from across the globe come together to discuss the clean energy trends, challenges, opportunities and outlook. The summit focuses on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) market.

Key takeaways from the panel:

– The solution that we need to achieve starts with accepting the simple truth that our economies are embedded within nature and not external to it and nature to enter our economic and financial decisions. It’s a collective effort to fight climate change that requires commitment from both the private and public sector together.

– The Middle East region is becoming increasingly active within the climate finance sector. The UAE is leading the region with the highest number of green issuances.

– Mandating standards for climate finance and disclosure is the most straightforward way to accelerate more access to finance for climate change mitigation. The recent developments from the International Financial Report Standards (IFRS) are important with the proposed establishment of the international sustainability standards board, because this has to be done on a super national level.

– There are many motivations for the private sector to make sure that they align their investments with ESG such as access to capital, crossed savings, long term profitability and brand reputation.

– The financial and fiscal tools are going to be the critical tools that drive us along the path to decarbonization. Pricing carbon risk has to be taken into account in our business decisions and even in our private household decisions. Governments need to start gradually reducing fossil fuel subsidies and in parallel introduce carbon tax.

This summit is organized by the Clean Energy Business Council (CEBC). The CEBC is a non profit organization dedicated to promoting clean energy including renewables, energy efficiency, smart grid, energy storage and clean energy technology and solutions for the environmental sector. CEBC provides a platform to further dialogue between the public and private sectors to develop much needed policy and regulation to help drive the implementation of clean energy across the MENA region. Thank you to the summit Gold sponsors Pinsent Masons, Standard Chartered, GreenParking, CATEC Mobility, CITA, ESB International and Enova and Bronze sponsors Emirates National Oil Company (ENOC), SCAME, Hager Group and Lockton.