The Energy Ministers representing the Member Countries of The Latin American and Caribbean Energy Organization (OLACDE), who met virtually on November 24, 2021 at the LI Meeting of Ministers, signed 14 important milestones that make up the Ministerial Declaration, a document that guides regional energy policy and OLACDE’s role in this area.
In accordance with the objectives set forth in the Lima Agreement, the instrument establishing the Organization, OLACDE promotes regional commitment through the Ministerial Declaration, which contains the following postulates:
FIRST: RATIFY the commitment to accelerate the energy transitions of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean towards more clean and low-carbon energy systems.
SECOND: RECOGNIZE the achievements and commitments of some countries in the region that have defined carbon neutrality targets.
THIRD: ASSUME that each country will have its own path towards the decarbonization of its energy systems in the timeframe determined by its own national strategies and restrictions, and taking into account the international commitments that each country has honored individually; addressing the national circumstances of each State in terms of availability of resources, technologies and conditions of access to capital and financing.
FOURTH: CONSOLIDATE the strengths of the regional energy sector to make it one of the drivers of sustainable post-covid economic recovery.
FIFTH: PROMOTE innovation at the regional level as a driving force behind energy transitions in our countries and of the mechanisms to create value in national economies with the corresponding promotion of employment; as well as a fundamental pillar of the efforts undertaken in the development and deployment of technologies aimed at increasing energy efficiency, the digitization of energy systems, increasing the participation of renewable energies, increasing the availability for the use of sustainable bioenergy, sustainable mobility, improvements in the productivity of hydroelectricity and acceleration of the implementation of carbon capture and sequestration technologies.
SIXTH: FACILITATE the development of national strategies aimed at the use of hydrogen as an energy vector, noting that the Latin American and Caribbean region has enormous potential for the production of hydrogen with the capacity to contribute to global decarbonization processes.
SEVENTH: SUPPORT the development of strategies and actions aimed at strengthening the resilience of the energy sector and reducing its vulnerability to phenomena related to Climate Change, including the corresponding identification of the necessary resources to fulfill these objectives.
EIGHTH: INCREASE efforts to allow access to efficient financing mechanisms for the incorporation of clean technologies, with special consideration to improve the conditions of countries with unstable macroeconomic frameworks and lower relative development in order to reduce gaps in access to financing in our region.
NINTH: DEEPEN our demand to the international community to intensify and materialize the actions aimed at developing financing instruments and recognition in the conditions of access and payment of existing debt that take into account the climate efforts made by our countries with a focus on the decarbonization of the energy sector.
TENTH: FACILITATE the development of distributed energy, the digitization of energy systems, and strengthen the incorporation of technologies for sustainable transportation and efficient construction.
ELEVENTH: RECOGNIZE that, in some countries of our region, natural gas is a transition fuel that allows reducing the emissions intensity of the energy sector and is an important source and a viable, affordable and reliable option to accelerate the decarbonization process of some economies, always subject to its sustainable development.
TWELFTH: HIGHLIGHT the important role of international cooperation and support the increase of cooperative actions in our countries by exchanging experiences on successful policies related to decarbonization, mitigation of emissions and the development of long-term low-carbon strategies.
THIRTEENTH: CONTINUE working on strengthening regional and subregional energy integration initiatives, considering that integration today represents not only a form of cooperation and support between our countries, but also the possibility of achieving greater efficiency in the allocation of the resources of the energy systems of our region.
FOURTEENTH: SUPPORT the political institutionality and technical capacity of OLACDE as the ideal intergovernmental mechanism to coordinate and promote initiatives and projects related to the reduction of emissions linked to the energy sector, resilience to the adverse effects of climate change on energy systems and energy transitions.
