The 2018 Sustainable Energy for All Forum held on 2-3 May in Lisbon will bring together more than 750 leaders from government, business, civil society and international organisations to discuss key challenges in achieving the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 — ensuring equitable electricity access, accelerating renewable energy uptake and improving energy efficiency.

At the landmark gathering, EEG will convene a roundtable discussion on strategic energy planning in low-income countries. Strategic energy planning has been identified as an essential part of policy and decision-making in the energy sector, and is crucial to enabling the scale-up in investment needed to meet economic and social development goals.

This roundtable follows a previous discussion hosted by the UK Department for International Development in November 2017, prior to the Knowledge Exchange Forum of the World Bank’s Energy Sector Management Assistant Programme (ESMAP). This initial roundtable discussion explored tactics to improve the way in which development partners support strategic energy planning in developing countries.

In attendance, were representatives of major donors, international organisations and technical organisations operating in the energy sector, along with EEG’s Marcela Tarazona and Ryan Hogarth as observers.

A key outcome from the discussion was that donors agreed to work together to investigate improvements to the way that decision-support tools, models and data used in energy systems planning are created, accessed and maintained in developing nations.
Energy system models and decision-support tools are designed to provide data and evidence to inform governments’ strategic energy plans, public and private investment choices and operational decisions. Development partner-funded models and decision-support tools, however, are frequently ineffective at improving decisions-making.
Beyond hosting the follow-on event at the SE4All Forum, EEG is also conducting a joint scoping exercise with the UK Energy Systems Catapult, which will identify and assess the following:

• The current modelling capacity of developing country actors and the planning and modelling support they require

• Existing donor support initiatives for energy planning in low- and lower-middle income countries

• The energy modelling and decision support tools available for developing country governments

By supporting this DFID-led initiative, EEG aims to advance its ultimate objective – fostering evidence-based energy programming in low-income countries.

To see the results of the roundtable follow the discussion via Twitter @OPMglobal or look out for our report in the next newsletter.