Energy ministers from the G20 countries and heads of international organisations affirmed their commitment to renewable energy at the first-ever G20 Energy Ministers Meeting in Istanbul. The participants endorsed a 11-point Communiqué, including the adoption of a renewable energy toolkit, which provides options for G20 countries to take a long-term, integrated and sustainable approach towards accelerated deployment of renewable energy.
The Communiqué will be presented to the G20 Antalya Summit in November for consideration by G20 leaders. The toolkit adopted by the G20 has five focus areas: driving down technology costs; exchanging good practices on enabling policy frameworks and power system integration; mobilising finance through risk mitigation; technology potentials and roadmaps, and; accelerating the deployment of modern bioenergy. The renewable energy toolkit and the supporting analysis were prepared by IRENA in close cooperation with other international organisations. The energy ministers have requested IRENA to coordinate the future toolkit work under the direction of the G20 Energy Sustainability Working Group, which will reconvene in 2016 under the guidance of the next G20 president, China.