The Climate Parliament will be holding an international parliamentary hearing on climate change and energy access for the poor in Viti Levu, Fiji on October 1st-3rd.

The hearing will convene around 15 legislators from the Pacific region together with experts on energy policy for an in-depth discussion on how the growing demand for energy can most effectively be met in an age of rising fuel prices and climate change.

This hearing will be the eighth in a series of international parliamentary hearings on climate change and energy access in the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) regions. The most recent hearing took place in Cameroon in March 2010 and was for Central African legislators. Previous hearings involving legislators from the Pacific region, took place on Tobago in 2008 and Vanuatu in 2009.

As a result of these hearings, the Climate Parliament has been developing and refining a number of concrete policy proposals for advancing renewable energy in villages and small islands. These will be presented and discussed in some detail in Fiji.

In particular, legislators and experts have been examining how village councils, small enterprises and local electricity agencies can cooperate to enable local communities to generate their own energy through mini-grids, and, where possible, feed electricity into larger grids.

The hearing will take place at the Tanoa Waterfront Hotel in Lautoka, near Nadi.