Our side-event at the Lima COP20

Lima: Last weekend, we were proud to host a parliamentary side-event at the UNFCCC climate negotiations in Lima, Peru. The workshop, held in the Peruvian National Congress, brought legislators from across Latin America together with experts, policy analysts and climate scientists for an intense day-long discussion of urgently-required climate action.

The meeting, centered on parliamentary policy on sustainability and renewable energy, included presentations on the latest state of climate science and mitigation efforts from Dr Chris Field, co-chair of the IPCC's Working Group II, and a proposal from the China State Grid Corporation on the concept of a "Global Energy Internet": a network of smart grid connections within and between the world’s regions, enabling countries to trade renewable energy and giving everyone access to major renewable resources such as desert solar and Arctic wind. This approach could potentially enable the world to derive 80% of its total energy from renewable sources by 2050. Amanda Maxwell, Director of the Latin America Project at NRDC, presented an overview of renewable energy developments in the Andean region, underscoring very diverse realities in the four countries represented at the meeting.

The event was the first step in our new plan to expand the Climate Parliament network into Latin America, focussing initially on the four Andean states of Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Ecuador. As well as the briefings from policy analysts, the assembled legislators discussed key strategic issues for building the network, and agreed to contribute to the process of building cross-party groups in all four countries. We look forward to working with them over the coming months to develop strong parliamentary action on renewables in Latin America.