 Welcome, everybody, and thank you for joining us at this event to launch the Breakthrough Agenda Report 2023. The Breakthrough Agenda's goal is to accelerate low-carbon transitions through strengthened international cooperation. At its launch at COP26, 45 countries agreed to work together to make clean technologies and sustainable solutions the most affordable, accessible, and attractive options in key emitting sectors of the global economy before the end of this decade. Its membership has since grown to include countries covering around 80% of global GDP. The annual Breakthrough Agenda Report assesses the state of international collaboration in each sector and advises countries and non-state actors on how they can work together to make low-carbon transitions faster, less difficult, and lower cost. At COP27 last year, countries responded to the First Breakthrough Agenda Report by agreeing a set of 28 priority actions that they would take together to accelerate transition. This year, we expect this report to help set the stage for further actions to be agreed at COP28. In today's launch event, you will hear first from the leaders of the three organisations that are co-authors of the Breakthrough Agenda Report. They are Dr. Fatih Burrell, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, Mr. Francesco La Camara, Director General of the International Renewable Agency, who will give his presentation via a pre-recorded video message, and Dr. Makhmud Mahodeen, the UN climate change high-level champion for COP27. Next, officials from the three co-author organisations will share some of the key findings from the report, after which there will be an opportunity to ask questions. And finally, there will be a panel discussion involving three distinguished speakers to hear their reflections on the report. Those speakers are Ms. Lee McDonough, Director General for Net Zero Nuclear and International in the UK Government's Energy Department, Ms. Maria Mendelucci, Chief Executive Officer of the Women's Business Coalition, and Mr. Simon Bertback, Director of the Energy Transition at the COP28 Presidency in the United Arab Emirates. So to begin, I will hand over to Dr. Fatih Burrell from the IEA. Thank you, Mrs. May. It is good to hear from you and many thanks to all the colleagues who are following this launch of the second edition of the report, and I am thankful to all the institutions who joined the IEA to put this report together. So one year ago, we were here, and we discussed where we are in terms of climate transitions. And when I look at the last year where we were, and this year, I am happy to share with you our assessment that, between the last one year, clean energy transitions moved fast and faster than many people think. One of the beauties of working at the IEA is we have data on every single corner of the global energy sector, coal, solar, renewables, electricity, oil, everything, and in all countries and in all sectors. All the investments in the energy sector year by year we are following, sometimes even on a daily basis. When we look at all this data around the world, it is impossible not to find out that the clean energy transitions are moving fast and faster than many people think. And in that context, dear colleagues, only two days ago, we have published some of our projections for the next years to come for this decade. Some of you might have seen, we say that even with the current policies, even there are no additional policies are implemented to push the climate agenda, clean energy agenda. Even with the existing policies, we see that the coal, oil, and natural gas consumption globally set to peak within this decade. This is, of course, very good news, especially from a climate perspective. Why this is happening? There are three reasons. First, spectacular penetration of solar power across the world. Second, big rise in the electric car sales. And third, slowing down of Chinese economy, which has been responsible for an overwhelming part of the fossil fuel growth globally. So putting all of these three things together and other factors, we see that even with the existing policies, with current policies, global fossil fuel consumption will peak and start the decline. Having said that, this decline will not bring us even closer to our target, climate target of 1.5 degrees Celsius. What to do? So there are many conditions we need to fulfill according to our net zero report we published last year. And the next one is in making. One of them is, our report says, we need to triple the renewable electricity capacity globally. It's number one. We are growing strongly in renewables, but we need to triple if we want to be in line with the IES 1.5 scenario. Second, we need to double the global energy efficiency improvement. It's another important challenge. Only last June, we brought more than 50 countries, governments around the world, from China to United States, from the African countries, Europeans and others agree on a statement. We called Versailles energy efficient statement to double the energy efficiency. This is the second condition after renewables. And the third one, these are good renewables and efficiency, but it is not enough. We need to see the unabated fossil fuels need to decline as well. Renewables growth, efficiency growth alone will not be enough. If we are serious about 1.5, we have to see that there is an international agreement, push on the significant decline in the unabated use of coal, started with coal, followed by oil and gas. So these are some of the conditions that we think we need to reach the 1.5 targets, some of the three conditions that IEA is keen to highlight at every occasion. What are the hurdles? There are many hurdles I can go through with you, but if I have to pick up one of them, it is the lack of international collaboration. Our analysis show that in the case of there is an international collaboration among the countries, reaching our climate targets would be less costly and faster than otherwise around. So therefore, international collaboration for us is critical, and it is one of the reasons we together with our colleagues from IRENA and from high level champions put this report together, and I would like to hear once again thank the government of the United Kingdom for facilitating this work. As you will see in this report, we see compared to last year's report some progress, but we are not yet there where we would like to be. In a few minutes, my colleague Dr. Gül, who is our Chief Energy Technology Officer, will give you some insights about this report, but I would like to stop here once again thanking our collaborators, the UK government and others to put this important report together in order to show why international collaboration is important and how we can put the different forces together to reach our international climate targets. With this, over to you, Mrs. May. Thank you very much. We're now going to hear a recorded message from Mr. Francesco La Camera. The outset, let me thank my friends Fatih and Mahut for the great cooperation on this report. It is in itself an example of strength of collaboration. This report is coming out at a highly complex moment, but the international cooperation is needed more than ever. At the same time, the very concept of cooperation is challenged from all sides. Despite this, we are observing progress across different sectors and geographies. Although this process is modest, it leaves a significant room for improvement. Technological solutions that can get us to 2030 exist and most of them are already cost-effective. One central solution is renewable energy, which we extensively cover in this report. Arena has long argued that investing in renewables is a smart way to build resilience, energy security, and social and economic prosperity. To give you one example, Arena estimates in 2022 the renewable power deployed globally since 2000 saved 520 billion in full cost in the electricity sector. So the positive price crisis in the past few years was a telling reminder of the power economic benefit the renewable power can provide. But we have a long way to go. Arena won any transition outlook called for tripping of renewable capacity by 2030 for several years now. And we welcome the push of the COP 2080 Presidency to rally action around this goal. This will require international cooperation at many fronts. In the report, we point out the transition, especially for developed countries, at this stage is more of a financial issues than a technical one. In 2022, as we were the case of previous year, less than 2% of the total world investment was in Africa, where the needs are the greatest. The breakthrough agenda and our journal report come ahead of COP28. We'll show that the world is not on track to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. What we do after the global stock take will be of high consequences. We show that greater international cooperation can amplify ambition and accelerate progress. Innovation is not solely the domain of technology. The new energy era needs a new blueprint for global collaboration. It is our hope that shedding the light of a strong international cooperation that can make a difference in the coming year will be an important contribution of this report. I thank you very much for your attention. Thank you. And we will now hear from Dr. Macmed Mahodeen. Right. Thank you so much, Francis. It's a great pleasure for me to participate in the launching of this important report. It's a good example of collaboration between the non-state actors and the agencies, international agencies, responsible for energy and renewable energy, the IAA and IRENA. I listened carefully to the good interventions by Mr. Birol and Mr. Lacanara. I may react to that towards the end, but let me commend first this excellent collaboration between state and non-state actors and the good support and partnerships that we have as well from the UK. We recall that the whole idea came out from COP26 when 45 world leaders determined that it's important to accelerate innovation and deployment of clean technologies in various sectors. And I'm happy to see one sector added or two sectors rather added this year in addition to what we had in power, road, transport, steel, hydrogen, agriculture sector. Now we have the buildings and the cement sector. So we now cover over 60 percent of global emissions in this report. Like as well the approach that this report is taking is very practical. It's emphasizing the merits of implementation and providing solutions which have been highlighted in COP27 in Sharma Sheikh. This report provides 39 concrete recommendations for countries and stakeholders to adopt, especially in areas related to seizing the opportunity for just transition. And the cycle, we have a cycle ending and now the same end is the beginning of a new cycle. Now we have this review identifying urgent opportunities. We need to identify priority actions at the country level. Each country needs to really to update its action plan aligned with its NDCs and the initiatives as well of the private sector. They need to mobilize resources to implement these action plans seeking international cooperation. And then of course the report takes care of the mapping and the review again. So while we celebrate the good collaboration of this report, it's in itself launching a report and launching a process for next year as well. The good comments by Mr. Birol earlier and Mr. Lakamera telling us in different ways that there is progress but the progress is not enough. Especially what Mr. Birol mentioned that about the reasons of having more and more investments and contribution of renewals are related to two positive news and what not necessarily positive and I hope it will be short lived. The first of the good news of the investments in solar power. The second is the more growth that we're seeing in electric vehicles but of course the slowdown in the Chinese economy is not welcome given the significance of the Chinese economy and the world and its contribution to the supply chain. The other thing is basically that we see many countries in the global south and I was just few days ago in in Kenya seeking growth, high growth momentum. And as far as we can make sure through the collaboration of IAA, IRENA and other agencies that this growth is going to be fueled by clean green energy. The progress that we had so far is going to be protected and sustained. I'd like just before I conclude I'd like to make a couple of areas of emphasis. One is basically on areas on finance and investments including the work touching on matters related to decarbonization and the work especially in the power sector by new public and private commitments including at the country level with the support of Z-fans and the G7 and many collaborators in this field. So in addition to South Africa we have now projects in Indonesia, Vietnam and Senegal. And again the energy sector in the hydrogen sector in particular we see international financial institutions committing more than 6.4 billion to support developing economies and the hydrogen for development partnership launched by the World Bank is helping to catalyze project funding and the rest of the infrastructure required for the green hydrogen projects. In road transport we see the zero emission vehicles transition council bringing together nearly 50 countries to agree in priorities for technical assistance while the the Jeff global economic mobility program and the World Bank's global facility to decarbonize transport are expanding assistance. In addition to that I would like to highlight that the global south is moving fast with initiatives and implementation of initiatives on finance. I like to highlight the good contribution by the Bridgetown initiatives and areas related to finance linking debt management financial innovation and concessional finance to support just energy transition and climate action at large. I see as well that there is some important progress in the operationalization of the Sharma Sheikh adaptation agenda with its different areas of work very much linked to the work that we are doing. The whole matter here is not just on energy and hard to obey sectors but when we're talking about settlements and improvement and urban development planning and investments there are opportunities for the adaptation agenda to be an area of focus. The second area and this is the final area I like to to mention is basically the international public private partnership that creates demand for clean technologies. In steel sector for instance there are more and more industrial sector leaders from the private sector in collaboration with governments pushing towards decarbonization and we have the deep decarbonization initiative that is growing steadily but we need that to be faster than it is. The impact of different efforts especially in developing economies we see a lot of work at the regional level as well had highlighted significant progress in some countries and sectors especially in road transport. More progress is needed in hydrogen where commitments to create demand for low carbon and renewable hydrogen have only increased from 3% to 4% despite the announcements and as I said before the Sharma Sheikh adaptation agenda that is basically providing a parallel area of work and an area of collaboration as well with the breakthrough agenda in different areas of work and working with the same spirit of good collaboration between governments, public and private sectors and seeking support as well from the international financial institutions. One final area to conclude we are focusing on finance and technology there is a great deal of role for incentives in regulations and policy formulation. I'm saying that because the hard-to-abate sector could be subject very soon to challenges especially for the trading sector related to this hard-to-abate sector including steel, cement in particular and what we know now from Europe and its CBAM the cross-border adjustment mechanism requires some good attention perhaps in the next report as a suggestion from me to be considered is the implications of new regulations and policies on the sector that we are tackling especially when we are starting to see the impact of the operationalization of the CBAM approach of the European Union. Having said that it's a very important report I'm very pleased with the outcomes in terms of recommendations and as always it's all about implementation thank you so much. Thank you Dr Matmed now let's dive into the report findings and I'll pass to Simon Sharp director of economics of the climate champions team. Good afternoon last week the UN's global stock tape report said that more effective international cooperation was needed to close the emissions gap in this report we aim to say what that looks like what forms of international cooperation can make low carbon transitions faster less difficult and lower cost to be effective international cooperation needs to have at least four characteristics first it needs the right focus in each sector it should be focused on the ways that countries can achieve more together than they can alone like faster innovation through shared research and development stronger signals for investment through coordinated action to create demand for new technologies and level playing fields where they're needed to ensure that trade is not a barrier to the transition second it needs the right participation it needs enough to shift global markets typically the top 10 countries in a sector account for about three quarters of global production or consumption but in most sectors the leading international initiatives now still fall short of membership that covers half of the global market third political commitment is needed to progress from the softer forms of cooperation like sharing best practice to the harder forms like aligning standards and policies which are more difficult but can yield greater gains in mobilizing investment and accelerating cost reduction both cooperation has to be sustained over time to build a common understanding and confidence it cannot just be side events and summits countries need to invest properly in the institutions and processes for cooperation in each sector we have the the next slide please the overall picture is that only modest progress has been made since last year the opportunities for stronger collaboration to accelerate transitions are far from being fully exploited one of the areas where we see more progress being made is research and innovation last year a group of countries committed 94 billion dollars for clean energy demonstration projects in mission innovation a leading initiative in that space countries have agreed to take forward five products on five continents to demonstrate the integration of up to 80 percent renewable energy into power grids that's a good example of the kind of cooperation that we need to see in each sector and we need those kind of initiatives to go forward quickly and for the learning to be shared widely in the agriculture innovation mission for climate members have committed over 10 billion dollars to research and development for priorities like agroecology methane emissions reduction from livestock and the development of new crop varieties there's also been progress as dr math moot said in international finance and assistance with new funds being launched in hydrogen steel and transport sectors and the just energy transition partnerships mainly focused on the power sector but in every sector more is needed increased scale and accessibility of those international financial assistance programs the third area where we've seen some progress has been towards convergence on standards to measure emissions and to find low carbon products in steel cement and hydrogen now where we've seen less progress and i really want to emphasize how much there's a need for more is in demand creation where countries aligning policies to create and grow markets for clean technologies has huge potential to achieve economies of scale and accelerate cost reduction dr math moot mentioned the growing membership of the industrial deep decarbonization initiative where countries aim to use public procurement to create markets for near zero emissions steel and cement that membership has gone up from 9 percent to 20 percent of the global steel market that's encouraging but countries really need to convert that intention into action with large near term uh credible advanced purchase commitments and other supporting policies the private sector initiatives have a very important role to play there too aggregating demand for the new technologies similarly on hydrogen countries are missing the opportunity to deploy low carbon and renewable hydrogen quickly in the sectors where fossil fuel hydrogen is already used that fertilizers and refining and to make the power sector transition much easier countries could agree high energy efficiency standards for the most electricity consuming products like air conditioners and fridges eliminating the most inefficient products from global markets and saving money and emissions so much more is needed on demand creation and finally trade is another area where serious cooperation needs to begin in the past year 27 governments joined a climate club launched to work on industrial decarbonization and trade but so far this group only includes two of the top 10 emerging economies in sectors where trade could critically hold back the transition like steel and agriculture it's essential to begin international dialogues that include the largest producer and consumer countries by now pass on to my colleagues Timo and Elizabeth who will give some highlights from a few of the sectors covered by the report thank you yeah thank you very much Simon thanks a lot for the overview here as Simon showed on his slide we looked into many sectors and we will not have the time to go through all of them individually to present in our now webinar today our assessment of the relative progress what we have decided to do is to give you insights into three sectors that were already part of the breakthrough agenda report last year and for which we are tracking progress and one sector that is actually new to our work the road transport sector is one of those where we already um which was already covered last year it covers in terms of type of vehicles it covers light duty vehicles as well as heavy duty vehicles two and three wheelers as well as buses and the good news and our executive director mentioned this already in the beginning is that we have very seen very strong progress in the deployment of electric vehicles over the course of 2022 in particular in the segment of cars electric car sales actually exceeded 10 million in 2022 up 55 percent relative to the year before and IA analysis from earlier this year launched as part of our global EV outlook showed that we were expecting and we continue to expect that the actually on data that we have seen so far the sales to increase to 14 million by the end of this year up 35 percent year on year relative to 2022 now this is all very good progress but even here in the electric car segment or car segment it is very important to highlight that the progress in terms of the total volume of sales is actually confined to a few large car markets it's China it's European Union and it's the United States elsewhere we are still lacking somewhat behind which is one of the reasons we do believe there is a continued need for accelerating international collaboration in this space two points here to highlight from the report there are more of course but the two points that are worth highlighting here is that for a faster and more widespread transition countries and companies should align on common timelines by when all vehicle sales are zero emissions and that's true for cars but it's also true of course in other segments commitments in this regard have increased but when aggregated by selected international initiatives this only covers 20 percent of the sales of heavy duty vehicles and only 12 percent for light duty vehicles increasing these commitments from countries and companies can help send a much stronger international signal on both the direction and the pace of the transition in road transport creating greater certainty for investment and increasing the size of the markets the second point to highlight is that we found there was very good progress in the area of used vehicle trade where countries have been working successfully to agree a work way forward on the import of safer as well as cleaner used vehicles this is of course important to ensure that importing countries including in particular in the developing world are not burdened with an excessive number of highly polluting and unsafe vehicles beyond these two points we show in our report that further efforts are required to improve the offer of financial and technical assistance particularly in the area of charging infrastructure as well as in the harmonization of battery supply chain standards to promote sustainable production use and recycling the second sector that we would like to discuss with you today here in the webinar that was also already part of our report last year is steel production in fact many of the colleagues here in the the presentation or the webinar so far have already touched upon this sector which is currently enjoying a lot of international attention the transition here is at a much earlier stage compared to say the power sector or even road transport there's no commercial scale near zero emission plant for the production of steel currently operation in operation worldwide however the analysis that we've carried out here at the IEA and that we've released over the past year or two shows very clearly that the pipeline of commitments for new plants before 2030 has increased substantially over the last year there is a lot of good news in the context of international collaboration here underpinned by IEA analysis in the context of the German as well as the Japanese G7 presidencies over the last two years we have seen most progress in the steel sector in the area of standards and here including both emission measurement methodologies for steel production as well as the definitions for what we consider to be near zero emission steel or a green steel as some call it in some initiatives focused on these issues we have seen a marked increase in their membership and participation since last year as my colleague Sam and Sharpe from the high level champions already mentioned the industrial deep decarbonization initiative responsible steel is another one where we have seen you see this on the top left hand corner an increased membership again membership as he pointed out is good but of course action on the ground and further progress on critical areas will be important on the definitions themselves we are seeing encouraging signs of conversions around both the ambition level and the approach you see this on the top right hand corner in the chart to accelerate this progress further governments should in our view agree on key principles for measurement methodologies in order to help to facilitate trade likewise for definitions governments should start to adopt these policies as soon as possible latest by around the mid 2020s using them to support measures such as procurement at the IEA we are very privileged to have established a new platform actually in the context of our committee work that will help governments to collaborate on these particular topics beyond standards here just to say that further efforts according to our assessment in the breakthrough agenda report are required in the areas of demand creation financial and technical assistance research and innovation as well as trade in all cases working with the major steel producing countries particular those that are still undergoing rapid industrialization will be important to avoid significant emission lock in in these countries. I now pass on the word to my colleague Elizabeth Press from Irina for her intervention. Thank you very much and I will reflect on a couple more sectors starting with hydrogen it was mentioned quite a few times because we know hydrogen has been a high policy priority for the last few years and it's actually quite interesting to deep dive and see how this sector is progressing from different angles and comparing to what recommendations they made the last year so one I think it was already mentioned by Dr. Mahmood and Simon that the sector is actually really not moving very fast because the deployment of renewable old hydrogen is significantly below for what is what is required for the med zero pathway. As a consequence there was no significant impact on emissions in the last last year so then the other obstacle I would say is that the costs still remained quite quite high so the new world carbon hydrogen remains more expensive than hydrogen from unabated fossil fuels and the expectation is that with economies in scale the cost will go down especially for electrolysis a capital cost. So the production remains below one megatron a year in 2022 and we estimate that the range has to be between 70 and 125 megatron a year by 2030 so we have a long long way to go. The other observation that we are making is that the pilot project is 20 pilot projects but the geographic concentration of those is also limited with the bulk of pilot projects taking place in Europe and within Europe in a limited number of countries. So on this slide we actually are showing that there has been progress in providing public finance and differential commitments for developing countries to tap into the potential in different regions and since March 2022 international finance institutions have committed at least 6.4 billion dollars to support renewable carbon hydrogen development in developing countries. Again this falls short of what what is required for both public and private sectors so the investment gap remains large. At present, Avina is working with Unido and the World Bank to map what is at offer what is this so that we can actually have a greater visibility of where the possibilities for tapping in traditional finance can be but as well as to highlight the gaps. We have also observed progress towards convergence of standards and certification for emissions and safety which which is also very promising sign. However, we as Simon was actually speaking about authority in the opening that there is a really oppressive need to strengthen the collective demand signal for renewables and low carbon hydrogen from both public and private buyers so that all these commitments in projects are actually translated into contract projects and policies and obviously the largest potential lies in the areas where hydrogen is already used so that that is the fertilizer that we're finding. So in Irina we actually have a work stream on within a collaborative framework of hydrogen that is looking to provide greater visibility and harmonization between demand and supply so hopefully some progress will be seen in the coming years. So regarding the joint research innovation activities there is a need for greater prioritization of these sectors where hydrogen can provide the most value specifically industry and shipping. Again the geographical distribution of projects is really really important and for that the exchange of knowledge and sharing of experiences will be particularly important. So can we go to the next slide please. I will also reflect on the buildings which is a new sector that we have added this year to the breakthrough report and the reason the reason is quite obvious in the buildings in 2022 accounted for about a third of total energy system emissions combining both building operations and embodied emissions and since 2015 the emissions in the sector were growing on average of 1% per year which is overtaking any progress that has been made in the move to decarbonize the sector. So this is a new sector and there was quite some work to map out the flurry of activity that already exists. It's a complicated landscape because it's highly fragmented across sectors with different layers of government different stakeholders but there is a lot that is going on so one of the recommendations is really to look at what's going on and build and grow what is already there. So in this slide we are showing what is the future of this sector and about 90 countries today have some sort of energy code but it is estimated at about 50% of the growth in this flow area by 2050 is not going to be covered by these energy codes so that really underscores the importance of expanding and accelerated cooperation in this area. So as I said there is a flurry of activity in the building sector but it's really highly fragmented and there is a huge potential to improve coordination, alignment and cooperation. As with all other sectors one of the key recommendations is the harmonization of definitions, number culture, standards. It's really a step number one so that there is a greater understanding and converges around what is required in terms of technology performance. The other area that we are recommending international cooperation action is around strengthening procurement commitments. Again one of the activities that has been working very well across many sectors and where governments and policy makers have a great influence and the possibility to make a difference. So the commitments in enhancing procurement commitments for 90 resilient buildings is really one of the areas where products can be made and especially focusing on deploying clean and efficient heating and cooling technologies. In the sector as well and considering the slides that you see the gap in and building codes in the new flow area additions the increasing funding and coordination both in countries but also across regions and in developing countries is absolutely necessary and in identifying knowledge gaps and the needs for research and development and alignment with current activity it would really go a long way to move the sector. And finally in capacity building and knowledge sharing is incredibly important to develop the capabilities institutional and workforce skills to implement the necessary changes in the coming years. With that we conclude our technical presentation of the report and I turn it over back to our colleague Jathra who will guide us through the Q&A segment of the discussion. Jathra, over to you. Thank you very much Elizabeth for the presentation and to Timor and Simon for their comments and we now have a bit of time for a Q&A from the journalists and other stakeholders who are in the webinar part of this presentation. By the way I'm Jathra Mullen Head of Communications at the IA. I'll just be moderating this part of the event. So please we invite the participants in the Zoom to send your questions through the Q&A function if you can. We're just going to take a short break, just a couple of minutes to give you time to send the questions and we'll be right back to give our answers. We'll start going through. So and for those sending questions do encourage you to provide your name and organization when you send them through if possible. But there's one question we'll maybe start off with and it might be a good one for Simon from the high-level champions and this is where have you seen the greatest signs of progress on international collaboration? So I guess which areas and how can this be translated to other areas where the progress is lacking? Simon would you have any thoughts on that? Thanks well I suppose in our presentations just now I think all of us gave some examples of where we're seeing good cooperation. I mean just to emphasize one of those examples again Timo talked about road transport. I think something that's really interesting is the level of collaboration on heavy duty vehicles. Of course decarbonizing heavy road transport is more difficult than light road transport. We're talking about big trucks but there's actually really significant movement there. There's an initiative called the global memorandum of understanding on zero emission heavy duty vehicles. Last year the members of that covered 5% of that global market now they cover 20% and that includes countries and over 75 non-state actors including regional governments, vehicle manufacturers, fleet owners and operators and all of them are committing to a trajectory towards 30% of new truck sales being zero emission by 2030 and 100% by 2040. That kind of collective action can really shift industry expectations, shift investment and bring down costs more quickly making the transition for easier for all countries. So I think as we mentioned in our presentations there are many different forms that international cooperation can take research and development, the technical assistance, financial assistance, aligning regulatory standards, working together on trade, creating demand through public procurement. When we look across all of these sectors we can find good examples of any one of those and so it's really useful to learn from those best examples and try and replicate them quickly in the other sectors. Thanks a lot Simon. Another question a question from from the zoom perhaps Dr Moldin would like to take this one. It's asking what you're hoping to achieve by COP28 under the breakthrough agenda. I guess you know with the breakthrough agenda being something that was launched at COP26 and that you carried forward at COP27. Where do you see it going from here to COP28 and beyond? Right, thank you so much. Well as we are trying to take three areas of action to support the breakthrough agenda and especially that it tackles very important sectors, not just for the advanced economies but for emerging markets and developing economies. There are three areas of action one is on finance and we touch upon some of the areas but perhaps more focusing on partnerships with international financial institutions. There is a great deal of work related to localization of efforts and regionalization of efforts as well that you will be seeing highlighted more this year at COP28 based on our work on the pipeline of bankable investable projects and the work as well that we're doing in the host country for COP27 on the green smart activities. The other work which is basically on research development technology and capacity development to do that. I'm happy that both the agendas of the presidency on the official side and the Marrakesh partnership agenda which is the parallel one have a very strong focus this year on technology research and development including at the project level. The third area which is really big and it's a very big area of concern which we are seeing that was not mentioned till now. It's basic about the operationalization of the high-level experts group. The work that's being conducted now in partnership between the champions, the work on the race to zero areas related. I know it has some controversy and some jurisdictions but I have to spill it out. It's about ESG and the environment social and governance areas of work and this in particular is providing the kind of incentives and guidelines for the private sector and their financiers and we are expecting some progress and I hope without exaggeration some sort of good alignment of priorities. So these are basically the three areas that you will be seeing finance and Indian technology incentives including what's related to regulatory structure and policies. Thank you very much Dr. Maldin. The next question comes from Glenn Pierce Oroz from SE4ALL. He's asking we need, well he's first of all stating we need to pay more attention to regional contexts especially in emerging and developing economies and the question is what is needed to scale up technology transfer into emerging and developing economies? Perhaps Elizabeth is this one you might be able to take? Sure I can take it and I think it builds a little bit upon what Dr. Mahmood was saying as well because it's absolutely correct that whatever progress is being made it's very consistent. It's regionally concentrated and it hasn't been changing for the last couple of decades quite frankly even though what you think you know to think about your energy deployment you know that the business model the business case is very strong and but we understand what the reasons are. I mean that the structural systemic reasons that the problem I think I mean the cost of capital is prohibitive. The infrastructure is lacking. The policy frameworks are insufficient and then finally the institutional and the skill sets are also presenting an obstacle. So we are making in this report we actually make a very specific recommendations how some of these can be overcome because part of it is really that the finance side of it but part of it is also a lot closer collaboration and transfer of knowledge experiences across regions. But the part that I really want to highlight is also that not everything is transferable because also regions need to be empowered to innovate for themselves and develop solutions for themselves. So there is multiple avenues and facets that need to be covered as we also do to get greater diversification. Also within regions there are huge differences. It's not necessarily that one region is a coherent and unaligned fully. So this is where the collaboration really plays a fundamental role because we are all learning curve so more we exchange faster. Thanks a lot Elizabeth and I think we have time for one last question about another challenge obviously there's a challenge of the technologies being available making them available in the developing world and then there's another I guess a challenge for international cooperation. So the question is with industrial competitiveness high on the agenda for many countries around the world and do you think strengthened international cooperation in these sectors is a realistic prospect? I think Timo maybe you'll take this one. Yeah happy to thank you very much Jethro and thanks to the colleagues for the excellent question. The sector here or there are many sectors that are exposed to industrial competitiveness of course one of the key ones that we looked into in this report is for example steel. It's a highly competitive sector products are traded internationally. As I said in my interventions the technologies that can make it to bring us to near zero to net zero mission so the near zero mission technologies are just still not in the market and costs are higher than for the incumbents. So there is a clear case for international collaboration here innovation just works quicker faster costs are cheaper when you collaborate internationally and the environment here is already difficult given this highly internationally international sector but in the current context of course it's additionally difficult. Having said that I think it's particularly encouraging to see the progress that we have seen over the last year. We've been very pleased to see countries working together on solutions in these areas. I mentioned definition and standards in particular but there is also innovation where there has been great progress on sharing technologies for country whether I need it the most in particular via mission innovation and the IA's technology collaboration programs. So there is a good case here that is being developed in that particular segment but it remains a difficult environment moving forward and we'll do and I think I can speak for all partnering organizations here all what we can do in order to support the international collaboration aspect in these type of sectors. Thank you. Thanks very much Timo and thank you to the other authors for their thoughts on these issues. That's all we have time for for questions obviously if there are other questions from journalists that they'd like to raise please do send them you can reach us at the IA at press at IA.org and obviously we'll make sure the right question goes to the right expert and we'd be happy to come back to you. But with that I think we're now moving on to the the panel discussion and so I will pass back to Francis over to Francis. Thank you Jethro. I did see actually that Dr Matt Mudd had his hand up just in response to that last question. Could we just give him a moment to chip in there? Absolutely. Apologies Dr Mudd. No worries. Well I like very much the reactions to the two very important questions on the regional aspects and industrial policy. One caveat basically coming from developing economies and emerging markets. It's great to see industrial policies are back which is good but the bad is basically that some of these policies are not taking into consideration trade investment and technological collaboration and some of the policies in some of the advanced economies tend to be more interventionist and inward looking and what we like to see while we are realizing very much there are tensions related to geopolitics but we see hope of collaboration if the new industrial policies in which energy is really and the rest of the sectors discussed in the breakthrough are in the center of the discussions we need them to be more collaborative more outward looking with trade investment and technology being considered while these industrial policies are being designed. More of this discussion especially at the regional level we have two of them coming soon one for the main region hosted in Riyadh in October and the other one in the Asia and Pacific is going to be hosted in Malaysia in November and will bring the regional aspect of this important report to our discussions with our partners in these two opportunities at the regional level. Thank you so much. Thank you Dr Mudd. So let's move on to the round table discussion and I'm delighted to invite our panelists who I introduced at the beginning but we have Ms Lee McDonough, Ms Maria Mendelucci and Mr Simon I am going to start with a question to Lee the director general of net zero nuclear and international department for energy security and net zero UK government. So Lee based on your experience with the UK government how do you see the contribution of the breakthrough agenda report in delivering international collaboration for ambitious climate action? Thank you Francis for that introduction and firstly if I can just say a big thank you for inviting me today to speak on behalf of the UK. So look the UK's had I think a very unique role in the breakthrough agenda as the framework as originally as you know launched by world leaders at COP26 and we co-chair the original five breakthroughs with colleagues from the US, India, Germany, Morocco and Egypt in addition to hosting the breakthroughs secretariat so it's very dear to our hearts and we're very excited about the direction of travel for the breakthrough agenda both in terms of its expanding scope thanks to the great work of France and Morocco on buildings and Canada's leadership on the cement breakthrough and also with a strong partnership with the COP presidency which the breakthrough agenda announced in January this year and similarly I think we're also delighted with the breakthrough agenda's partnership with SEM and MI which was agreed in Goa as you know in July it's a very exciting opportunity to really sort of cement the SEM-MI ministerial as a centre of gravity coordinated international clean energy action. So in terms of the breakthrough agenda's role I'm sure this has already come up this morning we're always very clear that the breakthrough is not another initiative the objective is to establish and run a global annual cycle it's a process and it's been signed specifically to achieve three key things. So firstly it facilitates greater coordination between leading international initiatives in each sector making it clear who is doing what reducing duplication helping to plug gaps all of those things I'm sure you've talked about this morning. Secondly it works to identify the most urgent international actions needed to accelerate clean tech transitions and then finally it works with the COP presidency's and others to over the year to align efforts and actually in terms of the reason we're here today so the breakthrough agenda report is central to that process and the authors the IEA, IRENA and the UN high-level champions they've delivered another excellent piece of analysis this year and I guess from my perspective I feel their recommendations are a real wake-up call and a clear call to action both in the run-ups of COP and for how the world responds to the global stock take. So it's distinct focus on where international collaboration helps us understand where we as governments need to refocus our attention to drive emissions reductions at the rate and scale they are so desperately needed to achieve clean technology transitions by 2030 and we in the public-private sector now need to act so later this year COP 28 we will see further how the breakthrough agenda has helped enable strengthened ambition and implementation in Dubai across all sectors guided by collaboration between initiatives and countries and I really want to thank actually our initiatives for their leadership and drive in helping countries focus their efforts. Many sectors are already making brilliant progress but in other areas far more action and coordination is needed to see the shift that is truly needed as was highlighted by the report. So look I'm also excited that COP 28 new priority actions will be launched to ratchet ambition and focus minds on what needs to do next to respond to the recommendations in the report launched today and so these actions will be a truly global effort synthesising the work of leading initiatives across the breakthrough sectors both public and private so I think it is incredibly timely to have this fantastic report produced today hopefully it will help us all keep on the straight and narrow in terms of focus on driving forward these agendas thanks. Thank you let's move on to Maria Mendelucci the CEO of Weaving Business so Maria there's been a lot of progress on solar PVs and electric vehicles over the last year as summarised in the report and business obviously plays a key role in accelerating the breakthroughs what more needs to be done specifically in the cement steel and hydrogen sectors to replicate the success in power and EVs. Thank you Francis I'm pleasure to be with you on this panel thank you for all the teams that have done their report and do help us keep on track on what needs to be done in well it is clear that that progress is being made and you know to a large extent because business are investing in clean energies okay it is obvious but let's think that statement and what why are they doing it well because they have they have set some targets themselves and they have been doing this for many years and they have set a science-based target or 100% renewable targets or 100% EV targets and this is bearing results and it's not only the results that they are bringing but it's also the the call on all those business to do similarly okay so at the moment there are 13 000 companies as part of the women business network that have aligned and set a target to be in science-based targets to reduce emissions within the and then there's a more than 400 that have committed to 100% renewables it is very interesting this initiative led by the climate group which is one of our partners you know that they have achieved a 50 percent target so 50 percent of their you know it's renewable electricity I think what it was more interesting is you might have seen Apple yesterday percent in a really cool video and about the progress being made and there's one thing that they said which I love is that they have now 300 suppliers having 100 percent coming you know achieved 100% renewable energy electricity so I think this is this is not only what you do as a company but what you ask your suppliers to do it is how we're going to move from from the thousands to the millions in only a million 100 the climate group as well six million vehicles have been committed electric vehicles right so it is clear that the strong demand signal works and it can accelerate the deployment of clean technologies now this is not only that so the heart of eight sectors you know they have pressure for four areas first their voluntary commitments second the regulatory environment certainly the consumers so the apples of the world that are asking can I have the emissions still emissions cement etc and finally the finance also who has targets to reduce their emissions so but the reality is that in this energy intensive sectors is hard it is expensive it is kind of like renewables back in 2000 so what do they need well they need incentives to buy this we need regulations and I agree and I think countries and companies need to start to put end dates for the use of fossil fuels to accelerate the transition and lastly a lot of investment in R&D okay so yeah there's a lot to do but we have seen what works and hopefully that will provide signals to governments to implement the same kind of measures that they did on the renewables 20 years ago thank you thanks Maria now let's go to Simon Birkbeck who is representing the COP28 presidency as director for energy transition so Simon with COP28 being hosted in by the United Arab Emirates in Dubai at the end of November this year how does the presidency view the findings and recommendations of this report especially on the role of demand creation that Maria was just alluding to for increasing the deployment of clean technologies and sustainable solutions yeah thank you thank you for the invitation to participate so over all the COP28 presidents here are strong supporters of the breakthrough agenda and we believe that our COP28 agenda is very well aligned with with the broad agenda from from Jake breakthrough we call for parties to come to the UE in December to really unite act and deliver and that links quite well with with the ambition for breakthrough agenda right we want to drive collaboration and coordination we want to focus on practical and implement implementable solutions and we aim to deliver actions in this critical decade so we can keep 1.5 within reach and that that's really our our north star and and we believe that it's it's important that there's continuous focus on implementation and accountability of this delivery and and action from one presidency is is taking forward to the next and that's why we're happy to collaborate both with the high-level champions and the breakthrough agenda so we we saw both last week in the first technical report from the global stock take and also in the breakthrough report that we are now launching here that there's some momentum but we're we're not overall on track and and we really have to do a lot more and we see that as quite a strong call to action and in the anticipation of that the COP28 presidency are complementing the formal negotiations track with a very broad and ambitious action agenda that has four overall pillars one is focusing on fast tracking the energy transition and mitigation another one is delivering on finance and we have improving lives and livelihoods in nature and then we have tech and inclusivity and we see that as our view of I'll say responding to the GST so within the mitigation package we have again a broad agenda covering all the emitting sectors and also linking up with the various breakthroughs power hydrogen transport steel buildings where we focus on energy efficiency and and cement we aim to sort of build momentum and on existing initiatives and also complement that with with some new ones and so so on your question on on demand so our overall view is that in order to get to the outcome that we are aiming for one really need to look at all the different elements of the energy system supply as well as demand and there's a big role for industry and energy supply to decarbonize the supply side many companies can take unilateral action to do this but there's also more collaboration needed but of course there's a big role in terms of demand and policy makers to to to facilitate that from the demand side and that's whether it's for fossil fuel consumption but also especially for heavy mating sectors like cement and steel and aluminum etc so so we're fully supportive of the recommendations that are put forward here and the importance of driving demand signals and and as a result we're also building momentum on some of the existing initiatives out there such as green public procurement to really drive that demand across the heavy-mitting sectors from the public side we are also supporting a number of private green procurement especially when it comes to demand aggregating coalitions because we believe that it's important to build momentum on this so they both in volume but also in strength are increasing so you can I'll say move from these pledges to moving over to over the hump to actual contracts where you see many issues right now right there's many good ideas you have technologies etc in place and many pledges but but there's lack of actually actual traction on the ground whether that's hydrogen or steel etc so building on those is something I receive very important to to get over that hump we also see that there's a need for sort of beyond demand to drive collaboration between industries especially on the heavy-mitting side where we are working with across producers to strengthen that collaboration so that they can work better with the public sector and the governments to deploy the required infrastructure that's needed finance and policies so overall from our side we really welcome the conclusions and the recommendations for the breakthrough report we are already working hard to to drive support from many of these recommendations and we really hope to to get that broad support both for for our work and the broader recommendations to to show the world that we can we can break the curve and speed up action and ultimately keep 1.5 within reach so thank you thank you Simon okay if I go back to Lee your second question so what's hindered further progress on international corporation activity over the last few years and how do you think this could be overcome yeah it's a really great question um I'd just like to say um just listening uh you know there's really great alignments actually between the breakthrough and the COP 28 um ambitions that I totally agree on that so look I I guess in terms of hindering uh progress internationally it's almost like the downside of the of the success but you know there's huge amounts of fantastic work being done in all corners of the world to advance um clean technology transitions but I guess the flip side of that is that um uh things from start to get a bit messy um and so uh messiness leads to duplication opportunity costs and as we know this can have an adverse effect on uh and progress and look I know from the UK's perspective and what other countries and initiatives um have told us you know we often struggle to keep on top of the latest announcements initiatives being launched you know left right and centre all over the globe and so you know I think that's one of the things that's hindered us in terms of um you know sort of really driving forward to action and so you know I guess we also know that when we coalesce um and form coalitions to solve problems we can you know we can move mountains we can make absolutely significant progress real tangible uh change and I guess that's what's behind the breakthrough agenda uh when it was launched in the first place to try to bring together you know the entire landscape in a given sector um you know across public and private uh and try to identify areas where you know um I guess strength and collaboration can can really turbo charge the actions that we want to see and um you know I also think one of the challenges recently has been around erosion of trust in uh the multilateral processes um and that and we have seen some of that but you know we know that climate change is an area where we all stand to lose um if no action is taken and we know that collaborating on a sectoral approach um to emissions reduction can help make uh the transition quicker and cheaper and easier for everyone so I think you know um in addition to the sort of NDC processes the emissions reduction drive through there if countries if we can agree uh to a new set of priorities in uh in each of the breakthrough sectors uh you know by COP28 then that is a really uh you know great uh way to I guess galvanize action and join forces as we as we seek to address this you know significant challenge we have thanks thank you so Maria uh second question how can the breakthrough agenda catalyze and support businesses um and make clean technologies the most affordable accessible and attractive option before the end of the decade well thank you so we are preparing ourselves to COP28 it's an important moment to take stock and this is what the breakthrough agenda has done with this report but now you know on January next year countries need to start to thinking about their next round of NDCs that should be presented by COP13 so within those NDCs we need to have clearly included and embedded three things tripling renewables doubling energy efficiency and fossil fuel phase out dates okay which are the key messages as well that I heard from FATIVIDOL at the beginning and I think it is important that as part of those you know the different policies that are needed you know to to to bring you know the the deployment the the galvanization in these sectors are also included we see that there are three things that countries need to do to accelerate the reduction of of emissions in these sectors the first one is demand the low carbon products as part of the public procurement obviously the second one is carbon pricing carbon pricing carbon pricing we can go on and on come on we need to price it right it's the only way cannot work that that clean energies are more expensive than those that are producing the externality you know we need to change this and then the third one it is not about supporting the first really cool new product project on hydrogen it is about how do you support the next wave of breakthrough projects the second and third wave because those are the ones that will lead to commercialization and in that sense the mission possible partnership in which we are a proud partner of is working on that so we spoke about the there's two other things and then I'll give it to you Francis is that we need to build coalitions of the willing in these sectors with businesses and government and it is not a top-down me government tell you business what to do it is truly a public private partnership and we are launching we have a lot of corporate stock dig and this is the main conclusion that we have and then the second thing it is quite obvious but the biggest biggest barriers that we have now for the clean energy transition is permanent in it cannot be that red tape is our biggest barrier I think we can grow older and we can make this happen and remove those barriers because it is an obvious one that can be removed very easily so let's do that thank you Francis thanks Maria so to Simon and Simon the 2023 report it provides a bridge to the forthcoming buildings and cement breakthroughs that which are planned to be launched at COP28 how do you see the breakthrough agenda report and its recommendations which we expect to see translated into priority actions by the countries at COP28 supporting the work underway by the COP28 presidency yeah yeah so they're obviously quite different sectors but obviously very important areas right so I think directly and indirectly those two sectors are responsible for maybe over 30 percent of emissions depending on how you count that right so the way we think about buildings is we see that there's a good momentum on electrification and as a result we really focus on energy efficiency and it's one of our flagship initiatives to build momentum around renewables tripling renewables capacity but also doubling energy efficiency rate of improvement globally that means of course coordination allowing on standards for heat pumps and cooling especially but but there aren't just very big differences between countries and as a result we are encouraging countries to of course recognize this target of tripling and doubling but then translating that into what that means for their own domestic circumstances and what it of course entails is picked energy efficiency regulation across all sectors and for buildings in particular that would translate into public procurement mandatory policies retrofit new building codes etc we also are launching an initiative on cooling which of course increasingly in many places are important to both be sustainable but also to have access to that links up to through the building's recommendation so cement a very different challenge in terms of technology the solutions are generally not commercially available at least not at scale especially carbon capture and hydrogen there's really a strong need to to scale that up and that of course is always best if there is collaboration when it comes to technology and regulation etc we are working with existing industry associations to collaborate on doing this and specifically on end on an important enabler form for this on hydrogen we are pushing the broader collaboration and ability for countries to trade hydrogen to to take advantage of the the production arbitrage essentially to drive a mutual recognition of standards so that one country can produce something that's recognized in another country essentially sort of translate from one policy to another one and and we see that as a an enabler to make the hydrogen component a much more efficient and cost efficient so so we are on these two elements we're looking forward to working closely with these breakthroughs and launch them at COP28 thank you so that is the end of the questions and of the round table discussion and therefore of this whole event I'm uh want to encourage everybody listening to download the report you will find it on both the IEA and the Ivena website so please do look at it in more detail and then that just leaves me to thank all of our speakers and everybody who took part in asking questions and listening in um and uh with that I'm going to close this session