 So good afternoon again colleagues we will be starting in just a minute I would invite you if you wish to turn your cameras on so our audience can see you there but obviously please stay and mute unless you're speaking and we do want to hear from you all so please to try to stick the time in your opening remarks but then when we go into the discussion I'm very happy to hear from any of you so once we open up to Q&A if you want to just signal you'd like to come in on a point or even ask another panelist a question we'd be very welcome to do that we'd make this as interactive as possible and I know that we're going to learn a lot from all of you today and I'm sure all of our audience will so we're very grateful. So I'm just going to go silent for 20 seconds while Matthew lets all of our viewers in and then we'll start straight away so thanks again for joining us we appreciate it. Hello everybody thank you for joining us good afternoon good morning good evening depending where you are this is Brian Motherway here at the International Energy Agency welcoming you all today to a webinar on a very important topic where we have many eminent and knowledgeable speakers to discuss with us about skills development for clean energy transitions in the MENA region. We know that that employment and benefiting people through new well-paid good quality jobs is a central part of clean energy transitions around the world and and very much so in the MENA region where there are so many opportunities in terms of resources skills bases and new emerging opportunities across all types of clean energy but of course it takes preparation and many governments are already moving in terms of preparing skills programs getting their workforces ready existing and future for the opportunities that will emerge and so we're here today to discuss some of the opportunities as well as the challenges related to this topic in the region. I'm delighted that so many people are joining us including our speakers but also all of you who are joining us online you're very welcome and you're also very welcome to participate so please feel free to to enter a question or comment in the chat box below and we'll certainly take as many questions as time allows during the next 19 minutes so we're very pleased you're all with us today. Let me turn that to my colleague Nadim Abelama who's my colleague here at the IEA our MENA energy analyst and program officer he's going to kind of give us some opening remarks here today. Nadim thank you for your collaboration this event and the floor is now yours. Thank you, thank you Brian for making that introduction and thank you everybody for being here both speakers and participants so I'm Nadim Abelama I'm the Middle East and North Africa program officer here at the IEA so the MENA program focuses on basically the intersection between economic development and the energy sector and especially in the changing or the evolving global energy systems we can see that especially for the MENA region there is a shift or a gradual shift towards a revenue model in the region as key energy consumers across the world are accelerating their energy transitions hence MENA producer will gradually also shift their economic models we can see from the ambitious diversification economic diversification programs in the region that this is already happening but these changes will be underpinned by some deep and profound labor market transformations that include also a higher role for the private sector but also a higher role for example enabling the participation of women or other actors that were potentially less involved in labor markets people and as these economies diversify so do the energy sectors in order to reduce dependence on oil and gas exports produced so we'll have to gradually shift their new revenue models in favor of clean energy technologies and for that you need the adequate skills to be able to staff the future positions that would make this model work so this is why we're all here today and also this is why we are happy to have a wide representation within the region and we would be really pleased to hear your views and your perspectives on this very important matter so I hope you enjoy the workshop and as Brian mentioned before don't hesitate to interact directly with the panel thank you thank you very much Nadine and thank you for setting the scene and the strategic context in which we're discussing today and let's also now just briefly set the scene in analytic terms and we're going to hear about some of the IEA's work looking at employment and skills in energy and in clean energy particularly and for that we're joined by Bruno Adini an analyst here at the IEA Bruno thanks for joining us the floor is yours thank you so much yeah I think maybe Matthew will share my slides yeah it's great thank you very much so let me extend the welcome that from Nadine as well just to all the stakeholders from the region today so my name is Bruno Adini I work within the World Energy Outlook team now specifically on energy employment which is a work that we first launched last year and now will become a yearly publication that will be updated later this fall if you could kindly move to the next slide thank you so first let me set the scene like we're kind of a global perspective so today most of the most of our energy jobs are concentrated in the Asia Pacific region with the China alone accounting for around one third of total employment now the reason why there is such a high concentration in this region of jobs is first of all because of new infrastructure projects that are coming online but also because of the high share of manufacturing jobs that the region has which we also model for manufacturing that is related to the energy sector as you can see in the buy charts the green part which shows clean energy showcases that most regions today already have surpassed that 50 percent mark of total energy jobs related to clean energy now the middle east stands out as an important exception to this but globally in the base year that we use for the for the past publication which was 2019 clean energy jobs were already over 50 percent of total employment in the energy sector you can move to the next slide and just skip twice please thanks so this is very important talking about skills because it shows that energy employment the energy sector requires a higher level of skills compared to the to the broader economy so what we identify here is that 45 percent of all energy jobs require whether a university degree of some type of vocational training that we classify as as high skill and then there is a a much smaller share compared to the to the broader economy which is somewhere around five percent which is low skill labor which is mainly concentrated in emerging markets and developing economies and this is because not only there is much more manual labor in those regions but also because you have well much less mechanization of production processes and the focus that we have on skills and also the which is the the main topic of today's session is mainly for two reasons the first one is that higher skills will bring higher job quality for workers especially in terms of wage premiums compared to non-energy jobs and therefore the skill distribution within the energy value chain can help workers navigate the different career opportunities that they will have so there is this qualitative element first the second one is more structural and it has to do with the fact that with growing demand for energy workers the energy transition will require more skilled a more skilled labor force and we see that mapping these skills especially particularly the gaps can help energy companies foreseeing potential hiring difficulties if we come up to the next slide please and just skip once thanks so just briefly the clean energy transition is transforming the energy employment landscape and this is not happening overnight but if we were to expect all governments that have put in climate pledges to reach those pledges in full we would expect that the global market for some of the key clean energy technologies to reach 650 billion dollars per year to 2030 which is around three times more than today now those some of those key clean technologies are solar pv batteries wind systems and heat pumps among others but the sort of the ias work also a lot of the emphasis that we're having here is to put to contribute in shaping the energy transition in a people-centered way and we believe as you can see here in the screen that mapping the energy employment trends will promote first of all the use of information on the skill needs for the sector inform how to facilitate the career transitions from fossil fuels into the clean energy sectors and lastly emphasizing the need to focus not only on job quality but also on inclusivity within the energy sector and i would just close now if you can just keep one more thanks just with some of the future scopes in terms of how we want to extend our work will be first looking at occupations across the energy sector and potential overlaps with the broader economy mapping the skills that are common across similar occupations but let's say between fossil fuels and the clean energy and the clean energy sector or clean energy sector and the broader economy third the wages of those occupations so when we talk about skill transferability yes there there might be an opportunity there but also there needs to be like i mean wages need to make sense for workers in order to be attracted to the to the energy sector particularly to clean energy jobs uh fourth vacancies i'm being able to potentially address hiring gaps that we could identify and lastly we want to expand our work on critical critical minerals not only mining but also processing and with that i hope i just gave you a good sense of of to set the scene thank you very very much Brian over to you thank you Bruno and indeed you did set the scene very well you gave us a very good overview and i think it does really help frame the discussion it gives us a sense of the opportunity but also the key issues that we're going to hear many perspectives on now directly from the region and let's go straight to that and our first intervention comes from Jordan from Faiza Asaf who is the project officer at edama association for energy water and environment in jordan so Faiza we're delighted you're with us today and i now have the floor to you thank you Brian thank you everyone for giving me the opportunity to speak in this amazing workshop uh i'm going to briefly talk about edama and how we are playing a role in the uh energy sector uh so i do i have the um sorry do i have the the request to to to play the the next uh i don't know what uh slide maybe just call out next slide Faiza we'll do okay next slide please so our main mission is to um make sure that uh jordan green economy uh is built and it's um um um empowered with leadership and business so next slide please uh so uh edama means sustainability in Arabic to whoever whoever knows Arabic edama means sustainability uh edama is an NGO that started in 2009 and we are currently uh have the different perils pillars to to let's say start the presentation so may please next slide our main pillars are capacity building quality advocacy business development and public awareness and CSR and next slide please regarding the capacity building which is the main focus on this let's say this workshop edama has been um uh in different trainings and workshops throughout the years with different projects that also build the capacity to different youth and trainees around jordan and internationally of course so next slide please one of our projects was uh with nofic uh it was to help the Syrian refugees and youth uh in the energy sector so it was about cleaning the PV cells uh we trained the 45 youth uh from the from the refugees camps after that we uh we um created them at jobs to um to help them start their own business with the renewable energy sector next slide please other project that we currently have is dao with yellow door energy and actis which is also to certify 20 trainees from the um uh three camps um let's say the refugees camps to build their own business as well or to be certified to build PV cells models uh and install and maintenance uh for the training itself next slide please we also have uh projects with bdc and eu for delegation in jordan which is about three trainings uh that will be held in al-azra camp uh it will be mainly about the solar PV modules cleaning housekeeping uh for 100 youth who's under 25 and for this solid waste management for around 40 people and for organic farming which is also for around 40 people for uh the unvulnerable um let's say trainees from the refugees so next slide please we also have a project for solid waste management in aqaba that means that's about the pilot of the composting uh we started with training 38 uh youth who's also underserved and now they're eight uh working in the pilot side uh as of today uh and that's it thank you and for the opportunity again and this is uh what we are doing uh currently in edama thank you very much phase it's really great to hear that and congratulations on that excellent work those projects i think it can be an example to many in terms of what you're achieving with the focus on on creating jobs and creating skills in the clean energy sector but also targeting vulnerable people to give them those opportunities so thank you i'm sure we'll come back to some parts of that in our discussion in just a little while so thank you let's go next now though to rind al hage rind we're delighted you're with us rind is a monitoring and evaluation and learning lead at the uh sustainable development goal seven youth constituency rind the floor is yours thank you hi thanks everyone i'm here from the sg7 youth constituency which is a network of young people that are interested in clean and sustainable energy what happened uh what's happening right now is that we're holding the biggest climate conferences in one of the most fossil producing regions in the world so it's a mix is it a mix of irony greenwashing where is it a sign of real change this question is becoming more and more relevant especially for people like me the youth of minna when we consider the challenges that we still have on skill development for the clean energy transition in this area where youth make up more than half of the region's population so there are many challenges first of all when it comes to the classic training programs like university curricula on energy they are often either outdated or mismatched with what actual needs of the job market so while most programs might be very good and up to date on the technical side of sustainable energy they often overlook these soft skills like project management and negotiation that we need for the clean energy sector on the other hand we have these more experienced professionals and fossil fuels that have these soft skills but they don't have those very high skilled uh high technical skills that we talked about in the previous presentations so we see that there's a clear way that we could actually create synergies and exchange knowledge and skills between these two groups between the youth who have the technical skills and the older fossil generations who have the operational skills that are needed for the energy transition and this is something that has happened in uh for example for the european win industry that made shared training programs for re-skilling with youth and uh also old co-professionals so i think in organizations like edamard could purely see an opportunity to have similar programs but targeted for the region uh a second issue that we also talked about especially in Nadine's intervention was that the renewable energy sector is by definition gonna change uh the the whole energy sphere because renewables are more decentralized and fossil so there's more emergence of actors in the private sector since it's way more decentralized and local than fossil so also when we talk about renewables we know that this creates a possibility to have more startups and more of these local projects but on the other hand one of the top priorities uh of youth and top concerns for youth in this region is that these entrepreneurs they're launching into sustainable energy aren't feeling that they're getting enough support from the public and private sector because the public and private sector still sees energy as the sector of big groups and big public energy utilities so a third topic that we haven't touched upon yet is that youth and minas don't have a lot of trust in their governments because of corruption because of staggering inequality and the lack of inclusiveness that Bruno mentioned so we've seen that the fossil industry in the Minya region has benefited only a handful of leads and as the clean energy transition is bringing new opportunities there are still some contradictions and doubts about especially longevity for example in green hydrogen which is something i personally a bit knowledgeable about the green hydrogen sector is quite promising since we have a lot of strong solar resources but we're also facing severe water stress so that's another resource constraint that i don't feel like we're taking that much into account and we're also quite frustrated by the small role that's given to research as opposed to the business side in the energy sector so if we continue on the same example on hydrogen do we really again want to be in this situation where other countries sell us their technologies to produce energy from our resources in our region and then we sell them back to them i mean applying this good everybody knows that applying the technology is good we can have a successful business but if you want to think in longevity if you want to think in the long term we can also be inventors sustainability is about building the entire clean energy value chain from r&d to end use and switching to clean energy could be an opportunity to finally redistribute and improve the livelihoods of all the mean citizens in a more equal way and finally let's not forget that the mean region is quite heterogeneous so we have the very resource rich fossil labeled countries but we also have other countries like mine, Lebanon that still struggle with access to reliable energy so anyone who's been in Lebanon recently has seen that solar panels are really popping up everywhere through personal initiatives and local initiatives despite the economic crisis i guess my intervention was a bit dark but i think that the bigger the problem the bigger the change the positive change that can generate so i and hopefully all youth in minna are quite optimistic about the sustainable energy transition thank you thank you very much rindan thank you for any note of optimism while also exploring some of the complex issues that governments and citizens societies have to address in these transitions so i think again raise a number of issues that i'm sure will come up again during the discussion so thank you let's go now to Sean Ratka Sean thank you for joining us Sean as the economic affairs officer in the sustainable energy section of UNESCO Sean we're very pleased you with us thank you the floor is yours thank you very much thanks for having me and just to echo some of rind's points speaking of darkness i'm also based in Lebanon so if the lights go out at any point don't worry i'll be back we're currently holding i just want to mention our arab form for sustainable development so i'm just jumping between sessions but if there are any questions regarding the overview that i give today my emails on the last slide and i'd be happy to connect you with any of the experts who are managing certain aspects of our skills development programs one quick thing i'll mention about our session this morning as part of the form it was on resilient recovery using renewables and one thing participants and donor organizations and governments and un bodies consistently highlighted was the importance of capacity building and community engagement in order to determine the most appropriate generation technologies and to ensure local buy-in which is the foundation for long-term sustainability of projects so partnerships are also needed to ensure an integrated approach that is just an inclusive and this really includes vocational training focused on women and youth that goes beyond access and those were some of the main takeaways from this morning and i think it echoes what rind was also mentioning so next slide please so in terms of energy Esquah has several tracks of work including sustainable energy systems energy efficiency renewables and climate change mitigation next slide please so is the air region on track the short answer is no but over the next five years we foresee solid progress on renewables based on data from IEA also world bank with renewable electricity a capacity expansion in the region expected to triple from 2022 to 2027 compared with the previous five-year period reaching 45 gigawatts and that's due in part to some of what was just discussed mainly the economic advantages here when it comes to utility scale solar which we've seen in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE with the very very low record-breaking auction prices but the point I want to highlight here is that the lack of access to sustainable modern energy is a form an outcome and a cause of poverty so it constrains human capabilities productivity access to basic services including health and education and reinforces the lack of income generating capacity and economic opportunities so within this context in my presentation I'll touch on renewables and access and the work that Esquah was doing to address these gaps next slide please so one of the main questions this session aims to address is this how can governments and related stakeholders work together to design inclusive training programs for jobs in clean energy industries and I'd like to spend the rest of my time talking about what Esquah is doing when it comes to addressing the rural energy access gap and how we can use capacity building and training to make progress on this target as part of SDG7 next slide please so in order to address this issue of rural access Esquah has developed Regend the regional initiative for promoting small-scale renewable energy applications in rural areas of the Arab region these are just a few of our latest reports and they're all available on our website which you'll see on the next slide next slide please so as part of Regend Esquah held 30 field projects in these three countries and Esquah was the implementing body in Lebanon in Tunisia and our partner was the implementer in Jordan and I think the key here is that beneficiaries use this new access to distributed energy resources for productive uses including solar water heating and pumping so this reduced their apex by about 50 percent in many cases we made sure that extended warranties were included so that the installer has to check every six months that everything is working properly and they are available for two years after the project is complete to handle any maintenance issues at no cost to the beneficiaries beneficiaries were also provided with basic training on the equipment so they know when to call for maintenance and when they can simply handle small issues themselves so given the limit of time I have I'm going to go through this swiftly but again all this information is available on our website if you want more detail next slide please so in the team's work in the field a lack of skills previous slide I think yeah so in the team's work in the field a lack of skills in financing were identified as the two main barriers to implementation and to address this region to health capacity building workshops so an assessment report was first conducted to identify the needs of local communities local consultants were hired to teach certain skills and I should highlight that community engagement is really key here so what do these communities really need and local buy-in to these solutions in order to guarantee the longevity of projects is key and sustainable business models are needed so what Esquad did was identified certain income generating activities with the help of the assessment reports and the consultants and the important thing to note is that besides training on how to use and maintain the physical assets capacity building workshops were held which covered a range of topics on how to use this new access to modern renewable energy to actually generate income and this included embroidery agricultural practices food manufacturing and financial management next slide please so going beyond access to productive uses key in order to ensure these access initiatives are economically sustainable and in this graph you can see we focused on capacity building for women in specific to have the biggest impact holding workshops on good food packaging practices agricultural practices and others and this is just one of the examples from one of the countries next slide please so using the knowledge we've acquired in the field we're now expanding beyond the original three countries and implementing these lessons learned in Algeria in order to build capacities among rural women there the focus will be on good agricultural and food practices based on the sustainable use of natural resources to handle these these issues that you see fruit trees and palms oil extraction processing and and marketing and last slide please so in terms of reaching even wider audience a new e-learning course based on region's capacity building is now live on Esquiz website and you can access it via this QR code you see on the screen target audiences include women and youth local authorities rural workers policy makers and researchers in national and regional agencies I have a few more points on youth and things like that but let's save it for the discussion and Machia was very strict with me with keeping to my time so I'll end there and allow the time for the other participants thank you very much thank you Sean that's really great you're able to stay with us for a little while are you yes yes no problem great good I'm sure we'll have questions for you so I really appreciate that really interesting to see to see the range that works congratulations let's go let's let's now to Iraq and we're joined by Noam Redan energy consultant in Iraq and Iraq Noam we're delighted to do with us the floor is yours now thank you very much I will need the team's help with the slides please um first of all thank you for having me here I will keep my presentation short and to the point some numbers I will be sharing today were first published in a research paper I contributed to last year and which was led by energy expert Therese Tepanyan the paper for those interested is titled a roadmap to prepare Iraq's power sector for energy transition which was published by the Baghdad based LBN center I will I will start with a slide too please this is a quick summary of key numbers and facts in Iraq's energy sector oil gas and electricity the first figure you see on this slide is 4.5 million barrels per day this is federal Iraq's crude production as of December 2022 Iraq wants to boost capacity to five million bears per day and even eight million bears per day in the next few years despite some challenges Iraq up a second biggest oil producer off the side Arabia heavily relies on crude oil sales for revenues more than 90 percent of Baghdad state budget comes from crude sales and according to estimates the federal government needs more than four billion dollars each month for public salaries and pensions just last month February such sales generated around seven billion dollars for Iraq moving to the second figure 43 percent Iraq has the 12th largest gas reserves in the world however federal Iraq produces we're talking here domestic production only 43 percent of natural gas for domestic use the third figure is 41 percent this is the percentage increase of flaring from 2012 to 2021 gas flaring rose to 18 bcm in 2021 from 13 bcm in 2012 bcm is billion cubic meters for those who are not familiar with this gas flaring refers to the burning of natural gas associated with oil extraction instead of capturing and mutualizing it now the last figure the figure before the last is 45 to 70 million cubic meters per day these are the gas supplies federal Iraq is supposed to import annually from Iran Iraq also relies on electricity imports from Iran in 2021 Baghdad paid about four billion dollars for these imports and these are unstable supplies that can be suspended due to technical problems late payments or high gas demand inside Iran the final figure which sadly emerges when Iraq is struggling every year with acute power outages especially during peak summer and winter months is 37 000 megawatts federal Iraq's design power capacity is around 37 000 megawatts last summer the government failed to produce more than 22 250 megawatts peak daily power demand was at around 36 000 megawatts the group that always benefits from this gap between demand and supply is that network of politically connected private generators now moving to slide three please the chart shows Iraq's primary energy consumption shared by fuel time it's unsurprising given Iraq's heavy reliance on fossil fuels and the low share of renewable sources as shown in the chart now I move to slide four to discuss Iraq's talk about energy transition Iraq somebody needs to mute please Iraq can talk about its intentions to embrace renewable energy and reduce its reliance on fossil fuels particularly when the country has become extremely vulnerable to climate change this part is easy for example Baghdad has said it wants to reach around 33 percent of clean energy production by the end of this decade with more than 6000 megawatts originating from solar sources that's extremely ambitious and easy to say Baghdad can discuss various Baghdad has discussed various large-scale PV power plant solar projects with different companies including Saudi aqua power and French total energies but there have been prolonged delays due to contractual disagreements political paralysis high costs of financing Iraqi projects and other issues the question is does Iraq have the necessary regulatory framework or political capacity to carry out a successful and smooth renewable energy investment and embark on an energy transition several technical legal and economic challenges make this difficult and which I will summarize shortly if Iraq does not take the serious actions to change how its energy sector operates especially its power sector and if it does not show that it is willing to focus more efforts to prepare the technical and legal ground for energy transition it will be difficult to develop its skill base beyond the oil and gas sector and I will come back to this before I finish the presentation slide five please um some key challenges to the energy transition in Iraq we have lack of laws really related to renewable energy investment lack of emission laws and regulations high costs of financing Iraqi projects poor grid infrastructure transmission and distribution losses I would like to focus on five four and five quickly these two challenges can hardly be ignored when discussing the addition of thousands of megawatts of solar energy for instance in Iraq the national grid has not been revamped technologically and there are incredible technical and even non-technical losses six high costs for replacing oil fire power plants the seven they have a focus on boosting crude oil production thus relegating green energy as a matter of priority eight the focus on increasing power generation without upgrading the power grid and the transmission and distribution systems and I discussed these just now nine poor revenue collection system 10 lack of action to restructure the minister of electricity and finally corruption this is a severe problem for anyone who has worked on the ground in Baghdad and everyone knows that uh finally to slide six uh addressing some of the challenges to energy transition Iraq needs to design a solid regulatory framework for energy transition without new regulations Iraq will be putting the cart before the horse and sadly this is already happening uh two and this is an important measure if the political will can be found somehow Iraq needs to restructure the minister of electricity because in its current form it cannot succeed and will remain a burden on the state budget uh former Iraqi minister of finance Ali Allah we warned in December 2021 of the possibility of Iraq's electricity sector destroying the state's budget within three to five years if it did not undergo the necessary reforms drawing attention to a lack of cost recovery recovery measures Allah we said quote unquote Iraq's electricity sector is the only one of its kind in the world three Iraq needs to seriously combat rampant corruption in the energy sector that has affected millions of lives and the work of some international companies this is a severe problem for Iraq needs to prioritize political stability and put an end to the revolving door in top leadership in the energy sector because if ministers keep changing and whenever a new one is sworn in needs time to understand the status of the energy sector how can progress be achieved then if these key problems can be addressed then the country will also be able to increase awareness campaigns to educate the Iraqi society about the benefits of using renewable technologies it can also later manage to build skilled workforce and strong technical training facilities on renewable projects but for now all these don't exist thank you thank you very much now that's really interesting to get to detail context in Iraq and like other speakers you've made a lot of connections between jobs and skills but also wider economic and social development issues and it's very interesting to see the intertwining of those issues so thank you for that let's go now to Mohammed Shawali Mohammed thank you for joining us Mohammed is the renewable energy and environment specialist at the regional center for renewable energy and energy efficiency Mohammed thanks the floor is yours thank you Mr. Brown and Brian for this introduction as I said this is Mohammed Shawali from Renewable Energy Energy Efficiency Center of Recreate let's slide please for those who doesn't know Recreary Recreary is an inter-governmental organization with 70 member states and we also consider the technical arm of the League of Arab States and also we are the first regional renewable energy energy efficiency across the world so and our headquarters are in Cairo Egypt next slide please our member states containing the whole North Africa countries beside to Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain and Yemen, Djibouti and Somalia next slide please besides to our aim which is increase the adoption of renewable energy energy efficiency practices across the Arab countries we are also working in many areas such as a private sector promotion environment and climate change and financial and economic assessment for the membership countries also to the capacity building programs related to energy renewable energy energy efficiency next slide please so as we as we're here to talk about the skill development across the MENA region let me see let me see this opportunity to introduce you the Pan Arab certified energy management professional program or SEM SEM was established in 2016 to fill the gap between the increasing demand for high technical skill and certified personnel in the area in the Arab countries and lack of certified energy program so for from recognized body so also SEM was designed to meet the requirement from the Arab countries as most of the Arab countries force a regulation to energy management sector for the workers in that sector to be certified so this this idea is the problem has been solved by SEM so the impact was like many impacts for the for the workers in this sector in the Arab countries for example lower increase in energy and demand and reducing investment and expanding in the sub-lie side and most important thing create a decent job for locals there next slide please until now there there there are for a 48 round was held in four countries and there is there are 488 certified which are working in decent job in industrial and the energy management sector so and also I would like to mention that there are many programs related to youth and women empowerment in the sector and energy and energy efficiency for example we have the program our internship called Arab program for sustainable energy youth which has been held for 10 years now or more to train the fresh graduates in renewable energy project and there is a lot of capacity building program there is no time to mention them all here and but I would like to however I would like to prefer and to mention and resize in the SEM because it has its impact on the ground and its impact is tangible for the workers in this sector and it's applied for this for any contact information and this is my email phone number thank you all thank you indeed Muhammad that was really interesting to hear and I might ask you a question if I may because we're going to take take a few questions now I was going to bring in some other colleagues who are on the meeting winners today so I invite any of you to put questions in the Q&A chat and Muhammad just looking at the excellent work there on PA SEMP and the training across the region is the regional transferability and mobility an important part of it that if people are qualified in one country they can they can then work in another country is that an important part of the program? Yes as the program is certified from the Arab League state which is contained the whole Arab League so yeah if you as soon as you got the certified so you can work in any country which is within the League of Arab States yeah yeah thank you and do you know whether people are availing of that opportunity that that people are using the qualification to to find work in different countries has that been something you've been able to track? Excuse me I didn't hear you well. So do you know if people are making use of that kind of regional qualification whether people are using the certification to to transfer their skills to other countries? Yeah yeah actually most of participants or certified people who get the certificate from this program are working in the industrial sector and and related to renewable energy or energy management so yeah they are they they exchange their knowledge with the other people and under them that's because as most of the certified people are in the managerial level so in a way or another they they exchange their knowledge with their employee. And we have a question in the chat Mohamed about how many people have been certified from PA? 488 certified people yeah in four countries Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Palestine and Egypt and we are doing an agreement with Tunisia right now and Algeria to do around in Tunisia and Algeria and during corona I would like to mention that during the COVID pandemic we held online training rather than physically sessions. Thank you very much Mohamed. No there's also a question in the chat for you I think about Iraq asking about how much small-scale renewable development features in Iraq so far is that has a much much focus on small-scale renewables? Thank you again with respect to the small scale yes there are but again when it comes to I mentioned something raising awareness among people in order to embrace you know these technologies more the more work needs to be done they do exist but more can be done if there are more awareness campaigns to educate people about the importance of such you know projects. Thank you Norm and Sean if I can ask you a question in fact I have two one from myself and one from the chat but first of all the question I was going to ask you and it kind of dovetails with the question that just popped up in the chat was interesting question with with these training programmes how much are they how much is it different to be training people in clean energy skills versus any other kind of skills is this just is it fairly similar kind of work whether you happen to be focused on renewables or efficiency or it could be lots of other opportunities and it kind of relates to a question coming up in the chat as well whether there is much focus on re-skilling workers who are currently working in oil and gas and may transition into jobs in clean energy. So both good questions maybe I'll start with the second one it primarily focuses on rural women who weren't already working in the energy sector so sort of training them on these income-generating activities that they can now engage in based on having access to power so it's mainly focused on that and the way that it sort of happens there was another question in the chat saying how is this focused on women basically the assessment report sort of identifies what the needs are and these trainings are at sort of a very basic level in terms of you know how to use these new energies and how they can be used to generate income activities and sometimes the trainers are also women which makes it easier for some of these rural areas and things like that so it's I guess it's really really tailored to the audience so that it's not so that's really relevant and it's in conjunction with the stakeholders so what do they need they let us know and then we train on those income-generating activities and what kinds of energies could be useful for that so sort of working backwards and can you repeat your first question Brian I'm not sure I answered that one I probably didn't ask it very well but I'm trying to ask you whether if if your training is focused on clean energy or if it happened to be focused on agriculture or I don't know you know car repair or whatever else is it different to be work focusing on clean energy than any other set of skills yeah that's a good question it's it's a mix of both so it's training on the clean energy technologies and then also you know the the embroidery the agricultural practices and things like that and it's kind of similar because it's first again conducting an assessment report seeing what's needed what kind of skills are lacking who the audience is and then tailoring the trainings based on those types of things starting at a very basic level and hiring the appropriate consultants based on the rural areas that can really enhance what we're training because they're on the ground and they know what they're doing so I wouldn't say it's very different but we sort of have a holistic approach where we tackle both issues at the same time the energy aspect and the income generating activities just to make sure that these projects are sustainable because they can actually fund themselves moving forward and I presume it's not accidental that you're focused on not just any jobs and skills but ones that that enhance the well-being of the community more broadly by their existence yes exactly so their jobs that were already sort of happening or there are new their new jobs that were identified by the local people as things that would work so it's not sort of inventing something new and pushing it on a local community it's really dialogue with them to see what's needed and I think that's why we've witnessed so much success in our projects because specifically of that dialogue and that back and forth and sort of learning from the local people and how we can help them instead of just telling them what they need to do thank you thank you very much Rhind if I could ask you a question because again like others you are emphasizing these are not just jobs but they're about enhancing people's lives through energy access productivity anything like that so when you're speaking to young people about clean energy and employment do you find that this is a sector that's seen as attractive that people want to make their careers in or as it's seen as just another job opportunity if you're like I think there's a mix of both when it comes to you have the people that are already convinced and have values of sustainability and climate and clean energy so these are people that go into the sector by conviction but I've also seen a lot of people graduates from my batch that weren't particularly passionate about climate but since most of the new jobs in the energy sector are in clean energy it's something that they went into after that so it's a mix of both but there is clearly an interest for clean energy but also the frustration that most young people have in the region and the minor region is that so most curricula are quite traditional in the sense that they are perhaps very genetic like electrical engineering chemical engineering and then while that does prepare you to have a job it does not specifically prepare you for the clean energy sector and then you have to have additional certifications or you have to go abroad to get a master's program that's relevant to what you want to specialize in so you see that okay so what I've done in university is a high level but it's still not enough it's still unrelated to the job that's lying ahead and then I have to go abroad and then I go abroad and then I see that if I go back I will be strictly in this applying a sense of business sense of approach to the market so if it's someone that's passionate about technology they're less interested in going back to their country because they feel like they will not contribute to the technology development so you do have this frustration about the gap between the education and the actual needs of the job market plus the limited contribution to the development. Thank you that's very interesting so colleagues we have a couple more questions coming in and do please bring in your questions but before we take those I do want to bring in another couple of perspectives that that were kind of a couple of people who are kind enough to join the discussion and I would think we can hear from them now and I'm going to start with Khalid Salim al-Gamari Khalid thank you for joining us Khalid is the capability building stream manager at the National Employment Programme in Tashkil in Oman and I know that you're doing some interesting work on skills and clean energy in Oman so we'd love to hear a bit from you please thank you Brian can you hear me yes very well thank you okay thank you for this opportunity Brian and the team here in fact in National Employment Programme we're looking for the long-term sustainable solution to to reduce unemployment numbers basically and here in Oman especially we got hit by this covid pandemic last two years and then with the number of high number of graduates joining the market while low in number of jobs is really a small community in Oman so it's really a small number also making big difference big difference comparing when you have small community as well but the future is bright I can say that especially I mean maybe you heard yesterday we just signed a few agreement for high green hydrogen around 20 billion US dollar for next seven years investment with different international companies and the good things here also for this green energy or I can call it and also the way how we are tackling it especially with the learning we have from oil and gas last almost 50 years now we want really to start early and start early meaning even make that mindset with the kids in the school and also in the university and we want also this company embracing or practicing the local content as we did it in oil and gas 12 years ago and starting from R&D we don't just want to build the skills when the student or the graduates come to the job market no we want to start it where early when there are the colleges or schools and also think about the project and they start collaborate and we want really to enhance the collaboration between the academia and industry especially in the clean energy so that one of the aspects we are really focusing on it and also as we speak Brian last week and also a couple of weeks coming we have arranging a workshop with higher minister of higher education you know man also want really to review the the scholarship degrees we are sending our student internally or of externally and really to get big portion for the green energy as well as also mining also mining in our mind is coming not co-inmining no other mineral mining and many of them also used for the clean energy so we want that one second things when come to capability building most of the jobs coming in hydrogen also mining they are close to the type of jobs we have in the energy sector today in oil and gas basically okay but with the few changes of your modification or extra competency we're going to give our people i'm not so really worried i'm just shifting from people from oil and gas to mining or or to hydrogen or hydrogen or other renewable energy because still we're going to have a business we're going to have a lot of work in oil and gas oil and gas we still need it and we're going to live with it next i mean the case so but the the the investment in this green energy is really opportunity for the youth in this country and also around the surrounding country and also the world as well to come and also to help us in this in this investment and also producing the hydrogen and also other type of energy so that's we're going to really reduce the burden on the labor market and then we're going to expect it a lot of jobs but at the same time brine we really we are starting as we speak now we are discussing with with ministry of energy to start assigning some competency and see what type of competency needed in this type different type of jobs which is different than the oil and gas so as you know with this signature going on now this agreement is going to be some feed projects the front end engineering projects and the emc project next maybe around two to five years and then after that we're going to see all commissioning of all this project and then that when we need huge number of people coming from vocational education or other type of education and hopefully at that time we are also ready with the competency that has mapped all the needs or the all the skills need needed in this new type of energy adapting worldwide best practice from other company and the good things as i said this agreement with really strong international companies which is definitely they're going to also move their experience practice also to our country thank you very much Khalid it's great to hear and congratulations on all of that work can i can i ask you how are jobs and careers in clean energy seen by people in a man is this seen as an exciting new sector or is it just another sector is it seen as more or less attractive than oil and gas how do people perceive the opportunities here it's it's really i i don't see it's like they don't like it in fact the the good things the mindset also in the kids in the in the schools they knew about this renewable and they also we started like a few years ago we started already solar plants and solar power also we have wind in the country uh the percentage is very low around i can't really quote the number with around five percent or or more or i mean around that person we are generating power from this renewable energy we have already youth we have oman is working in this sector and also have two universities also open specialization or degrees in this renewable energy here in the country the country and the the good things they see it as a new opportunity for them in in the in the energy sector we're going to employ a lot of people especially uh i mean most of the jobs in this energy usually with really very good income and that's what they also the mindset there and definitely i'm i'm seeing people really looking forward especially the kids at an adversity when we talk to them they're looking forward and really they are really to start and by the way also i i saw antarbonures already starting their small company in in in fixing solar panels and doing doing auditing on on this on this business as well so that's also now small business for these people started and to be quite honest brian with you also on the new things we are thinking about it and maybe just i'm i'm sharing some maybe it's not secret but i'm telling you here uh we also we're going to plan with the big one of the big company looking after the energy there we're planning also incubators where we're going to when you have the hydrogen we're going to do some incubators for the small small medium enterprises or or small companies local companies to really have something or or build something or or get something which is going to help or help in the green hydrogen industry or renewable industry so that also we are really pushing or supporting the SMEs in next five or ten years we're going to see that one as well because that's a big direction from the top bar in the government great it's great to hear Khalid and again congratulations and Khalid there's a question in the chat that i think you might be able to comment on you've talked about renewable energy and green hydrogen is energy efficiency also something you're looking at here yes in fact brian i don't know if you heard or maybe some of the people that we have already net zero plan in 2050 and that we have already team under now in the in government and that assigned with his majesty himself and then i talked to one of the member on the team two days ago and really they have a couple of initiative and projects already from planting which is all the green planting on that small level and for the really decarbonization which is already started with the one of the oil companies which is petroleum developers oman we already started that project co2 injection and also reducing the flaring already we start that mission and the flaring around more than 10 years ago to reduce also the flaring by 2030 to become very i can't really quote the number now but there's a lot of initiative going on that direction really to come to the net zero by 2050 and that the group or that center is really looking after from his majesty himself to make sure we are achieving that objective by 2050 thank you khalid it's great to hear really it's really exciting words that's going on there thank you let's turn now to morocco and we're fortunate to be joined by miss kadeja el barnuni who's a specialist in environment and green economy at the moroccan agency for energy efficiency speaking of this topic so kadeja we're very grateful that you took time to join us and i'd like to give you the floor next please yes i can i hear my screen yes please hi everyone i would like to thank you first the international energy agency for the for inviting us to this workshop to share with you the perspective of the moroccan agency for energy efficiency in this field of skill development for the clean energy transition in morocco so first i would like to introduce the army the moroccan agency for energy efficiency it's a public institution under the supervision of the minister of energy transition and sustainable development created in 2016 whose mission is to implement the action of the action plans of the government's energy efficiency policy well in morocco the energy transition transition is a national priority as said as the in the royal letter addressed in the international in the national energy conference held on 2009 as you can see we have some objectives sorry i share with you here some objective some national objectives to achieve in two in 2030 as in energy efficiency we aim to get 20 percent of energy efficiency and in renewable energy the country aims to achieve 52 percent of installed power in renewable energy so to get to this objective the moroccan agency for energy efficiency has developed a green catalog a green training catalog that had a lot of training sessions in energy efficiency this catalog enabled to master the technologies related to energy efficiency i've shown you here some of the training session included and this presentation i will develop four of them as eco-driving energy efficiency in building fuller pumping and the green mosque program that we have established so i can start with the training session that we we offer for drivers in from different ministries managers and technicians this program has been developed by the army that focused on the topic of eco-driving and organized a train the trainer session the this aim of this training session was to install the principle of eco-driving best practices for driver mode as well as the techniques for commissioning using and configuring electric bio-carging station and operating a vehicle eco-driving simulator so on solar popin pumping sorry army has carried out several capacity building buildings and training action for partners in order to create a conducive framework for the development of solar pumping system in the field of agriculture we also have until today have trained more than hundreds of trainings for managers financial executive professionals farmers partners i would like to say that we have a program named pakapru for privates in solar for solar pumping in the agriculture field well next i have the training in energy efficiency in buildings we have organized several workshops on building energy buildings energy efficiency and thermal regulation regulation this training session were carried out in collaboration with the ministry of national territorial planning urbanism housing and city policy the objective of this training is to popularize sorry is to popularize the the content of the thermal regulation regulation in question and to support the relevant actor and professionals to comply with the established requirements so this training came following the publication of a decree which set which sets out the documents required for application for permits to subdivide and constructs housing for development and i would like to finish my presentation with the training in the scope of green mosque program it's a program that aims to upgrade the energy efficiency of mosques through the implementation of energy efficiency techniques and also developing training awareness rising for religious actor this program was carried out with the ministry of habus and islamic affairs uh this training focus on the energy efficiency solution identified as a priority such as the installation of photovoltaic system solar thermal system and the replacement of internal lightning system and electric panel this program uh had more than uh one thousand and four and four hundred beneficiaries in morocco and thank you for your attention thank you very much karelia it's really interesting to hear the range of programs that are going on there can i ask you just maybe comment on the sense of popularity or their attractiveness are these are these programs that a lot of people want to participate in or do you have to encourage people to participate how does that work um we uh for like solar pumping uh the program taqab who had uh had been very had a good uh it was very popular because it's um uh it can give uh private insular uh they we're getting this this time of this this type of training the the their client trusts them uh with their installation and uh for other um for other programs uh we carried out some i say uh we promote through our website but all in all we we get very uh we would especially the uh our programs are um uh our programs well they they knew uh they are very popular and uh we don't we don't really at first when we first launched our green uh catalog we had to uh to to uh promote it a little bit but uh later it's the train the training session were were a good hit that's great to hear thank you so colleagues before i return to some uh questions from our participants i'd like to bring in one one other voice which i think is a very important one to hear and that's Bradley Hiller who's the lead climate change specialist at the Islamic Development Bank Bradley we'd love to hear your perspective on these issues please yeah thank you Brian thank you colleagues it's been very interesting to listen to all the different perspectives today it's been very rich um so for those who don't know Islamic Development Bank is a multilateral development bank uh we have 57 member countries um many of which are in the MENA region so uh very topical for today um and i think uh one one aspect of that which is uh gives us a unique perspective is this sort of regional um perspective with different countries as you probably know with development banks the core focus traditionally has been on poverty alleviation this is still very much part of our core business um we do this through financing through knowledge generation capacity building and technical assistance but also um by the end of 2023 the Islamic Development Bank is committed to be paris aligned um with its sovereign operation and as as many people probably know um just transition is referenced specifically in the paris agreement so this is sort of all where um some of this work kicks off for us in terms of the energy we do have an energy policy which is built around four pillars um energy access is a big issue in many of our countries but then we also look at renewable energy energy efficiency and then knowledge generation and transfer in terms of enabling factors um for the energy policy we do um try to promote private sector activity also innovative financing which i think can be important in especially in new areas or or business uh also regional integration i spoke about that just briefly and then also partnerships working with groups such as international energy agency and others um to address some of these challenges so um more specifically on the skills development side of thing um i thought i'd introduced a bit of a different perspective um we've talked a lot about skills development of sort of individuals and people working perhaps in the private sector or sort of at the community level which is obviously very important but also there's the element of skills development or capacity building of governments themselves um and i think this is quite a key issue around energy transition and why is this so um firstly i think uh what we're starting to look at is um country industrial policies so this relates to policies around manufacturing labour and these types of things um so how do we have the government um promote a transition to a green economy and have through some of these policies at national level i think is important and then obviously this then links to other um national level policies such as NDCs which are nationally determined contributions um and then also more recently what they call long-term strategies which are countries looking at um long-term issues related to things such as just transition around labour policies as well so i think this is quite important uh then when we come to um skills development for individuals often capacity building is is a strong and knowledge exchange and generations is a strong element of our project investments but then we also do have specific mechanisms we have something called reverse linkage mechanism which encourages exchange of information between countries and this is quite a powerful tool as well so if we see success in one country perhaps around industrial policy or a particular clean energy policy with good labour conditions and a green transition then we can help share that between institutions between different countries so i think this is also quite interesting as well and then finally before i finish up recently at the COP 27 in Egypt we did look at a green a youth green skill accelerator program or a competition um where we do see um many youth that have been discussed uh from colleagues in Iraq and others um around the youth engaging in these sorts of activities particularly around these centralized systems where they can be installed perhaps with lower upfront capital cost but then operation maintenance um can be skill development for for local people and to run enterprises off this so i'll stop there just gives a bit of a uh a perspective of some of the things that we're looking at but very uh supportive and we're we're increasing and learning like everybody else around just transition um and it's something as as an MDB or Multilateral Development Bank community that we're trying to skill up on and enhance our support both internally with our colleagues but also with our member countries so thank you very much Brian and look forward to continuing the conversation. Thank you Bradley it's really interesting to hear and thank you for that and let me just ask you a couple of quick questions first of all um how much do the kind of work that you do is it how much is it country specific region specific is it transferable across mean is it transferable globally do you see that programs have to be tailored for each local circumstance or they're quite they're quite generalizable yeah so uh as i said we do have the capacity to work at both scales i think regionally often it is um sometimes knowledge products and generation so trying to learn if there's common challenges perhaps that a region could face and then you know by by um continuation there you know common solution um we are looking at one project which in the example where we're looking at um sort of regional energy coupling um so you know can you try to find some um benefits of perhaps energy being generated in one country and then you know reliable demand or buyer um within the region so i think this is this is good especially for large-scale um you know clean energy projects um so i think in that sense there can be some transferable learning i think also you know depending on the specific challenges that um regions face we are quite unique because we do cover um South America, Africa, Middle East and North Africa, Central Asia and a little bit in Southeast Asia so we can bring examples if there's been success in one region that we think is transferable we could bring that to others but generally what we do is respond to requests from countries themselves and often they chart their own development pathways so more commonly we do tend to work with individual countries and we have what we call membership, country, partnership strategies which are agreements between the bank and also the country on how they may want support looking forward to say the next three or four years so it's a combination of both but um more strongly with investments it's usually um on a country uh country level Thank you and there's a question in the chat about scalableness because some of the programs we're hearing about today and we know are going on are still relatively small or relevant to you or whatever else what do you view on scalability can all of these programs grow or are they constrained by size or what do you think? Yeah it's a good question i think to be honest the the multilateral development banks and when i talk about this people might be familiar with the World Bank or the African Development Bank and other groups these are examples of multilateral development banks i think um some and i'm not a banker myself i'm actually an engineer and scientist but i think from a banking perspective often um traditionally it's been easier to do larger scale investments with less transactions um than many many transactions of of lower value um investments and i i think that's been a model that um does work for large scale infrastructure um but if you're starting to look at decentralized system this is i think where you need to aggregate sometimes some of these models you do it at a regional scale for example in a sorry when i say regional say provincial within a country or perhaps even regional between countries um where you can get that scale of investment for for development banks to intervene but also increasingly um business models are emerging where um as i mentioned one of our energy sector policy enablers is looking at innovative financing and this may be um you know co-financing or blended financing we call it um with perhaps private sector partners where there is opportunity either scale decentralized systems or still look at some of the large infrastructure which may be associated with um say green hydrogen and other elements that have been considered thank you Bradley let me ask a question that anybody may want to take uh if it's something you know about which is about bioenergy because we heard a question in the chat saying we've heard about solar and renewables and efficiency and hydrogen uh we haven't heard so much about about skills in bioenergy has any has anybody working in this area would like to comment on it uh Brian can i please yeah uh we have some initiative i think i heard about one or two projects here in oman with the inter-beunion started from university really from the date seats and they're already producing oil from it but it's really from bioenergy but how is scalable is very small is it commercialized not yet as far i know it's just it's very small scale but it's really some work going on and also there's another project also i heard also student project with their professors basically in the universities but it's not really at a commercial level at least in oman as far i know thank you very much Kelly that's good to hear and phaser if i could ask you a quick question because i know you've had some connection difficulties but i hope you're with us now because we had a little discussion a minute ago i'm not sure if you heard it on scalability and and obviously we heard about the really excellent programs you're doing i'd love to ask you about do you have plans to scale them up is it possible to scale them up it's just a question of financing what what are your plans about about getting bigger well actually most of the our projects have a sustainability plan as to complete them in fact we have the pilot in akhaba now we are planning the sustainability plan with a seiza which is the main authority there to build and to contribute more on on their job as i mean the needs job to be to be exact as to sustain the project thank you that's really interesting to be here thank you there's a question here that i think my colleague bruno is for the best place to answer bruno there's a question here about the nature of the skills we see as most needed in clean energy transitions and particularly is it all about skilled workers or are there also jobs for for less skilled workers what are your thoughts on that thanks uh yeah i think it's a very important question and you know like we need to keep in mind that we've been talking about you know like skills development and skill needs really since the offset of the industrial revolution and it is not so much that jobs get created or destroyed is that they change so i think what we would need is you know like forward-looking policies industrial policies from the government and you know like we can argue on the level of ambition and whatnot but if you look at you know like EU 4555 sorry uh repower EU the IRA now they said you know like they give visibility first of all to academia to be able to tailor their curriculums but also you know like on the other hand to you know like investments and and and companies to be able to you know like to have a project pipeline based on that industrial policy and you know it was great to hear from Mohammed that you know like the the certificates work across the Arab League and that you know like the students can move but it is also important to keep in mind that those industrial policies will be very different across the regions like some of them will have a focus more in low-income countries might be sustainable development in richer countries might be the diversification of their economies um so i think the focus is you know like something that's been mentioned here a lot which is for workers to be able to also move and for those skills to be able to be transferable across the region and have some kind of a standard of education and yeah there will be opportunities you know like for both high skill lowers uh mid-skill it's also a very important part of the of um of the mix but as i said i think we need that that forward-looking policy that can then have training bodies universities whatever training center you have to be able to tailor their offers based on that particular policy that the governments are pushing forward thanks thank you Bruno very interesting so colleagues and friends we're almost out of time we've got a great discussion can i add something please Kadeji of course i just want to say that in Morocco we have developed a roadmap for biomass energy use aiming at the sustainable use of biomass as a renewable renewable and climate friendly source of energy uh this this roadmap develop an action plan to optimize energy recovery by 2013 in and it presents also the potential for the agriculture for a sea waste and wastewater sectors to achieve the goal in this field that's great to hear thank you and it shows the wide range of programs you're working on Kadeji thank you very much so colleagues before we close i'd like to return to my colleague Nadine for reflections on what is heard and any remarks you'd like to add before we finish thank you thank you can you hear me yes so no thank you Brian and thank you for for people in the panel i think it was great to have your insights again we can see that we hear very interesting steps taken at the regional level but we the discussion was also the opportunity to shed the light on some of the key challenges here again at the IA but other partners that we have globally we can we can see that the region can be very roughly divided into producers and hydrocarbon importance which have very different challenges while producer economies are looking into economic diversification and it was great to have the views from Mr. Al-Ghamari earlier and I wanted to use the opportunity to to to discuss about a a report that we are developing with the government of Oman that's looking into their plans for diversification especially in industries such as low emissions hydrogen so in Oman there's been there's a very very acute look that's being given at the opportunity cost of shifting from oil and gas generated revenues to revenues from clean energy industries and and here it's on the skills level they're also very interested to understand the linkages between the oil and gas industry and and for example a potential low emissions hydrogen industry you can see that there's a lot of commonalities and linkages but there's also some jobs that will require some risk-killing but again as Rind mentioned earlier we see a ramp up of decentralized PV generation in the region especially for hydrocarbon importers so a very different set of challenges and that we can see that across the regions you have some acute cases like Lebanon or Iraq that are suffering supply shortages but again this calls for another set of regulatory measures for this to be able to take place in a more fair and equitable way because as of today this is mainly benefiting the let's say higher ends of the revenues or the of the households in in in the countries in these countries so but to to sum up all of that together and regardless of whether you're a hydrocarbon importer or a producer economy having as my colleague Bruno said but also was also emphasized by our colleague from the ISDV Bradley the need for industrial policy to have a long-term objective for these countries whatever form it takes is key to ensuring that you know we can have skills and and and labor policies that are underpinning the development of you know clean energy technologies in the region and that would be mainly how I would like to conclude it and I'll pass it on again to Brian for for a few last words of wisdom thank you well thank you Nadeem I don't know about words of wisdom but there'll be words of thanks because I'm really grateful for everybody who spoke today we I certainly I've learned a lot from all of you and it's really exciting to hear the great work we're all doing across the region and so thank you very much for joining us and thanks everybody who joined and participated in today's event and let me just record also my thanks for my colleagues Matthew and Joshua who organized today's event and ran it so well I'm very grateful to them too and as you know this is one of an ongoing series of webinars the IEA is holding on what we call people-centered themes around clean energy transitions related to inclusion, jobs, skills, social benefits so we're very keen to stay in touch with you as we expand our work in this area you've heard about some of the work we're doing from Nadeem we're doing further work on job skills many related questions always very keen to hear from you in terms of what you're doing what your successes and challenges are and how we can work with you all on these very important issues so thanks again for joining us and we look forward to seeing you very soon thank you bye bye thank you thank you thank you everyone