Hongpeng Liu is the chief of the energy section of the United Nations (Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific ESCAP).
Hongpeng Liu talks with the Eurasia Diary in an exclusive interview on 7th International Forum on Energy for Sustainable Development.
Eurasia Diary: How do you see the 7th international energy forum in Baku?
Hongpeng Liu: This forum provided the countries to have opportunities to share their experiences and also to discuss about challenges and issues for sustainable energy development. It is also opportunity to identify the collaboration among different countries .For example, we had a meeting today talking about energy connectivity which mainly focus on cross border electricity treat. At the same time people also talked about energy efficiency, renewable energy and energy access. These are the key points supported sustainable energy development. This forum provided very good kind of platform for regional collaboration and to identify the priorities for sustainable energy development as well.
Eurasia Diary: What are the current main challenges we are facing today regarding energy sector, what can you say about it being the head of the energy section of UN?
Hongpeng Liu: There are three major challenges on energy sector. The first one is energy for sustainable development. You need energy today for everything such as development and economic growth. You really need sustainable or clean energy. We cannot cope with economic growth by damaging environment, by increasing the energy consumption. We have to think about how to use sustainable energy supporting economic growth .The second challenge is environment and climate change. After the Paris agreement approved by the member countries, it will come into the force early November.
That provides not only opportunities but also challenges .Most of the greenhouse gas emissions from the consumption of fossil fuels and currently most of the countries still fossil fuel based the economy. On the one side to support economic growth and on the other side to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions .At the same time you have to meet your commitment for the Paris agreement. These are really big changes for the most of the countries. The third challenge is how you provide the energy services to all of your population .In developing countries especially in South Asia energy access is still major issue. Totally we have 450 million people without access to electricity. 70 percent of this population is in South Asia. How can you provide those populations with modern, clean and sustainable energy services and that is another challenge.
Eurasia Diary: What kind of possible cooperation and some sort of new ventures could be mainly in central Asia, South Caucasus and CIS countries?
Hongpeng Liu: We discussed a lot of things in the forum happened in Central Asia and we also invited those countries from surroundings from South Asia , Northeast Asia and Europe to join as well. Main collaboration is how to increase the renewable energy and secondly how to increase the energy treat. For example, Central Asia, they have very rich energy resources like oil and gas, renewable energy as well. But how can you share these resources in a kind of efficient way, for example, between Central Asia and Europe, Central Asia and China, Central Asia and South Asia. Most of those countries in neighboring of South Asia there is a lack of energy resources .Through increasing the energy treat those countries can get cleaner and reliable energy supply from Central Asia. At the same time they can also provide technology like for renewable energy in Central Asia. We have to collaborate in both ways. One side to provide more energy like oil and gas even electricity and another side they can also take some technologies to improve the energy efficiency, to utilize more renewable energy resource.
Eurasia Diary: What is your massage on this platform from the 7th international energy forum to the world and to our media?
Hongpeng Liu: Through this kind of international cooperation we can achieve sustainable energy; we can achieve sustainable development with our limited resources, with our technologies and passion from the people who are now together here and discussing the issues. People want to work together. Through this kind of international forums we will have more strong international collaboration in order to achieve this sustainable energy and to achieve SDG.
