Powering the future

Energy security is no longer a question of individual projects alone. It requires stronger systems, regional cooperation and financing that can deliver at scale.

That was the key message of the Knowledge Series Event “Financing Secure Energy Systems: Strategic Choices & Sustainable Solutions,” held this week. Organized in collaboration with the World Bank, the two-day event brought together leaders, experts and development partners to examine how financing can support more secure, affordable and sustainable energy systems.

Opening the event, OPEC Fund President Abdulhamid Alkhalifa highlighted the complex “trilemma” facing developing and emerging economies: expanding energy access, ensuring affordability and advancing a just and equitable energy transition. With nearly 700 million people still lacking access to electricity, most of them in Sub-Saharan Africa, the President stressed the central role of energy in development.

Energy, he said, is the “golden thread” connecting the Sustainable Development Goals. But achieving a just and affordable transition requires a broader approach: “To achieve a just and affordable transition at scale, we must move beyond individual projects and think in terms of integrated ecosystems.”

Kandeh Yumkella, Chairman of the Presidential Initiative on Climate Change, Renewable Energy and Food Security in Sierra Leone, reinforced the urgency of responding to immediate shocks while keeping long-term development goals in view. Countries, he said, must be able to “walk and chew gum” — managing volatility, supply pressures and affordability today, while still expanding access and advancing the energy transition.

OPEC Fund Vice President of Public Sector Operations, Shaimaa Al-Sheiby, noted that renewable generation alone is not enough. Without investment in transmission, storage and grid capacity, new power may never reach the homes, businesses and industries that need it.

For Ahmed Badr, Director of Project Facilitation and Support at the International Renewable Energy Agency, the task is not only to respond to existing systems, but to shape the ones that will be needed in the future. The challenge, he said, is to be system forming, not system following.

One prominent initiative addressing this challenge is Mission 300, a joint World Bank and African Development Bank effort to provide energy access for 300 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030. The OPEC Fund has pledged up to US$2 billion in support of the initiative.

Day two shifted the focus to Europe and Central Asia, moving from strategy to the practical mechanics of implementation: regional power integration, renewable energy policy, energy efficiency finance and risk mitigation. Discussions showed that the next phase of energy security will depend not only on building more generation, but on making systems work together across borders.

For the OPEC Fund, the message was also one of partnership. By combining its financing with the technical depth and country engagement of partners such as the World Bank Group and IRENA, the institution is helping partner countries build energy systems that are more resilient, affordable and equitable.