The Sustainable Energy Trade Initiative (SETI) aims to promote sustainable energy by providing enabling governance and frameworks at the international level to facilitate trade in renewable energy goods and services and ensure robust markets. Such frameworks could be an important contributor to an enhanced climate change action, as well as provide for longer-term energy security and enable a transition to a low-carbon economy. Initiatives undertaken under SETI could follow diverse pathways, depending on participating country priorities and preferences. They could take the form of a legally binding trade agreement, a Sustainable Energy Trade Agreement (SETA), or adopt a softer approach in the form of voluntary guidelines or ‘codes of conduct’ between countries.
SETI evolved out of an initiative pioneered by Michael Liebreich, Chief Executive of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, and the Renewable Energy Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum’s Global Redesign Initiative in October 2009. It was then taken as a recommendation by the Forum to the Korea G-20 Summit in 2010. Since then, ICTSD - in co-operation with the Global Green Growth Institute (GGI), and the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) - has developed the analytical case for it, with consultations being held with governments and other stakeholders in fora including the WTO, UNFCCC, and the World Economic Forum. ICTSD and its partners will undertake a focussed series of research and dialogue activities during the course of 2012-13 to further develop the initiative and ensure that it meaningfully informs and shapes trade, investment and climate-change policy processes around the world.
More information on the initiative can be found on websites of the Global Green Growth Institute (GGI) and the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE).
