The Lusophone Association for Renewable Energy (ALER) said on Thursday (24) that Mozambique, together with Brazil, can lead the energy transition strategy among the countries of the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries (CPLP), according to Lusa.
‘The energy cooperation strategy will have to have some leaders and Mozambique, for example, should or can position itself as one of them in the transition strategy, in order to pass this information on to other countries,’ said ALER President Mayra Pereira in Maputo, southern Mozambique.
She was speaking on the sidelines of a round table on ‘The 2030 Roadmap for Energy and Climate Cooperation in the CPLP,’ a side event to the business conference on renewable energy, one of the largest forums on clean energy in the country.
According to Pereira, at the CPLP level, Mozambique and Brazil are countries with robust energy transition strategies, with some ‘competitive advantages’.
‘We have a great advantage here, which is that we all speak Portuguese. So right now what we are trying to do is to ensure that in areas where we have a competitive advantage, for example Mozambique and Brazil, which have a robust energy transition strategy, we can support our sister countries in moving in the same direction,’ she said.
Mayra Pereira also pointed out that some Portuguese-speaking countries do not have strategies for energy transition: ‘If the PALOP countries have access to the information that has already been produced for Mozambique and Brazil, they already have a good basis for understanding how to build their own narrative, in their own context.’
On the other hand, according to the representative, among the CPLP countries that already have strategies, challenges remain in their implementation, with emphasis on ‘regulatory and financing barriers.’
To implement the roadmap in the CPLP, ALER estimates that total financing of around US$8 billion will be needed by 2030.
According to the source, in addition to individual strategies, the Cooperation Roadmap, launched last March, can also serve as a space for dialogue to identify the needs of each country.
In the current socio-political context, characterised by political and social tensions and extreme climate phenomena, the president of ALER advocated a ‘broader vision’ and the search for joint solutions among Portuguese-speaking countries. ‘We have very different geopolitical scenarios. We have to look and understand how, for example, funds need to be mobilised from now on in this new context,’ she added.
The 2030 Energy and Climate Cooperation Roadmap for the CPLP is a plan that aims to identify common strategic priorities for the nine countries of the community in the field of energy transition and climate resilience.
To implement the roadmap in the CPLP, ALER estimates that total funding of around US$8 billion will be needed by 2030.
In the case of Mozambique, according to the Mozambican Renewable Energy Association (AMER), the country needs around US$80 billion (more than 5 trillion meticals) for its energy transition strategy to renewable sources by 2050.
The member states of the CPLP are Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe, and East Timor.
