District Energy in Cities Recognized as Innovative Partnership to Address Sustainable Development

District Energy in Cities Initiative has the honor of being selected as one of the top three globally impactful public-private partnerships on energy, alongside the African Development Bank and World Bank/IFC, to be featured at the P4G Summit held in Copenhagen and hosted by the Prime Minister of Denmark, this Friday 19 October.

Lily Riahi, Global Head of District Energy in Cities, will present the work the Initiative does across the world to build capacity in local and national governments for the accelerated uptake of district energy, a proven cost-effective technology for addressing the huge energy consumption of heating and cooling in urban buildings. The Initiative team is enthusiastic to showcase how we harness UN Environment’s power for public-private partnerships to generate effective, collaborative relationships with the private sector to expand global climate action and increase the number of actors working on this urgent issue.

The Initiative that is selected through an audience poll will go on to be featured alongside the other thematic winter (water, cities, etc, see below) and present on live broadcast to 8 heads of state and multinational CEOs.

Please find the event description for the summit below.

An action-oriented summit

On 19-20 October 2018, Denmark will gather Heads of States and Government, leaders of international organizations, businesses, academia, and the civil society at the first global P4G Summit to form a powerful coalition for sustainable growth through innovative partnerships.

The P4G Summit will be a place for developing and showcasing partnerships of large-scale impact. Whether it is partnering through new financing model to address the shortage of water, creating new models for mobility in megacities, implementing new food production techniques to address the food crisis, scaling energy optimizing of buildings, or developing innovative solutions for addressing plastic waste. Partnership facilitation will be a key part of the summit.

Thematically, the P4G Copenhagen Summit 2018 will pay a special attention to cities as increasingly important center of economic activity. In the immediate future, increased urbanization is expected to trigger an enormous demand for new sustainable solutions.

The P4G Copenhagen Summit marks an important first step in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, but success is not a given. As the partnerships emerge it will be critical to move fast to define process and progress for each partnership, because in changing the world, 12 years is a sprint.