PCREEE 3rd Steering Committee Meeting Emphasized Collaboration Among the Partners

The Pacific Community’s, Pacific Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (PCREEE) held its 3^rd Steering Committee Meeting at its Suva Regional Office on the 21^st – 23^rd November 2018.

In opening the Meeting, the Deputy Director for the SPC’s Geoscience and Energy Unit, Mr. Akuila Tawake emphasized the importance of support to the Centre by the PICTs. He outlined that “… through a decision of your energy ministers, we have planted the PCREEE in Tonga – I guess it is one of the most fertile grounds for planting in the region. It is however my hope that we are not only leaving it to the Chair to water the PCREEE by himself. It has to be a collective effort and hence the importance of your role in guiding the PCREEE and ensuring it will achieve it mission and goals.”

Mr Tawake also acknowledged Mr. Martin Lugmayr,  the Sustainable Energy Expert with UNIDO, as the brain behind the PCREEE and the Global Network of Centres.

In his remarks to the meeting, Mr Lugmayr thanked SPC for its support to the PCREEE and for the PCREEE team for all their hard work during the formative years of the PCREEE. “We now have seven established regional Centres in the Global Network of Sustainable Energy Centres (GN-SEC). The GN-SEC has Centres in the SIDS, Africa and the Middle East and is in an unique position to effectively contribute to the achievement of SDG 7, 9 & 13”.

One of the milestones in this year’s meeting was the adoption of the PCREEE’s fund raising strategy as well as it work plan and budget for 2019.

The meeting noted with satisfaction the conduct of country workshops on sustainable energy business development for the private sector and youths and a regional workshop on power purchase agreements and entrepreneurship that were conducted in the PICTs. Also of note was that the PCREEE has ushered in a number of innovative initiatives that included the;

1. PCEEE Research Fund,
2. PCREEE Innovation Competition and
3. PCREEE Sustainable Energy Support Facility 

The 4^th PCREEE Steering Committee Meeting has been tentatively scheduled to be held at the same time in Vava'u, Tonga in 2019.

END