Communique for the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate

Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate
January 13, 2006

We met at Sydney for our first Ministerial meeting of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate on 11-12 January 2006.

We adopted a Charter that sets out a framework to implement the Vision Statement of the Partnership announced in Vientiane on 28 July 2005. At the core of this vision is our conviction of the urgent need to pursue development and poverty eradication. By working together we will be better able to meet our increased energy needs and associated challenges, including those related to air pollution, energy security, and greenhouse gas intensity.

Our energy needs are growing rapidly, and will necessitate large-scale investments in the coming decades. We recognised that renewable energy and nuclear power will represent an increasing share of global energy supply. We recognised that fossil fuels underpin our economies, and will be an enduring reality for our lifetimes and beyond. It is therefore critical that we work together to develop, demonstrate and implement cleaner and lower emissions technologies that allow for the continued economic use of fossil fuels while addressing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. We undertook through this Partnership to cooperatively promote the deployment of promising technologies that offer greater energy efficiency and lower air pollution and greenhouse gas intensities.

Energy security is another major concern. Access to a diverse range of reliable and affordable energy sources underpins economic development and improved living standards and is a major determinant of energy security. Thus, our efforts to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of a wide range of fossil fuels provide an important energy security benefit to us all.

We view climate change in particular as a serious problem that warrants a long-term commitment to substantive action. The Partnership will be consistent with and contribute to our efforts under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and will complement, but not replace, the Kyoto Protocol.

We reviewed the extensive range of existing national programmes and projects our Governments are pursuing with regard to clean development and climate. Each Partner will bring significant value to the Partnership and our Governments have pledged a serious commitment to Partnership projects and activities. We view the private sector as critical to this effort, and we will marshall considerable financial, human and other resources both from the public and private sectors. The Partnership aims to mobilise domestic and foreign investment into clean and low emission technology by fostering the best possible enabling environments.

We prepared the Partnership Work Plan, which explores a new approach for harnessing the power of our private sectors, our research communities and our government sectors to drive sustainable development. We will bring together the key experts from the public, private and research sectors of our economies to tackle these matters. We will also share experiences on related matters, such as workplace safety and technologies that help ensure the safety and well-being of our peoples. Our Work Plan focuses on power generation and key industry sectors of our economies. We established eight public-private sector Task Forces covering (1) cleaner fossil energy; (2) renewable energy and distributed generation; (3) power generation and transmission; (4) steel; (5) aluminium; (6) cement; (7) coal mining; and (8) buildings and appliances.

We have directed the Task Forces to drive improvements with regard to best practices and ensure that a range of technologies is developed and repeatedly demonstrated so that scale is increased and costs are reduced.

In this regard we have asked each Task Force to:

• review the current status within their thematic area with regard to clean development and climate,
• share knowledge, experience and good practices of how efficiency can be improved,
• systematically roadmap, where appropriate, relevant existing and emerging technologies, and
• develop an action plan that identifies specific opportunities for co-operation, and wherever possible, ambitious and realistic goals.

The Partnership Work Plan will be dynamic, evolving as the Task Forces elaborate their work.

Initially the Partnership chose to focus on a number of specific areas. The vision statement also detailed a rich array of other sectors, such as transport, where we will explore co-operation as the Partnership develops. There are also cross-cutting opportunities to advance clean development and climate beyond the current Task Forces, such as skills exchange. In this regard, we will positively consider the proposal to establish an “Asia-Pacific Energy Technology Co-operation Centre”, to focus on the development and implementation of an energy audit program and its follow-up projects. We envisage that future meetings will address these other sectors of interest and cross-cutting matters as well as provide a forum for sharing experiences in developing and implementing our sustainable development and energy strategies.

The Partnership brings together a grouping of key nations to address the serious and long-term challenges of climate change, energy security and air pollution in ways that support sustainable economic development. Working together, we can make a significant contribution to global clean development and climate.