Heard at PRI in Person 2024: Partnerships

• October 17, 2024
• admin

Partnership was an underlying theme in every discussion last week on how to advance climate solutions and sustainable development goals. In his opening remarks, PRI CEO David Atkin emphasized one of the organization’s core principles: Cultivating collaboration among key stakeholders, including investor signatories, policymakers, and academics.

At the Sustainable Finance Policy Conference on October 8, the PRI introduced updates to its Policy Toolkit on sustainable finance policy reforms. The event, which convened policymakers, regulators, and investors, explored reforms that support sustainability goals while maintaining competitiveness and economic resilience. Discussions also focused on how to navigate political cycles to ensure long-term support for responsible investment initiatives.

Speakers from all regions – North America, Europe, Africa – advocated for a “whole of government” approach, emphasizing the need for comprehensive coordination across various government departments, agencies, and levels. Coordination ensures that all facets of policy, from environmental regulation to financial oversight, are aligned to address systemic challenges such as climate change. In resource-based economies, from Canada to South Africa, targets along the transition trajectory must include human rights; not just to address job joss, but also to crowd people into new industries.

Speakers in all regions also noted the need to work together in addressing what have become human rights trade-offs in the path to net-zero, primarily land acquisition for renewables. Speakers acknowledged that this remains a steep learning curve that must be solved through collaboration between the Global North and South alongside governments and the private sector.

Back on the ground following PRI, speakers from the electricity sector at the Smart Growth Symposium talked about the historic undertaking of doubling the electricity grid by 2050. They called for more strategic collaborations between universities, industry, and government with better linkages between ivory towers and the shop floor. 

The room took a moment to celebrate an initiative to emulate. The University of Toronto’s long-standing reputation as a global leader in AI research acted as a foundation for bringing together researchers, government entities, and private sector partners to create the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence in 2017. U of T’s expertise in AI, particularly through faculty members such as Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton, provided the academic credibility and leadership that helped position Toronto as a significant hub for AI innovation globally.

On the energy transition, the university recently announced funding to make its Grid Modernization and Testing Centre, a Climate Positive Energy initiative, a reality. Industry facing, this test centre will help address a market capacity gap related to technology testing and real time simulation of various grid models. 

The Global Climate Finance Accelerator is delighted to collaborate with Climate Positive Energy and Rotman School of Management on interdisciplinary research to investigate and deploy new financing strategies and tools to accelerate the energy transition.

The Global Climate Finance Accelerator convenes partnerships across business, finance, and government on strategies, policies, procedures, and tools to finance the deployment of technically viable climate solutions.