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Int'l renewable energy assembly looks to implement Paris climate agreement

Xinhua, January 16, 2016 Adjust font size:

Ministers, government officials and representatives from over 150 countries and more than 140 international bodies gathered here on Saturday for the sixth Assembly of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) following the United Nations (UN) Climate Conference (COP21) in Paris last year.

The two-day assembly follows the theme "from Negotiation to Action" after the COP21 climate conference in Paris where nearly 200 states participated.

It aims to implement concrete steps to accelerate the ongoing global energy transition. "The Paris Agreement set a long-term vision for the deep reduction of global emissions and the need to de-carbonize the energy sector," said IRENA Director-General Adnan Z. Amin in his opening speech.

He called on the IRENA Assembly to take now the next steps and establish a blueprint for action to meet global climate goals and set the world on a path to a sustainable energy future.

Amin also said that Paris showed that despite huge challenges in global security, the world can stand together. The ambitious objective agreed at COP21 to keep global temperature increase below two degrees Celsius and to step up actions to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius also proofed that the global community was ready to take serious steps to reduce global warming.

"Sustainable development depends on the richness of renewable energy resources," said Mohamed Hamed Shaker El-Markaby, Egypt's Minister of Electricity and Renewable Energy.

"I am confident in IRENA's ability to perform its mission in mobilizing the entire world's efforts to build more sustainable economies, which rely mainly on renewable sources," Markaby, also president of the assembly, added.

IRENA, a UN affiliate founded in 2009, assembles 144 member states along with the European Union. Notable non-member states are Canada, Brazil and Ukraine.

COP21 in Paris reached a global agreement to reduce climate change and can only become legally binding if the agreement is joined by 55 states that represent at least 55 percent of global greenhouse emissions. The concerned states are called on to sign the agreement between April 22 2016 which marks this year's Earth Day, and April 21 2017.

This assembly also marks the opening of the annual Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, a global gathering of more than 30,000 energy leaders, experts and enthusiasts. Enditem