UNDP Administrator

 IRENA Director-General

 Fellow Ministers

 Distinguished ladies and gentlemen

Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to join you to discuss how we can best enhance our climate action plans and the role of partnerships in this process.

My apologies for joining this important discussion late.

Environment and climate change issues have been a priority for Rwanda for more than two decades. Rwanda has established a robust and comprehensive legal, policy and institutional framework that guides the country’s response to climate change, and broader environmental protection initiatives.

In summary, Rwanda’s climate action plan is to build the country’s resilience while ensuring we are playing our part to address climate change. Our goal is to become a developed, low carbon economy by 2050.

As with all climate action efforts, it can be a long process to get public and private institutions to move away from operating in silos and business as usual to a more collaborative approach and puts the environment at the heart of all decision making.

This is especially true for energy issues, where institutions responsible for power generation can be focused on the generation part and not the sustainability part.

In Rwanda, we have taken a whole of government approach. That’s why we are transforming and expanding our energy infrastructure to achieve universal access,

with the aim for 52% to be connected via the grid and 48% to be connected via off-grid technologies by 2024.

Rwanda is also committed to increasing renewable energy as a share of the on-grid electricity generation mix by 2030. These efforts will be supported by promoting energy efficiency. We aim to reduce losses in transmission and distribution networks to 15% by 2024.

On clean cooking, we aim to halve the number of households using traditional cooking technologies (biomass) by 2024 by promoting alternatives such as LPG, electricity and improving efficiency of biomass use.

So how can NDCs support these objectives?

Currently, there is limited investment to meet our targets. Power generation and access represent a big opportunity for the private sector. However, currently concession loans for countries like Rwanda are still at a very high interest rate around 14% while some nations can get these loans at between 1 and 3%. We need to make money cheaper for investing in green energy.

The relatively high costs of the initial electricity connection for low income households, mostly in rural area, limits connection to the national grid and access to various off-grid solutions. We need to mobilise resources and expertise to develop innovative financing mechanisms for low income households to pay in instalments -

as just one example.

Resolving these challenges requires partnership between governments, the private sector and international organisations. We have been fortunate to enjoy a very strong relationship with UNDP, which has supported the environment and natural resources sector.

UNDP has especially supported the Rwanda Green Fund which is investing in green growth, environmental initiatives and renewable energy. To date, the fund’s investments have created more than 137,000 green jobs, of which 60% have been for women.

We look forward to continuing this strong partnership and working with other partners including IRENA to achieve strong climate action while expanding energy access to all.

Thank you.