Powering a Green Energy Future for 2026 and Beyond
The UN Secretary-General’s report, Seizing the Moment of Opportunity: Supercharging the New Energy Era, released in July 2025, set forth a powerful call to accelerate the global energy transition through renewables, efficiency, and electrification. Now, in the weeks following COP30 and as we approach the New Year, the report’s recommendations and warnings are as relevant as ever. Across the world, the business case for renewables has never been stronger. Yet, there is still a need for technically grounded transition pathways. Outcomes from the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30) have further emphasized the need for system-wide transformation to a green energy future through solutions around scaling grid-enhancing technologies, unlocking long-duration storage, and deploying electrified solutions across hard-to-abate sectors.
The Council of Engineers for the Energy Transition (CEET) sees a crucial need to translate these high-level goals into action plans that address infrastructure bottlenecks and accelerate the energy transition. Action plans shall include replicable technical solutions that address energy needs and climate change mitigation while also defining models of partnerships for financing and capacity building to guarantee sustainable development. Such technical solutions include modernizing grids, harnessing organic waste for bioenergy, assessing the evolving role of nuclear power, and establishing just transition pathways for an orderly fossil-fuel phase-out aligned with the sustainable development agenda. In this article, Council members emphasize key points from the Seizing the Moment of Opportunity report and call attention to additional areas that should be considered to accelerate a low-carbon energy transition.
Grid Development and Optimization
By Juan Roberto Paredes, Senior Renewable Energy Specialist, Inter-American Development Bank
A key gap identified in the Secretary-General’s report is the underinvestment in grid modernization. While renewables have achieved record cost reductions — solar and wind now outcompete fossil fuels — outdated transmission and distribution systems are becoming the main barrier to scaling green energy. Today, more than 3,000 gigawatts (GW) of renewable projects worldwide are waiting for grid connections. The report rightly calls for doubling investments in grid and storage infrastructure to USD 680 billion annually by 2030. Upgrading transmission lines, deploying advanced grid digitalization, and improving flexibility can deliver immediate gains in reliability and efficiency.
For emerging economies, grid optimization is not just a technical necessity but a financial imperative. With limited fiscal space, these countries cannot afford to invest in fossil fuels and renewable energy in parallel. Solutions such as reconductoring, dynamic line rating, grid-enhancing devices, and AI-driven demand forecasting can boost the capacity of existing infrastructure at a fraction of the cost of new builds. For example, an Inter-American Development Bank analysis suggests that grid capacity in Latin America and the Caribbean must double over the next 15 years in order to meet rising demands and climate targets.
Given the long timelines for building new infrastructure, this target will not be met without a smarter approach. Replacing high-voltage cables with more advanced conductors with 80% greater capacity — where technically and economically feasible — could avoid the need for almost 50,000 km of new lines and deliver cumulative savings of USD 12 billion by 2040. These savings could be passed directly on to consumers.
Meanwhile, there is also a need to consider the development of microgrids and minigrids, particularly in rural and remote areas where grid extension is not an option in the short run. A technical, economic, and governance model for efficient deployment of such solutions will guarantee electricity access to large marginalized populations.
The Secretary-General’s call for action is timely, but technical leadership in grid engineering will determine whether this decade becomes a turning point for sustainable energy or not. Grid modernization is the bridge between renewable ambition and reliable energy access — the single most impactful low-hanging fruit for emerging economies facing surging demand, aging infrastructure, and tight budgets.
From Waste to Worth for a Just Energy Future
By Alessandro Sanches Pereira, Executive Director, Instituto17, and Roberta Cenni, Head of Biofuels, Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping
The Secretary-General’s report centers justice, finance, and accelerated renewables as pillars for climate action, with emphasis on solar and wind power. Nevertheless, further attention to the opportunity to develop bioenergy, and particularly the transformation of organic waste into energy, is needed.
Even at full global development, waste-to-energy may supply less than 5% of current energy demand, underscoring its role as a complementary, not primary, solution. Its value lies in its local co-benefits — improved sanitation, waste removal, and pollution reduction — which contribute to improved public health and outweigh its modest contribution to global energy supply. For many countries in the Global South, including Brazil, this has become not merely a technical opportunity but a strategic pathway to a fairer, circular, and decarbonized energy system.
Brazil’s biomethane sector illustrates how local organic waste streams can deliver on multiple fronts: reducing methane emissions, improving sanitation, enabling clean cooking, and decarbonizing heavy transport. With less than 3% of Brazil’s biomethane potential currently used, scaling distributed organic waste-to-fuel systems is a practical, high-impact opportunity. The CEET’s recent issue brief on bio-LNG (Liquefied Bio-Natural Gas) highlights yet another entry point to address this untapped potential, whereby demand for decarbonization in maritime transport can help build a business case for biomethane production coupled with sanitation and organic waste management in large port cities.
These technologies are modular, adaptable, and well-suited to low-infrastructure contexts. They align with UN-Habitat’s 2026–2029 Strategic Plan, which emphasizes inclusive access to basic services and infrastructure, especially in informal settlements, as well as the Advisory Board on Zero Waste’s mission to promote integrated, non-discriminatory, and inclusive zero-waste practices. Community-scale digesters, organic waste valorization, and biodigester-powered kitchens can improve dignity through better waste management while creating jobs in urban and rural areas. However, they require proper design and oversight. Poorly managed small digesters can leak methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and pose safety hazards. In Denmark, for example, an old sludge digester was decommissioned after leaking biogas, illustrating the need for strong technical standards.
Engineering justice means ensuring transitions are equitable, not extractive. It requires democratizing access to green technologies, financing community-led models, and valuing the role of the informal sector in waste collection and circular resource recovery. It also means building the basic infrastructure for waste segregation and fostering public participation in waste reduction and sorting. Biomethane is therefore as much a systemic and societal challenge as a technical one; success depends on effective collection systems and citizen engagement.
Biomethane is now on the global agenda. The EU, for example, targets 35 billion m³ by 2030, but enabling conditions remain scarce. Policymakers and partners must prioritize bio-LNG, biomethane corridors, and zero-waste infrastructure that supports a circular economy, while also investing in the systems and practices that make them viable. If the transition is to be just, it must be engineered not just for speed, but for equity, grounded in the waste realities and wisdoms of the Global South.
What about Nuclear Power?
By Henri Paillere, Head of Planning and Economic Studies Section, International Atomic Energy Agency, and Sama Bilbao y Leon, Director General, World Nuclear Association
One of the key outcomes of the First Global Stocktake (GST), adopted by consensus at COP28, was a call to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels to carbon-free energy. While the Secretary-General’s report focuses on the role of renewables, the GST highlights other sources of low-carbon electricity — notably, nuclear power.
For the past 50 years, nuclear power has been the second largest source of low-carbon electricity behind hydropower, and remains so today, although its share has fallen to just under 10%. Most decarbonization scenarios in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 6th Assessment Report require nuclear expansion. Similarly, the International Energy Agency’s report entitled “From Taking Stock to Taking Action,” explains how nuclear power can complement renewables by providing both low-emissions electricity and heat, while also stabilizing the grid. The growing demand for electricity from AI and data centres further underscores the need for 24/7 low-emissions power. Globally, more than 31 countries, 16 major global banks and financial institutions, and many large energy users have committed to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050.
Nuclear power faces several challenges, including access to affordable financing and longer construction times compared to other sources, as well as the disposal of nuclear waste and the fear of nuclear proliferation. However, it is a dense source of energy with a reduced land footprint and limited reliance on critical minerals. The United Arab Emirates, for example, decarbonized a quarter of its electricity mix in under 12 years with its first nuclear power plant. Once operational, a plant can generate low-carbon electricity around the clock for more than 60 years. New technologies, such as Small Modular Reactors (SMR), promise shorter deployment times, lower upfront capital costs, and the flexibility to produce not just electricity, but heat and desalinated water to support industrialization and sustainable development.
Interest in nuclear power is growing in emerging markets and developing economies. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s recent “Outlook for Nuclear Energy in Africa,” released alongside the G20 South Africa Energy Transition Working Group, highlights the high level of interest on the continent. While South Africa currently operates the continent’s only nuclear plant, Egypt is building its first, and another 13 other countries are at various stages of nuclear program development. The World Bank’s recent decision to “reenter” the nuclear space could also help transform these ambitions into reality.
While interest in nuclear power is growing, its deployment will vary by national circumstances, meaning it may not be suitable for all countries. Nevertheless, nuclear power could play an important role in supercharging the new era of electrification and in decarbonizing sectors that cannot be easily electrified. Ignoring it risks overlooking a tool available to meet climate goals while ensuring reliable, secure energy.
Just Transition and Sustainable Development Pathways
By Emi Minghui Gui, Associate Professor (Practice, Adjunct), Monash University Malaysia
Tripling renewable energy and doubling energy efficiency, pledged by over 130 countries at COP28, has assisted the world in closing in on the renewable energy tipping point. The share of renewable energy in the total power capacity expansion has been increasing steadily worldwide. However, a large divergence in renewable-energy installation between advanced economies and many developing economies still exists. This gap presents a major barrier for developing economies to transition away from fossil fuels, due to limited implementation capacity and inadequate financing for both clean-energy development and fossil-fuel phase-out. Key capacity gaps in a just low-carbon energy transition exist in many developing economies, including institutional capacity, technical capacity, human-resources capacity, financing capacity, and the capacity to develop policy and legislation.
The role of the COP and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) is indispensable in acknowledging differences and disparities between countries, and in driving consensus and actions toward phasing out fossil fuels. At present, only 23% and 16% of Parties report domestic mitigation measures or quantitative targets that directly reference “Phasing down unabated coal power” and “Phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies” in their NDCs, respectively. More ambitious commitments away from fossil fuels can be supported through future COP processes and GST processes by embedding phase-out milestones into NDCs, establishing accountability mechanisms, enhancing transparency, and harmonizing fossil-fuel finance reporting.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are another important instrument, not only for measuring countries’ sustainable development progress, but also for providing a common foundation and transparency for stakeholder engagement and collective and participatory planning for a just and equitable energy transition. The indicators to track progress on the SDGs can serve as standard measurements to enable more effective planning and decision-making at regional, national, and project levels across multiple dimensions. By providing a common basis for comparing impacts, they help facilitate more efficient financial flows into infrastructure and projects that can deliver improved socio-environmental-economic outcomes, as illustrated by the Green Power Corridor-SDG (GPC-SDG) Framework led by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).
To guide more ambitious NDCs and a systemic shift away from fossil fuels, the CEET calls for strong international collaboration and coordination on providing the just transition and sustainable development pathways that are fair, just, orderly, and equitable for the affected economies, regions, and communities. Regardless of the pathway a country adopts to achieve these goals, adequate financing and strategic planning, supported by adequate implementation capacity, are necessary conditions to ensure low-carbon infrastructure development, just transition outcomes, and positive labour market and social impacts.
As the momentum and pace of energy transition build worldwide, developing countries are eager to advance their social, economic, and environmental goals in the clean energy era. To leave no one behind, the world must set on a just, equitable, and inclusive transition pathway that facilitates sustainable economic development away from fossil fuels.
Final Remarks
By Semida Silveira, Professor of Practice, Cornell University
We are in a new era of industrialization characterized by digitalization, circularity, and a decarbonized economy. We must find models to capitalize on mature technologies while continuing to work on the development of new technological solutions and innovative models for their deployment. The energy transition has a central role to play in this transformative process, but it shall also be used as a driver for sustainable development. Thus, the global benefits of the energy transition need to be integrated with the local demands and conditions so that the most efficient solutions are chosen to address climate change and benefit local economies.
Additional Resources
It should be acknowledged that these materials are for discussion purposes only, given the rapidly changing landscape of the energy transition and the various contexts in which they are relevant. CEET members are participating in their individual capacity and expertise without remuneration. Their professional affiliations are for identification purposes only, and their views and perspectives, including any statements, publications, social media posts, etc., are not representative of the United Nations, SDSN, or UNIDO.