SEATTLE, WA – On August 15-16, 2023, Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm hosted the 21 energy ministers in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) initiative, including Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, New Zealand, Peru, many ASEAN countries, and several others. This was the first Energy Ministers Meeting in eight years. Ministers made exceptional progress on several critical energy issues, including just energy transitions, power sector decarbonization, and methane emissions reductions in the fossil energy sector.
Notably, ministers charged the APEC Energy Working Group to establish a new Just Energy Transition Initiative and endorsed a set of Non-Binding Just Energy Transition Principles for APEC Cooperation.
As the Chair’s Statement reflects, nearly all APEC economies also supported a new collective aspirational goal for the power sector and a goal on reducing methane emissions in the fossil energy sector. These are only several examples among a range of strong outcomes.
The Energy Ministerial Meeting Statement summarizing the outcome with the 21 APEC economies can be found here: Secretary Granholm’s Statement on the 13th APEC Energy Ministerial Meeting.
On the margins of APEC, the United States joined ten other economies in endorsing a Joint Statement on Accelerating Methane Mitigation from the LNG Value Chain, in which they express their determination to cooperate to advance the objectives of the Global Methane Pledge—including cutting methane emissions in the fossil energy sector consistent with the goal of reducing global methane emissions by 30 percent below 2020 levels by the end of the decade.
Source: U.S. Department of Energy