Local Action Powering Global Impact: Public Private Partnerships to Advance Progress on SDG 7 – 81st Session of the UN General Assembly

Welcome back to the SDG Media Zone. We're live from the UN headquarters in New York during the 81st UN General Assembly, and I'm pleased to pass it to our moderator, Elaine Reyes, to kick off our next panel discussion.

All right, thank you so much, Alexandra, and welcome to everyone here. From wherever you are joining us, whether you're sitting with us here in windy New York or joining us online, this is Local Action Powering Global Impact, public-private partnerships to advance progress on SDG 7, affordable and clean energy for all. First, I'd like to introduce our panel, Kimberly Johnston, founder and CEO of NextGen Energy, and Mark Pacheco. former Massachusetts State Senator and CEO of the Transatlantic Climate Alliance. So our conversation today will showcase how public-private partnerships supporting SDG 7 can turn local resilience into a replicable global answer, and one that is not only for more sustainable, but also for more affordable and more secure energy. So Kimberly, tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and your organization.

Oh, wonderful. A pleasure to be here all. And Kimberly Johnston, I'm the-- my background has been in energy for three decades. So oil and gas, natural gas to renewables. And it's all been based in Texas. And when I look at my career, I was a former EY Americas Power and Utility partner for six years. So really working across the US on these horrific climate devastations. year after year. Prior to that, I was the vice president of and corporate officer at CenterPoint Energy, one of the largest utilities in the US, and we serve over 3 million people in Houston and serving the coastal lines day after day after her in hurricanes. So it was a Texas freeze of 2021 where that freeze paralyzed the Texas economy. Four and a half people out power for four days. It cost our economy two years of energy supply in four days, bankruptcies, people lost their lives. And that's when I decided to retire early and start NextGen Energy.

And Mark, you have a background previously in government, but tell us what you've been doing now.

Well, with my background at the local level and at the state level for 36 years at the state level. I've worked a lot in the clean energy sector and sustainability to have policy that is part of state policy that we could work with local officials on. And I just retired in December of '24 from the Massachusetts legislature as the Dean of the Massachusetts Senate because I wanted to actually look at making sure that we do everything we can at the local level to actually implement those policies. So we've created the Transatlantic Climate Alliance, and it actually got created because of a real life project that took place when we went to Europe. We met with European leaders, we looked at their policies, we looked at offshore wind, we brought back some of those policies to Massachusetts, And in working with our legal counsel and in policy makers, we decided to work within Governor Baker and other local leaders in a bipartisan way to make sure that we could try it out. Let's see if we have any bids that come back. And here we are just months after The Vineyard Wind 1 project was finally approved, powering 400,000 homes in the Northeast grid, all because we partnered together and learned from best practices that were taking place in the world, brought them back to Massachusetts, and implemented them. And we're powering affordable clean energy, 6.8 cents a kilowatt hour. for offshore wind. And it, there's no comparison. That's what we need to do more of. And that's why we created the transatlanticclimatealliance.org. Anybody that wants to sign on and look at that organization, please do and join us. Become a founding member of the Transatlantic Climate Alliance. It's all subnational climate action. So we're talking with mayors, with city councilors, with boards of selectmen, regional entities, and businesses. So we have a private-public partnership in making sure we do everything we can to embrace this climate action revolution.

Kimberly, I see you nodding your head there in agreement. What are some of the biggest challenges and misconceptions to getting where you are?

Absolutely. When I look about technology breakthroughs, and we've had so many technology breakthroughs in energy, when you think about the U.S., we were heavily dependent on coal. Well, we've reduced our carbon footprint by 4% GHG emissions reductions because we went from coal to natural gas. We found technology breakthroughs for this abundance natural gas that we have locally and we became energy independent which is a geopolitical historical threat but now we have abundance of Mark said wind solar you can't get more infinite power from mother nature why are we not shifting to working more in harmony with mother nature it's zero cost after storm Yuri I put on 40 panels solar panels, three power walls, we have two electric vehicles. I pay less than $4 a month in electricity. I've avoided 70 power outages, and I charge my cars for free. It's a net zero home. It costs nothing. It was an upfront investment, but the challenge is upfront investment. This is public infrastructure. Our aging infrastructure is here to provide an essential power. That is a given. And why it's rising to its 27 cents. Mark just said six cents for a wind, offshore wind project. But it's upfront capital. And that's what public and private partners have to come together. And that's what we're working at NextGen Energy, is really a local, on the ground, educating, getting the communities to understand their options, and then getting the governments to give us some seed capital because We do need these towns don't have budgets, they can issue bonds, give a seed capital, and then we bring in the private investment to scale these projects. And what we're looking at is distributive energy, what we call hubs for energy resilient operations. So think of what I just described for my home. You have it on water treatment plants, you have it on hospitals, you have it on fire stations, you have it on when these disasters hit your town, you are protected. and your lights are kept on. So we've launched at Massachusetts the Keep Lights On initiative, and it's to roll out a network of hero hubs that are really providing unerruptable 24/7 clean power and protect those vulnerable communities that are hit hardest from these storms. But it boils down to technology breakthroughs, commercialization through smart policies, stable policies that remove market barriers, and then, and really get the, empower those communities. And I know Mark has some thoughts here too on the challenges that we face in rolling this out.

Let me have you hold on for a second and bring in Dr. Wale Aboyeade, Vice President of Public Affairs and Government Relations at Sun King. I want to get your thoughts because you've also worked across government, development, finance, and now the private sector. So if we do want to accelerate SDG 7, what does an effective public-private partnership actually look like? What can governments and development partners do differently to help successful local models reach scale?

Thank you, Elaine. Yeah, that's a really good question and one that actually has a relatively clear answer now. That was launched a couple of years ago called Mission 300. Mission 300 is an initiative of the World Bank and African Development Bank to work with governments and the private sector to electrify 300 million out of the 600 odd million Africans that are not yet connected to electricity. And we are proud private sector partner to be under that program. And basically the way the program is shaped is that public finance made available by the World Bank and African Development Bank are channeled through governments, and a large portion of them goes to off-grid technologies because there's the realization that you cannot connect those 600 million people, or in this particular case, 300 only by extending the grid. We've been trying that for decades and it hasn't actually worked. But with off-grid solar, just as you mentioned, Kimberly, it is extremely quick to connect compared to how long it takes to extend the grid. And we have a model at Sun King that's called pay as you go, where owners of solar systems don't have to pay the total amount upfront. They only need to pay 10% upfront and pay the rest in installments, hence pay as you go. And so we had that model that was already successful outside of And so, governments through Mission 300 has realized that this is a pathway to actually make it work. We will try and extend that pay-as-you-go model to reach communities who might not even be able to afford that initial upfront payment. And so, they use public money to subsidize a little bit, sometimes usually around 10% or 20% of the cost of the solar systems. to make it that much more affordable. And then we come in, we sell the systems at a much cheaper rate, but we only get paid once the systems perform, which is, you know, so it's called a results-based finance mechanism. And we think that that's a really beautiful way. And right now, through that system, I think close to 30 or 40 million people have been connected faster than has ever been before. We are Sun King alone over the last few years have already have almost 30 million customers using this particular method. So it's scalable, it works, and it's a great example of a public private partnership.

And that's great to hear because as we all know, the demand for energy just continues to grow by the second. And you bring up an interesting and a very important point of access. And then we also have to talk about the infrastructure piece of all of that. Mark, what are your thoughts?

Well, we're looking at the big picture of what is happening out there, the policies that have been put in place by national governments, by regional entities, by state governments, but a lot of the action actually happens at the local level. And so that's why we've tried to focus on making sure that we look at and talk to decision makers in all communities and regions across the country, across the transatlantic world, because there are so many best practices that the doctor just referenced, that Kimalee is working on, that NextGen Energy is doing. And we can take these best practices and educate local decision makers in the public sector and the private sector so we can replicate those more quickly. The most frustrating thing about the climate crisis that we have right now is it's been over 20 years that we've been talking about solutions and we need to implement those solutions so much more quickly. so we can save this planet and save the future for the children and grandchildren that are out there so that they have a great future in this great country of ours, in this world of ours.

I'll go to all of you with this question, but Kimberly, I'll get you to answer first. I mean, can you share how your work addresses not just the climate question, as Mark just mentioned, but also makes a positive contribution to energy affordability and economic growth? I mean, there's that balance between development and being sustainable and smart and efficient at the same time.

Oh, absolutely. And SDG 7 is all about affordable, clean energy. And And it's accessible. When you're dealing with wind and solar, natural resources that are infinite, and you pair that with storage, storage is a breakthrough technology. And right now, storage is about to four to eight hours of storage, but there is storage in play. And we work closely with the US Department of Energy and then the 17 national labs. And there is technology in the making that could store up to 100 hours. And this is the breakthrough, and same with advanced nuclear reactors. And and that's using kind of laws of physics that really can contain those reactors from a safety public safety perspective And you have geothermal so not only we're looking at affordable accessible energy and especially as doctor said when you're working with Economies that are emerging and there's more than nearly 700 million people that have no power today globally. So this is a global answer, but not only are we working with SDG 7, but SDG 8 is around economic growth. That's right when we had the US law, infrastructure law passed, and that was about 1.7 trillion. We at our company immediately started advising US states on their climate action plans. How do they look at their state footprint, their carbon emissions, where are those carbon emissions coming from, and what is their pathways to 2050, and how can we deploy capital right now in the next 10 years to move that needle? And it was amazing how targeted you could on the power sector and the industrial sector. And it's achievable, it's just the willing party. So we had about 3 billion of energy economic development projects going to get to those net zero targets. Well, we had a huge shift in the political environment that set us back, and that's a big headwind. But then not only do you deal with that SGD, but we also are working on the public-private partnership 17, because this is public serving We're talking about the grid, and you need both governments and the private sector to come together.

So, Dr. Wally.

Yeah, sure. Again, I think this -- nothing is more important, really, than public-private partnerships on this topic. And we really do appreciate the effort of partners like the UN through the Sustainable Energy for All, and, of course, the DFIs and governments in opening up to actually having private sector play a really meaningful role. And that's, we have shown, again, through our scale, we now connect over 300,000 people to, you know, to solar every month. And just imagine the rate at which that scale, and that's only possible, again, because of public-private partnership. And we are excited to see what the future holds for SDG 7 and for programs like Mission 300.

We're almost out of time, but just some final thoughts as we wrap up our session here on SDG 7 and what you'd like to leave our audience with. Mark, we'll start with you.

Well, I just want to continue with the cost. No matter what renewable energy technology you point to, solar, wind, geothermal, storage, it's all less expensive. It's more affordable for the future, and there's a cost that we very really very rarely talk about, and that's healthcare costs. In Massachusetts alone, we save $1.4 billion a year in healthcare costs because of asthma rates and cardiovascular and all of those other issues that pollution is impacting human health. So when we think about the affordability of the renewable energy future, and the cost we save and the lives we save. Moving forward with what our colleagues on the panel here have talked about, that's what we need to embrace and we need to engage the political will at the local level to make sure these solutions actually get turned into action.

My closing thoughts, we are in the era of electrification. I mean, our grid in the US has been in existence over 100 years. Well, we've been growing that power and meeting the demand at the rate of GDP growth, population growth. But by 2030, we will be 2.5x the amount of electricity consumption is what's needed in less than a decade. That the only way to get there is all energy all power and let's make it clean Let's learn from the past and let's have you get clean resilient And now's our moment. So power to the people clean power to the people.

And I echo all of that. I will just say, look, we should always optimize for the fastest way to leave no one behind. There's 700 million people, 600 million in Africa. Affordability is a key issue. Speed is a key issue. And we should make sure that we make room through, again, effective public-private partnerships to be able to drive the systems and the models that have been shown to work to be able to meet that need. This is not the time to get into politics. It's not a time to debate whether renewables are good or not. They're established to be connect. Again, we're connecting 300,000 people every month. This is the way. These are the kind of numbers you need to be able to get to where we're going. And enough of the politics. Let's get doing.

That's wonderful. Wally, Kimberly, Mark, thank you all for joining us. And if you're following our conversation, just use the hashtag #SDGLive and #GlobalGoals. Thank you all for joining us.

Thank you.

Thank you.