Nitya Nanda, from the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), noted that global energy governance is hindered by gaps in regulation and the resistance from developing countries, especially towards accession to the Energy Charter Treaty, due to the standing granted to private parties in its dispute resolution system. In that regard, he noted particularly the comparative advantage of the WTO dispute settlement system. Conversely, the absence of some important energy supplying countries among the WTO membership may prevent bringing the issues to the organization. He also argued that besides modern energies, transitional types of energy would also benefit from regulation, since transition will not happen from one day to the next.

Jens Alsbrik, Market Access Manager from VESTAS wind systems, noted that tariff barriers remain a big although not the dominant challenge for the wind industry, local-content requirements being the top concern. In spite of the industry’s existing excess capacity, these barriers prevent it from operating at full capacity, impeding economies of scale and reduction of the costs of wind energy. In order to achieve trade liberalization in energy, he suggested that instead of the Doha Round, an all-encompassing and cross-industry initiative, a sectorial approach such as the one used in the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) 1996 would be more promising for green energy.

Emmanuel Guérin, Director of the Energy and Climate Programme of IDDRI, discussed the ambivalent role trade can perform in promoting green energy, depending on whether trade and climate policies are coordinated. He distinguished demand-pull and technology-push policies, showing how countries distributed policy differently between both models and its effectiveness in achieving desired goals.

Ricardo Melendez-Ortiz, Chief Executive of ICTSD, touched upon the problem of access to modern forms of energy and the importance of trade in providing it. In order to scale up the use of renewable energy, he said that policies would need to foster green technology and increase its manufacturing capacity, also by means of subsidies, technical standards, local-content requirements, technology transfer. Finally, he commented on the different possibilities for a framework agreement for energy proposed by the ICTSD, following either an ITA type or GTA type agreement within the WTO framework, or a plurilateral agreement outside the WTO framework, with different consequences on membership and benefit sharing.

The moderator concluded the session by stressing the convergence of the speakers on the fact that the actual framework does not provide sufficient support to the move towards renewable energy. Also, she stressed that countries need a forum to discuss and converge to clean energy, where every country will engage without the fear of trade sanctions.