Energy officials from the 21 APEC member economies have identified innovations coming out of the Asia-Pacific that are redefining standards for clean and efficient energy use, and fueling potentially game-changing green development across the world’s largest energy consuming and carbon emitting region.

Successfully adopted energy smart technologies and approaches were evaluated as part of a best practices competition administered in conjunction with a multi-year APEC Energy Smart Communities Initiative (ESCI) to promote next generation development and growth within the sector. The winners were revealed during a recent meeting of officials in Honolulu that helped to take the initiative forward.

Winning projects were selected from more than 200 public and private sector submissions and awarded gold and silver rankings across five categories: smart transportation, buildings, grids and jobs as well as cross-cutting low carbon model towns.

APEC has articulated a shared goals of doubling renewable energy generation by 2030 and reducing energy intensity by 45 per cent by 2035.

“New innovations and support infrastructure being developed in the Asia-Pacific are opening the door to potentially significant improvements both in the integration of clean, renewable energy sources and efficient energy use,” said Phyllis Genther Yoshida, Chair of the APEC Energy Working Group. “Building awareness of smart energy concepts and the economic and technical capacity of the region’s diverse economies to replicate them will be key to advancing sustainability within the sector and new climate objectives globally.”

Genther Yoshida is also United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy.

“When there are proven real world examples to which the public and private sectors can refer,” she added, “it can do a lot to boost project development.”

Among the projects cited by APEC were an intelligent transportation services project from Taiwan; a smart buildings project from South Korea; the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative from the United States; an energy efficiency training program from Australia and the Yokohama Smart City Project from

Japan.