EBRD Pledges Support For Azerbaijan At COP29 (Exclusive)

(MENAFN- Trend News Agency) BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 6. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) stands ready to collaborate closely with Azerbaijan to ensure COP29 is a successful and impactful event, advancing our shared goals of sustainability and climate action, Alkis Vryenios Drakinos, Director, Regional Head of the Caucasus for the EBRD, told Trend .

"Our team in Baku, but also those spread across our different countries will be supporting Azerbaijan in leveraging the opportunity presented by the conference to mobilize green finance on a national, regional, and global scale," he said.

Drakinos pointed out that Azerbaijan's role in advancing climate action and sustainability goals is becoming increasingly significant.

"The country has taken a pole position in the Caucasus when it comes to deploying utility-scale solar and wind energy generation capacity, and the EBRD has been instrumental in facilitating this. As the largest institutional investor in Azerbaijan, and the climate finance leader in the region, we are a natural partner for Azerbaijan's ambitious decarbonization agenda," the official noted.

The EBRD rep reminded that the bank has recently financed the first utility-scale privately owned wind power plant in the Absheron and Khizi regions, following investment in the first utility-scale solar power plant in Garadagh last year.

"We're also enhancing energy efficiency in Ganja under our flagship Green Cities program. On the policy front, our collaboration on renewable energy auctions has led to the planned development of a solar power plant project in Garadagh. We now want to help carry this momentum forward and we believe that COP29 is a great opportunity," Drakinos concluded.

Azerbaijan will host the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) in November this year. The decision was made at the plenary meeting of COP28 held in Dubai on December 11 last year. Within two weeks, Baku, having become the center of the world, will host about 70,000-80,000 foreign guests.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is an agreement signed at the Rio Earth Summit in June 1992 to prevent dangerous human interference in the climate system. The acronym COP (Conference of Parties) stands for Conference of Parties, which is the highest legislative body overseeing the implementation of the Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The parties to the convention are 198 countries. Unless the parties have decided otherwise, COP is held annually. The first COP event was held in March 1995 in Germany's Berlin, and its secretariat is located in Bonn.

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