Because a reliable and affordable supply of electricity is an essential basis for economic growth, emerging economies have experienced rapidly increasing demand for power. Ensuring that generation, transmission, and distribution in the power sector are as efficient as possible will help minimize greenhouse gas emissions from emerging economies. The emissions reduction potentials in the power sector are enormous. Even conservative estimates of potential energy savings from just applying best practices for existing coal-fired power generation plants are well over one gigaton of carbon dioxide emissions reductions per year.
Under the Power Working Group, key experts and leaders from the public, private, and academic/research sectors will exchange information and create practical projects through public-private partnerships in a bottom-up manner. Potential areas for cooperation include efficiency and environmental performance improvements at existing power plants of all types, and loss reduction in electricity transmission and distribution. Improvement of demand-side management for the power sector will also be discussed.
The Working Group will build upon, and expand geographically, the scope of work introduced under the Asia-Pacific Partnership Power Generation and Transmission Task Force, which is a partnership among the governments and business communities of Australia, Canada, China, India, Japan, Korea, and the United States.
The Working Group will provide a unique forum for public-private dialogue and cooperation, and will focus on the following: