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Cebu City, The Philippines, 13 October
2015 - “There is a need to establish the resilience of
businesses, even the small and medium scale enterprises, in times of disasters
to ensure continuity of operations,” said Philippine Department of Energy
Secretary Zenaida Monsada on Tuesday.
Drawing
the link between energy resilience and business continuity, Secretary Zenaida
Monsada introduced the agenda for the 12th APEC Energy Ministerial Meeting convening
today in Cebu, The Philippines.
"Today’s
agenda brings to the forefront APEC economies’ initiatives and collective
efforts to ensure energy-secured and sustainable communities capable of
withstanding the unpredictable environmental changes and adverse effects as
economies modernize and expand,” said Monsada, who also chairs this year’s
ministers' meeting.
“This
year’s meetings are guided by the sub-themes: climate proofing energy
infrastructure; improving energy trade and investment in APEC; advancing
cutting-edge energy efficient technologies; and promoting community-based clean
energy use in energy poverty stricken areas."
Monsada
said that energy infrastructure stands to benefit from the resilience-oriented
agenda as these structures bear the brunt of disasters, oftentimes disrupting
value chains.
“We
have seen how communities are paralyzed during disasters when such
infrastructure is affected and damaged,” he continued. “We all recognize that
energy serves as the bloodline of economies and without reliable energy supply,
economies will recover slower or worse, will not function at all."
Monsada
also highlighted the importance of financial resilience, along with
infrastructure development to ensure the sustainability of economic gains in
the region. She also noted the work that is being done under the APEC disaster
risk reduction framework to improve resiliency of economies.
"We
hope, therefore, that APEC member economies will come up with innovative
measures and avenues to foster greater cooperation to ensure energy security, sustainability
and now resiliency, especially that APEC accounts for about 60 per cent of
the world’s energy demand."
Accounting
for around 60 per cent of world energy demand, the APEC region includes four of
the world's five largest energy users. This demand, according to the Asia
Pacific Energy Research Centre, will increase by 32 per cent by 2040.
With
growing international attention on this issue, energy sustainability has been
centrally placed as an important parameter for the Sustainable Development
Goals now endorsed unanimously by the United Nations for the post-2015
development agenda.
"At
the end of the day, we hope that APEC economies will also learn, aside from
protecting the energy infrastructures, how to get up, recover, and build more
resilient economies and train people to be more proactive for the benefit of
their communities and cities," Secretary Monsada concluded.
# # #
For further details, please
contact:
Ma.
Lizbeth S. B. Edra +65 9452 8344 at mlbe@apec.org
Michael
Chapnick +65 9647 4847 at mc@apec.org
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