Toward Energy and Climate Security

Pathways and Priorities for Cooperation in 2022

Over the course of 2021, NBR worked with numerous partners across the Indo-Pacific to identify areas to strengthen existing cooperation or build new partnerships to achieve goals for energy and climate security. Issues ranged from considering the role for natural gas and other fuels in energy transitions; building resilient and reliable power sectors in South and Southeast Asia, with an in-depth focus on India; and assessing how countries prepared for and are responding to the most recent United Nations climate conference (COP26).

Alongside these programs, countries across the Indo-Pacific were experiencing or preparing for leadership transitions; mitigating the ongoing pandemic and impact from natural disasters; and devising strategies to achieve net-zero emissions with economic growth. These have all raised important questions of how countries can both individually and collectively achieve targets for economic, energy, and climate security.

Within this context, NBR asked leading U.S. policymakers Senator Dan Sullivan and Representative Joaquin Castro and regional experts Hiroyuki Suzuki (Chief Representative of the Washington, D.C. office, Japan Bank for International Cooperation) and Astha Gupta (Consultant to the International Energy Agency) to share what they view to be priority areas for energy and environmental cooperation in 2022.