Event Information
The fourth meeting of the Sustainable Energy Transitions Initiative (SETI) took place May 15-17, 2019 at University of Talca in Santiago, Chile. The workshop was co-hosted by the University of Talca and the University of Concepción.
As with prior meetings, we brought together leading experts working on this theme from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and organizations, but with a strong emphasis on environmental economics and policy. The meeting will consisted of a set of presentation and comments by selected speakers, smaller breakout and research planning sessions around specific topics, discussion of synthetic work being done by SETI research teams, and sessions with practitioners and policy-makers working on energy and development issues. The policy sessions focused particularly on energy issues relevant to the Latin American region (e.g., air pollution, deforestation, and/or enhanced energy access for the poor).
Common themes and sub-topics of presentations included:
- Impacts and drivers of regional air pollution and the policy mechanisms used to manage air quality;
- Consequences of energy poverty, and impacts of energy transitions at various scales (households, firms, and the regional and global environment);
- Drivers of the energy transition in low- and middle-income contexts, including lessons from past experiences;
- Adoption and impacts of renewable and off-grid or micro-grid solutions;
- New methods and data sources for measuring access to modern energy services;
- Policy levers and solutions to speed the energy transition; and analysis of their effectiveness; and
- Empirical evidence that speaks to gaps in research on energy transitions
