The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) took part on 2 July 2026 in the webinar "Clean and Affordable Energy: Where do we stand? How to move forward?", organized by UN-Energy and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) ahead of the review of Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) on affordable and clean energy, scheduled for 7 July 2026 in New York as part of the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) 2026. The virtual event brought together representatives of regional commissions and United Nations agencies to assess global progress on SDG7.

The opening session was led by Mr. Minoru Takada, Secretary of UN-Energy at UNDESA, who raised three central questions: where the world stands on SDG7, how energy drives the broader sustainable development agenda, and what actions taken now will shape the energy trajectory beyond 2030. According to the Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report 2026, presented by the SDG7 custodian agencies, global electricity access stands at 92%; 655 million people remain without a connection, 85% of them in sub-Saharan Africa; and close to 2 billion people still rely on polluting fuels for cooking. Renewables account for 30% of global electricity generation but only 18% of total final energy consumption, and international public finance flows to developing countries fell to USD 24.6 billion, down from a peak of USD 31.4 billion in 2016.

In the panel's regional discussion, ECLAC noted that Latin America and the Caribbean is a global leader in renewable electricity generation and has achieved electricity access of close to 99%, though these gains are not enough to put the region on track to fully meet SDG7 by 2030 given structural implementation challenges. ECLAC identified five central challenges: closing the remaining access and equity gaps, particularly in clean cooking, which disproportionately affects women; accelerating the decarbonization of final energy consumption, since close to two thirds of the region's primary energy mix still depends on fossil fuels; strengthening governance and institutional capacity; mobilizing finance at the scale required; and turning the energy transition into a driver of productive development and regional integration by tapping the region's critical minerals potential.

The intervention concluded that the challenge for the region is no longer to prove that the energy transition is possible, but to implement it: scaling up investment, strengthening institutions and ensuring a just and inclusive transition. In this regard, ECLAC prepared the regional chapter "Advancing SDG7 in Latin America and the Caribbean" of the SDG7 Policy Briefs in Support of the HLPF 2026, published on 25 June 2026 by the SDG7 Technical Advisory Group, coordinated by UNDESA. The chapter shows that regional electrification reached 98.5% in 2023, that renewables accounted for 64.5% of electricity generation in 2024, and that meeting the region's energy and climate targets through 2050 will require annual investment equivalent to between 1.7 and 1.9% of regional GDP, compared with a current level of just 0.23%.

Through its participation in this webinar and its authorship of the regional chapter of the SDG7 Policy Briefs, ECLAC reaffirms its commitment to supporting Latin American and Caribbean countries in strengthening energy planning, mobilizing finance and building a just, inclusive and sustainable energy transition, in line with SDG7.