Policy paper

Clean Power for Growth roundtable, April 2025: Chair’s summary

Published 9 April 2025

Government, industry, international organisations and institutions met today in the Mattatoio, in the heart of Rome, to discuss the once in a lifetime global shift to clean power.

The roundtable was chaired by The Rt Hon. David Lammy, UK Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, and Italian Vice-President of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Antonio Tajani.

At the end of the roundtable, participants briefed His Majesty The King and the President of the Republic of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, on their discussion on global progress towards clean power.

They discussed that the clean power transition requires global leadership and a global approach, and that it is an opportunity to build more affordable, resilient and diverse power systems, enhance energy access, and support economic growth. These themes will be central to the UK’s hosting of the International Energy Agency Summit on the Future of Energy Security in London on 24-25 April 2025.

To unlock this growth and meet the COP28 Global Stocktake commitments to triple renewable energy capacity and double energy efficiency improvement rates by 2030, we must work together to realise the opportunities and overcome the challenges.

Industry representatives reiterated the clear economic case for investing in clean energy, sharing details of their project pipelines and of the steps they are taking to address challenges such as training and skills.

They welcomed the focus on these issues from the UK and Italy, and called on all governments to unlock opportunities, collaborate to overcome problems, and put a specific emphasis on improving energy access and building resilience in clean power supply chains, especially in Africa and the Global South.

We welcomed the support of the Sustainable Markets Initiative in bringing together industry partners to discuss the important issues set out in this Chair’s summary.

Pressure on energy supply chains is growing, as are bottlenecks, so taking action in this area is key to delivering progress by 2030. To support this, improvement in data transparency was discussed in order to meet the growing demand for clean energy technologies.

The International Energy Agency, who attended the roundtable, agreed to host a further discussion on data transparency in supply chains and make recommendations on how to close the data gap. This is a welcome step to shape inputs to the Government’s Global Clean Power Alliance Supply Chain Mission, supported by a first of its kind international supply chains roundtable in the margins of the Future of Energy Security Summit. The UK will also host a Wilton Park seminar supporting this work before the end of 2025.

Foreign Secretary Lammy announced a new Global Clean Power Scholarship as part of the prestigious Chevening Scholarship Programme, providing skills for leaders of the future, initially sponsored by Centrica, Octopus Energy and Prysmian and supported by Ofgem.

Following our meeting today, the Royal Academy of Engineering will convene global engineering stakeholders to examine the engineering and systems challenges in delivering the energy transition in a variety of contexts, and to highlight lessons learnt and examples of best practice.

At a European level, it will convene engineering and policy stakeholders to look at key critical materials issues for the continent, including better embedding circularity into critical material supply chains for the energy transition, resulting in recommendations to Governments.

Participants discussed that the energy transition will look different in different countries; and that we need to find solutions which work in harmony with nature, and ensure they are financed.

This is a particular challenge in Africa, where growth opportunities are significant, but the energy access and clean cooking gap is greatest, as well as the capability needs to drive forward central energy planning.

There are strong synergies between the work of United Nations Development Programme Rome Centre, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the King’s Trust International in building the capabilities and skills required to drive clean power in Africa.

These organisations will discuss bringing together their activity and communities around building engineering skills to support the pace and scale of transition, including unlocking more opportunities for young people, women, and girls, and making the best use of initiatives such as Youth4Climate.

The roundtable was attended by the following organisations:

• AngloAmerican
• Barclays
• Carbon Clean
• Centrica
• Enel
• Eni Plenitude
• Great British Energy
• International Energy Agency
• King’s Trust International
• Leonardo
• Octopus Energy
• Ofgem
• Royal Academy of Engineering
• Prysmian
• SNAM
• Sustainable Markets Initiative
• UN Development Programme Rome Centre for Climate Action and Energy Transition
• Zhero