No green without digital: ESTDEV hosts panel on Twin Transition Initiative at COP28

Katrin Winter, ESTDEV’s regional head for Africa, hosted a panel called “Twin Transition in the Global South — What’s cooking, Team Europe?”. The main topic of discussion was the goals of the EU’s D4D Hub Twin Transition Initiative.

Panel participants included Carla Montesi, director of the Green Deal & Digital Agenda for the European Commission; Dr Heike Henn, director for Climate, Energy and Environment at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ); Jeremie Pellet, CEO of Expertise France; and Sophie Benedicte Jaqcues, the expert on Energy and Climate for the Belgian Development Agency, Enabel. The panelists’ respective organisations are part of the European Working Group on the Twin Transition.

“Green for digital, digital for green”

Digital technologies cause 3-4% of carbon emissions, use 7-9% of the global electricity supply and generate ever-increasing amounts of e-waste, according to a paper in the Journal of Cleaner Production, This is why the Twin Transition Initiative focuses on making digital services greener while using digitalisation to fight climate change — essentially digital for green and green for digital.

Director of the Green Deal & Digital Agenda for the European Commission Carla Montesi noted the importance of considering sustainability while developing digital solutions, saying, “Green and digital are very much connected. We need to ensure that everything that we want to do about digitalisation, everything that is on governance, everything on technology, on connectivity has to be prepared with a green approach.”

Montesi pointed out the example of data centres as a site for change. Africa has very few data centres, so they will be building them in the future. If partners have the necessary support, they can achieve the goal of building them green from the ground up.

How does Team Europe envision collaborating on the Twin Transition Initiative?

Under the umbrella of the Joint Initiative Twin Transition, members of the Working Group are designing a joint action by Team Europe with a focus on Digital Green Innovation (DGI), envisaged to start in early 2024. The Digital and Green Innovation Action would be the first step towards fulfilling the twin transition goals by helping transform the green and cleantech scene in the Global South by empowering and scaling local innovations.

The Action would support climate-focused digital innovation through three main components:

• The first is through grants and entrepreneurial advisory. Local challenges and potential solutions would be supported financially through direct grants, accompanied by entrepreneurship and technical advisory, and include local capacity-building in collaboration with European partners and local stakeholders.
• The policy and global coordination component focuses on coordinating stakeholders to build a knowledge base for digital and green innovation support and policymaking.
• The final component would involve financial advisory services, educating green digital innovators on financial readiness and connecting them with private- or public-sector investors to obtain additional funding for their solutions.

During the panel, Jeremie Pellet, the CEO of Enterprise France, commented that entrepreneurs in partner countries are eager to access the expertise Team Europe brings to the table. “Entrepreneurs from the South are waiting for us to share our experience. They have strong bonds with Europe. Sometimes, they live in Europe and they’re waiting for more exchanges with the European ecosystem,” Pellet said.

Estonia ready to share its digital expertise

Estonia is a founding member of the Digital4Development (D4D) Hub, where the Twin Transition Team Europe Initiative was created. The long-term goal of this project is to support new digital solutions and facilitate partnerships between the EU member states and other partners to address climate change and mitigate the related challenges in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Asia-Pacific region.

Each member of Team Europe brings unique experiences and expertise that they have learned through digitalisation processes in their own countries, and Estonia is not an exception.

“The strong relationships developed between the government, academia, private sector and civil society have put Estonia on the map as a frontrunner in the digital and green transition, and our substantial experience with start-up and innovation ecosystems makes us a valuable member of the European Working Group on the Twin Transition Initiative,” said Katrin Winter, ESTDEV’s regional head for Africa.

The tools are there, as is the will to change. As Dr Heike Henn from BMZ summed it up, Team Europe needs to join forces, think outside the box and act fast.