ACEF 2016: Call for Abstracts Announcement

Last year, ACEF celebrated its 10th anniversary by bringing in more than 1,500 people from 64 countries to participate in the forum events, including more than 200 expert speakers. This year, we are thrilled to bring back the 11th edition of ACEF with a deeper focus on the challenges, opportunities, and new frontiers for Asia's clean energy sector after the adoption of the Paris Agreement at CoP 21.

The Call for Abstracts for ACEF 2016 is now open. This year, we have streamlined the program from six (6) to four (4) tracks. As usual, we will have three sector focused tracks, covering the core pillars of Energy for All: Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, and Energy Access. We have done away with the Technology, Policy, and Finance tracks, as we believe it will be more productive, and reduce â€œstovepipingâ€, to have discussion of these tools (technological, policy, financial) contextualized around the three pillars of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and energy access. We believe that this can deliver a more well-rounded perspective and hence generate innovative thinking.

In addition to the three sector focused tracks, we are introducing a new track, titled Charting the Future of Clean Energy in Asia. This track will be cross-cutting and focus on big ideas that will be important for the transition to a clean energy future for Asia.

The deadline for submissions is 25 March 2016, at 17:00 Manila time (+8 GMT). Submissions must be short (no more than 150 words), and should highlight concrete outcomes and achievements. You can find the form for submissions on the Call for Abstracts page on our website here.

Increasing access to energy has historically been assumed to be synonymous with increasing access to electrical connections or to clean non-solid fuels. There is an emerging consensus, however, that energy access should also be characterized by attributes such as capacity of service connections, affordability, reliability and convenience. We encourage submission of abstracts that draw out this multi-dimensional nature of energy access and increase knowledge of how innovations are (or are not) contributing to improvements along multiple attributes.

In this track, we will explore big ideas and cross-cutting issues that could influence the future direction of clean energy efforts in the ASIA/ASEAN region. In line with the "Implementation and Innovationâ€ focus of this yearâ€™s ACEF, we encourage topics related to the role of innovation, technology, policy, and finance that will encourage debate and deep and holistic discussion about what works in practice. We want to hear about new implementation models and approaches, and integrated ways of thinking about energy and infrastructure development that can accelerate and scale-up the adoption of low-carbon approaches.

Below is a list of potential session topics. We encourage participants to contact the ACEF Steering Committee if you have additional ideas for session topics.