On April 28, 2021, AMALA’s Managing Director, Migara Jayawardena, made a presentation at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) webinar on Building Resilience of Power Systems in a Low Carbon Transition. A TED-style talk focused on the experience in Belize where a novel approach using load-dispatch information during extreme weather events were used to identify power system vulnerabilities, serving as a basis for developing a comprehensive set of interventions to address them. The Government of Belize and the Belize Electricity Company (BEL) were supported by the Global Environment Facility and the World Bank to implement these interventions as a part of the Energy Resilience and Climate Adaptation Project. Through the presentation and follow-on dialog, Migara Jayawardena illustrated how a similar approach can be applied in many ADB client countries to strengthen their power systems and improve reliability to adapt to extreme weather and climate impacts. He noted that adaptation and resilience action is still limited in many portfolios of international financial institutions (IFIs) and encouraged participants to operationalize such initiatives as they are increasingly becoming an development imperative.

• To link to webinar webpage, click here.
• To learn more about the Belize Energy Resilience and Climate Adaptation Project, click here.