WELLINGTON, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Donors at an international energy conference in New Zealand have committed more than 1 billion NZ dollars (693.3 million U.S. dollars) to sustainable energy projects in the Pacific, Foreign Minister Murray McCully said Tuesday.
The money committed at the Pacific Energy Conference in Auckland followed 635 million NZ dollars (440.12 million U.S. dollars) committed at the 2013 Pacific Energy Summit, McCully said in a statement.
Investors included conference co-hosts New Zealand and the European Union, as well as the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank Group, Japan, the United Arab Emirates and Australia.
The sum raised at the 2013 event had eventually translated into more than 900 million NZ dollars (624.69 million U.S. dollars) in investments across 70 projects, so the commitments announced Tuesday could increase as opportunities for leverage became apparent, said McCully.
"With the growing role for the private sector and the prospect of access to the UN Green Climate Fund there should be significant potential to further expand our efforts in this area," said McCully.
New Zealand had agreed to provide a further 100 million NZ dollars (69.33 million U.S. dollars) to Pacific energy projects, bringing its total contribution to 220 million NZ dollars (152.63 million U.S. dollars).
Since 2013, New Zealand and the EU had partnered to deliver renewable energy projects in Tuvalu, Samoa, the Cook Islands, and Kiribati.
EU Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development Neven Mimica welcomed the expansion of the partnership.
"I am particularly pleased to have signed today with New Zealand a Joint Declaration of Cooperation on a Pacific Partnership for Sustainable Energy. It signals our commitment to expand the scope of our close cooperation on renewable energy to benefit, among others, Tonga, Niue and northern Pacific," Mimica said in a statement.
"Furthermore this declaration paves the way for the future expansion of the successful EU-New Zealand partnership to fields such as climate change, in accordance with the framework established by the Paris Agreement, and sustainable agriculture, starting with Vanuatu."
