Tokyo, 25 September 2023: Japan's Ministry of Economic, Trade, and Industry (METI) held The Third Asia Green Growth Partnership Ministerial Meeting (AGGPM) as a part of Tokyo GX (Green Transformation) Week. The open meeting was attended by government officials and other stakeholders in charge of finance to address the importance of transition finance for a just and orderly transition to net-zero.

The meeting was opened by Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry Nishimura Yasutoshi, and followed by keynote speeches from the Japan Financial Services Agency (JFSA); Monetary Authority of Singapore; Tajikistan's Ministry of Energy and Water Resources; Kyrgyzstan's Ministry of Natural Resources, Ecology and Technical Supervision; the Philippines' Department of Energy; the Brunei Darussalam Embassy in Japan, and the United Arab Emirates' (UEA) Ministry of Energy.

Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) President Professor Tetsuya Watanabe raised the challenges and prospects in the Energy Transition in Asia session. He emphasized the importance of transition finance for the deployment of green and transition technologies.

Professor Jun Arima, ERIA Senior Policy Fellow on Energy and Environment, was a panellist in the session on The Role of Research Institution in Pragmatic Transition in Asia. Arima stressed the roles and contributions of ERIA as a research institute focusing on the ASEAN Region on facilitating knowledge provision, learning sessions, and analyses including, but not limited to, decarbonisation pathways, the Asia Transition Finance Study Group (ATF-SG), the Asia Zero Emission Community (AZEC), and the Asia CCUS Network (ACN). He also agreed that international organisations cannot force decisions and actions to be taken by individual countries, and should instead provide knowledge-based input for consideration.

Experience in a study collaborating with ASEAN Member States (AMS) resulted in ERIA calling on individual country governments to enhance in-house internal communication and integration on the clear perspective of the future cost of the energy transition.