Convenings

In September 2026, Climate Asia and Surge Climate Talent convened leaders at The Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center for the first working session of the Global Clean Energy Talent Initiative (G-CETI).

The question before the group was a practical one: how the Global South builds a workforce equal to the clean energy economy it is now creating.

Investment in renewables across the Global South is growing quickly, and jobs are following. The systems that connect people to those jobs have not kept pace. Training is often designed without reference to employer demand. Public skilling programmes and industry operate separately. Workforce development attracts little dedicated funding, and no institution owns the task of coordination. Without deliberate effort, the transition will widen the gap between those with access to opportunity and those without.

G-CETI was established to address this. Over three days at Bellagio, participants compared experiences across countries, examined what has worked and what has not, and defined where philanthropy, industry, government, and civil society each need to act. The convening closed with a shared agenda for the initiative's next phase.