On August 27, ORF America launched the IBSA+Indonesia Intergovernmental Advisory Group (IAG) with an inaugural virtual convening. The strategic group brings together serving and former officials, diplomats, and senior experts from India, Brazil, South Africa, and Indonesia to move beyond high-level dialogue and shape practical, actionable pathways for Global South cooperation across the clean energy landscape.
The convening builds on more than a year of research and international workshops in Washington, D.C., Cape Town, and Jakarta under ORF America's Green Transitions Initiative. Together, the four countries represent over 1.9 billion people and consecutive G20 presidencies, positioning them to help shape global consensus while ensuring that the developmental priorities of the Global South remain central to international policymaking. At the same time, all four face the shared challenge of expanding their economies and energy systems while decarbonizing, and bring complementary strengths across clean manufacturing, biofuels, critical minerals, renewable energy deployment, and procurement.
Key takeaways from the discussion included:
IBSA+Indonesia cooperation should advance on two mutually reinforcing fronts: collaboration among the four countries and coordination on the global stage. The IAG members emphasized the importance of strengthening cooperation among India, Brazil, South Africa, and Indonesia by sharing policy experiences, implementation challenges, and national strategies, while also building greater coordination in international forums such as the G20, COP, and BRICS. This could enable the four countries to develop stronger collective approaches to issues including trade, carbon markets, standards, climate finance, and the broader governance of the global energy transition.
High financing costs and weak offtake remain two of the most significant barriers to scaling clean energy investment. Clean energy projects in emerging economies continue to face substantially higher costs of capital than comparable projects in advanced economies. At the same time, participants noted that project execution itself is often not the principal constraint; instead, uncertainty around demand, off-takers, and market integration can prevent otherwise viable projects from advancing. Cooperation could therefore focus on innovative financing and de-risking mechanisms while also developing stronger demand aggregation, flexible contracts, and business models that provide investors with greater certainty.
Standards, procurement, certification, and trade offer immediate pathways for cooperation. The IAG members identified four areas where the countries could begin working together: harmonizing technical standards across sectors such as EVs, batteries, hydrogen, and green steel; coordinating procurement to aggregate demand and reduce costs; developing interoperable certification, traceability, carbon-accounting, and sustainable taxonomy frameworks; and exploring preferential trade arrangements that can facilitate cross-border investment and strengthen collective bargaining power.
Technical working groups and greater private-sector engagement will be critical to translating dialogue into action. The IAG members supported establishing focused working groups that could advance industry-to-industry and policy-to-policy cooperation in areas such as critical minerals, industrial decarbonization, standards, and clean technology deployment. The discussion also highlighted the importance of connecting governments with companies, industry associations, research institutions, and academia, while facilitating greater cross-border investment among firms from the four countries.
The group should define measurable objectives that can provide a clear “north star” for cooperation. Participants stressed that the initiative should ultimately produce tangible outcomes rather than remain primarily a forum for dialogue. One proposal was to develop a 2028 action agenda with measurable objectives around energy transition performance, investment, technology cooperation, and implementation. Such an agenda could provide a common framework for technical working groups and help translate recommendations into proposals that governments can take forward.
Energy cooperation should be designed for a changing global economy, not only today’s transition. Participants placed the energy transition within a broader set of structural shifts including AI and data centers, biotechnology, critical minerals, financial systems, and geopolitics. They argued that cooperation should therefore incorporate strategic foresight and be guided by three shared values, sovereignty, resilience, and democratic sustainable development. Greater interoperability across standards, taxonomies, carbon markets, and potentially Digital Public Infrastructure could also help the four countries create new cross-border value chains and strengthen their collective position in the emerging global economy.
