At London Climate Action Week on June 23, 2025, WRI and Climate Compatible Growth (CCG) formalized a strategic partnership to cooperate on energy transition, energy access, transport, critical minerals, political economy and more. WRI and CCG will continue to expand joint work supporting strategic energy planning and promoting sound scientific practice in energy modeling. The partnership builds on a history of collaboration between the two organizations. As WRI scales up its energy work with the new WRI Polsky Center for the Global Energy Transition, partnerships with visionary initiatives like CCG can lead to transformative change.
Energy planning and modeling are essential to an inclusive, low-carbon future. However, fragmented data, lack of tools and limited capacity of government departments are hampering development of energy plans. Open-source data and tools — such as Energy Access Explorer, an online platform for mapping energy access — are helping identify and prioritize areas for new and expanded energy projects. Together, WRI and CCG are helping inform inclusive energy planning to improve energy access and provide practical solutions on a global scale.
WRI’s Energy Access Explorer is an open-source, interactive platform designed to visualize energy access in unserved and underserved areas, supporting solutions to achieve universal energy access.
Jennifer Layke, WRI’s Global Director, Energy, said, “Collaborating with CCG enables us to move faster and go further as we tackle energy access challenges. To achieve access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all, around 135 million new connections are needed each year from 2024. This is why we are committed to finding the most impactful and scalable solutions. Through tools like the Energy Access Explorer, governments and businesses can identify opportunities that are truly transformative for communities around the world.”
Through this partnership, WRI and CCG will:
- Facilitate training on Energy Access Explorer for energy planners, governments and digital tool developers through platforms such as Open University.
- Support energy modeling capacity building, including boot camps and training in Africa and Italy at the Energy Modelling Platforms (EMPs) and associated Energy Modelling Communities (EMCs), focused on energy access, energy transition and related sectors.
- Continue to collaborate on research papers and policy briefs that advance understanding and practical solutions for those planning for future energy needs.
- Foster South-South cooperation and integrate global and regional strategies for a clean, abundant, affordable and reliable energy future.
The Program Director of CCG, Professor Mark Howells of Loughborough University and Imperial College London, said “We are delighted to have put our working relationship with WRI on a more formal footing, having worked together for a number of years already. We share a point of view on many climate-related issues and agree on the most appropriate ways to tackle them. By working together, we hope to achieve significant progress on providing support for countries in the Global South in their energy transitions.”
