Geneva, Switzerland—29 April 2013—The World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Energy Charter organized a workshop to discuss how WTO regulation and the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) apply to trade and investment in energy. Beyond discussing existing rules, the workshop debated the potential for new legislature and the need to reform governance to deal with energy trade.

In his opening speech, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy expressed concerns on the lack of a forward-looking discussion within the WTO on the rapidly growing trade and energy interface. In the same breath, he stressed the need to build consensus on the role of energy governance in the WTO. He highlighted fossil-fuel subsidy reform and renewable energy incentives as two of the most important contemporary challenges.

On fossil-fuel subsidy reform, Lamy was critical of the role that has been played by the trade regime to date: "The discussion on the reform of fossil-fuel subsidies has largely bypassed the WTO. This is a missed opportunity". In subsequent discussions, Dale Andrew from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) emphasized that charging the full cost of fossil fuels is one of the main market-pull policies for increasing renewable energy development and uptake.

On renewable energy subsidies, both Lamy and other participants observed that in spite of increasing WTO legal disputes, a discussion on the trade-related aspects of renewable energy incentives remains absent at the WTO. Joachim Karl of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) affirmed that an unstable political and legal environment is one of the main factors discouraging FDI in the energy sector and, in particular, is one of the main impediments to the uptake of renewables.

In October 2010, the GSI and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) organized a high level conference on fossil fuel subsidy reform at the WTO, among others to discuss the potential role of the WTO in promoting reform—an item that has not progressed nor left the reform agenda since.