SANTIAGO, Chile (Xinhua) — Energy experts gathered Tuesday in Chile’s capital Santiago for a two-day seminar designed to help promote Latin American and Caribbean cooperation in the sector.

The Aug. 18-19 seminar, “The Future of Energy: Latin America’s Path to Sustainability,” is being hosted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan Latin America Office (MSLAO), both based in Santiago.

“Energy is essential to the region’s economic growth and social development,” ECLAC said on its website, and organisers hope the event will “jump-start the dialogue” among academics, policy makers and industry leaders.

According to Lee Ullmann, director of MIT Sloan’s Office of International Programs, “it’s not about one country introducing changes, but about the region working as a whole to outline a path to sustainability.”

Today, 34 million people in the region have no electricity in their homes, “a basic service that’s essential for the development of societies,” Ullmann told Xinhua in a telephone interview.

Meanwhile, most communities rely on nonrenewable energy sources, that’s why “it’s fundamental to attend to the problem and increase access to renewable energy,” he added.

Academics at the seminar will present participating decision-makers with various options to improve energy access and efficiency, and underscore the economic and political costs of continuing to rely on nonrenewable energy in the region, such as climate change.

Countries such as Costa Rica, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Chile “are making a great effort” to promote sustainable energy, Ullmann acknowledged, but more needs to be done to meet the United Nations’ goal of providing sustainable energy to all the region’s inhabitants by 2030.