The Special Session of the 2018 Vienna Energy Forum (VEF) convened on Monday, 14 May 2018, and was attended by over 430 participants. The roundtable “A New Deal for Economies of Scale and Inclusiveness – the Global Network of Regional Sustainable Energy Centres (GN-SEC)” highlighted sub-regional cooperation as important tool to accelerate the energy and climate transformation in developing countries. The VEF sent a strong message to the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), scheduled to take place in July 2018 in New York, to further strengthen the “sub-regional dimension” in the SDG-7 review.