Thinking Global

United Nations declares UN Year of Sustainable Energy for All

The United Nations has made2012 the year of Sustainable Energy for All to support three inter-linked objectives:

• Ensure universal access to modern energy services
• Double the rate of improvement in energy efficiency
• Double the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix.

Anyone working in sustainable energy can hardly argue with these objectives.

As part of the Sustainable Energy for All Initiative, the United Nations Foundation has launched a new global Energy Access Practitioner Network to bring together practitioners from the private sector and civil society working on the delivery of energy services and solutions related to electrification in developing countries. The goal is to develop a more integrated approach to energy access planning and execution in support of the Sustainable Energy for All Target to achieve universal energy access by 2030. The Network will focus on both household and community level electrification for productive purposes, incorporating specific market-based applications for health, agriculture, education, small business, communities and household solutions.

The UN initiative has gone somewhat unnoticed in Europe, no doubt because there is so much going on in Europe. Europeans are focused on the approval process for the Energy Efficiency Directive, member states are busily implementing energy efficiency directives as well as struggling to meet the renewable energy obligations for 2020. But it is well worth thinking about a prominent role for Europe in the UN initiative, when almost all Europeans have access to energy and there is so much basic work to do in so many other parts of the world.

EBRD moves South

Europe is looking beyond its borders to provide support to ‘Arab Spring’ countries.  The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is an international financial institution that provides project financing in central Europe to central Asia, countries that are considered “in transition.”  The EBRD has recently shifted some of its effort to the Middle East and North Africa. Jordan and Tunisia recently became EBRD shareholders in the southern and eastern Mediterranean region, joining Egypt and Morocco which were founding members when the Bank was established in 1991 (although they were not countries of operations).  So far, more than €59 million in donor funds has been made available as part of the first phase of the EBRD’s economic response to the important political developments in North Africa and the Middle East.

The use of donor funds for technical cooperation will lay the groundwork for future  investments, once shareholders have ratified amendments to EBRD statutes to allow the Bank to invest in the southern and eastern Mediterranean (SEMED) region, as it is known.  The EU has signed agreements with the EBRD to provide €20 million for technical cooperation activities in the EBRD’s prospective new countries of operations. This comprises €15 million for a project preparation framework and €5 million for the EBRD TurnAround Management and Business Advisory Services (TAM/BAS).  Nine other donors have pledged funds for the Bank’s activities in the SEMED region. Australia and Italy pledged €0.5 million each, Finland €3.5 million, France €3 million, Germany €1 million, the Netherlands and Norway €2 million each, Sweden €1 million and the UK £5 million (€5.8 million) and the EBRD itself has contributed a further €20 million from its net income allocation to accelerate the launch of activities in the SEMED region.

The first agreed donor-funded project will help Fast Transport Group, an Egyptian-owned small business that provides private transportation services in Alexandria, to expand services to Cairo and to improve its business model and management.

The EBRD states that it has the capacity to eventually invest as much as €2.5 billion a year across the southern and eastern Mediterranean region.

Already some scoping work using technical assistance support is being undertaken in these countries to help the EBRD determine how it can best develop financial initiatives for these countries. These are important initiatives, with significant potential implications for sustainable energy projects, and an important opportunity for sharing Europe’s know-how and best practice in other parts of the world.

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EiD will be following such multilateral developments, especially in the lead up to the Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio +20, in June this year.