October 28, 2011

The Government of Norway and the International Energy Agency (IEA) co-organized Energy for All, a high-level conference on energy access from 10-11 October 2011 in Oslo, Norway. In the run-up to the 2012 International Year of Sustainable Energy for All, the event explored possible ways to finance access to energy for the 1.4 billion people without electricity and 2.5 billion people who still use unhealthy traditional biomass for cooking. CGD senior fellow Charles Kenney’s recent article in Slate explains the importance of ensuring that new sources of energy are clean. CGD president Nancy Birdsall gave a keynote speech at the Energy for All conference in Oslo on Cash-On-Delivery Aid for Energy Access suggesting that an approach whereby donors pay governments for outputs, not inputs, can help to scale up energy access in poor countries. In her blog after the conference, Birdsall included energy services for all in the next round of MDGs.

In a 30 August CGD-hosted meeting with Ambassador Brice Lalonde, the Executive Coordinator of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), and Washington-based NGOs, Lalonde explained that agreeing on a target for expanding energy access is one of the major goals for the Rio+20 summit next year.

Nancy’s speech at Oslo builds on a paper with Arvind Subramanian that identifies a fair deal on climate change for high-income and developing countries by focusing not on equitable emissions quotas, but on fair access to energy services. The paper proposes developing an indicator for making basic energy services available to people. It posits a simple principle, namely that the developing countries’ future access to energy services per se (not to carbon emissions) should be no different from the energy services enjoyed by high-income countries at the latter’s comparable stages of development.

The twin challenges of expanding access and reducing carbon emissions have led to a resurgence of large hydropower projects to promote electricity generation and economic growth. CGD senior fellow David Wheeler moderated a civil society panel discussion on "Hydropower Standards in a Changing Economic Landscape" during the World Bank-IMF Annual Meetings. The panel discussed the need to ensure that hydropower projects are designed to meet multiple goals (water storage, environmental quality, power, etc.) and effectiveness of MDB assessment tools (social and environmental safeguards policies) to promote multiple uses and strengthen social and environmental outcomes.

At the Oslo meeting the IEA issued a special excerpt of its forthcoming World Energy Outlook 2011 called "Energy For All: Financing Access for the Poor” and Norway launched its Energy+ initiative, together with UNIDO, UNEP and UNDP. Energy+ builds on the success of Norway’s REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries, as well as conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of carbon stocks) funding scheme. Support for energy access through this fund is expected to be over US$1 billion. Image: Kilian Munch

The tenth meeting of the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility took place in Berlin this past week (Oct 17-19). The principal objective of the FCPF Readiness Fund is to prepare countries for future performance-based REDD+ payments. CGD’s FORMA is now cranking out monthly data for dozens of countries, and David Wheeler is developing a global incentive system to stop tropical forest clearing: From REDD to Green. Image: Rainforest Network

While there have been setbacks in the clean tech sector due to the failure of the U.S. solar firm Solyndra, CGD continues to discuss with interested public and private funders ideas to move forward with proposals set out in the CGD working paper A Green Venture Fund to Finance Clean Technology for Developing Countries. Following the third meeting of Transitional Committee to design the Green Climate Fund that took place in Geneva in September (see Draft Report the Transitional Committee), the final TC meeting before the Durban climate conference took place this week in South Africa (16-17 October). We hope that the design of the Green Climate Fund will include incentives to draw in private investors for clean tech in emerging markets. Early examples of a fund-of-funds approach include the EIB’s Global Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Fund, which is currently trying to draw in private investors to this publicly financed fund-of-funds, and the CP3 (Climate Public Private Partnership), ) a “fund of intermediaries,” led by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) together with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the IFC. Image: Dana Smillie/ World Bank

Michele de Nevers and David Wheeler