March 2012

As the Durban climate change conference and the outcomes taken fade into the background, attention moves to the upcoming Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (a follow-up to the UN Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio twenty years ago).

The summit has two main themes: the “institutional framework for sustainable development” and the “green economy.” While the overall goals for the summit are broad--securing renewed political commitment to sustainable development, assessing the progress and implementation gaps in meeting already agreed commitments, and addressing new and emerging challenges--a key goal is to increase renewable energy to provide energy access to the 1.3 billion people who do not have electricity and the 2.7 billion who use unhealthy biofuels. Indeed the UN has declared 2012 the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All.

Energy Access for All

In preparation for the Rio+20 summit, CGD hosted a meeting in August 2011 with Brice Lalonde, the executive coordinator of Rio+20, providing him an opportunity to ask civil society and U.S. government officials for feedback on the planning progress. From the discussion then, it was clear that the conference would address development more broadly, rather than just the environment. A focus on the green economy was also seen as a way to promote broad-based development, including universal access to energy.

Seeing a potential window for movement on energy access, CGD president Nancy Birdsall participated in the Oslo Energy for All conference in October 2011 and chaired a breakfast meeting a with Nigel Purvis, president of Climate Advisers, on 9 February. The meeting, attended by energy, poverty, and finance experts, discussed concrete initiatives that the Obama administration could support at Rio+20 that would unleash U.S. know-how and private sector investment to contribute to the eradication of energy poverty and the expansion of clean energy.

The task of providing electricity to underserved rural consumers while trying to minimize emissions of greenhouse gases underscores the failures of centralized electricity to meet these challenges. At a 22 February CGD brownbag seminar on a new book, Let There Be Light: Electrifying the Developing World with Markets and Distributed Energy, Rachel Kleinfeld, president of the Truman National Security Project, and Drew Sloan, described how distributed, renewable energy such as solar and wind power can help meet energy needs. Kleinfeld noted that one problem with expanding energy access is the business model, not merely technology. To scale, distributed energy must harness the power of the market. It cannot be assumed that just because poor people lack electricity that there is also a clear demand and willingness to pay for it: the value to the consumer must be more clearly demonstrated. There is a precedent for market driven scaling, as CGD’s Charles Kenney blogs, explaining that cost reductions in solar energy could lead to a technology jump much like the mobile phone.

New Developments

While the UN focuses on green energy access for the poor, at the other extreme eight of Europe’s largest energy companies have launched a clean energy alliance with a call for the EU to set legally enforceable targets for 2030 in emissions reductions, renewable energy, and energy efficiency. In the wake of the weak outcome on extending the Kyoto Protocol in Durban (needed to provide targets for emission reductions that can stimulate renewable energy) the companies are pressing for binding 2030 targets for renewables and an effective CO2 price as crucial elements to set an economic framework that can drive huge investments in renewable energy and a modern energy infrastructure. In the United States, energy promises to be a hot issue in the presidential election, with Republicans pressing for more drilling for oil and shale gas in the name of energy security.

As its key contribution to Rio+20, the U.S. Department of State together with the Stanford Graduate School of Business Center for Social Innovation organized a conference, “Bridging Connection Technologies and Sustainable Development.” The conference showcased innovative technology solutions to sustainable development challenges. The highlight was a session of “speed geeking,” bringing together about thirty organizations that use technology for development to explain their work in fast-paced demonstrations to small groups of conference participants. One of the most heavily visited demonstrations was a presentation by Robin Kraft and Dan Hammer of Forest Monitoring for Action (FORMA), the satellite based deforestation alert system developed by CGD. The FORMA tool is now being used by World Resources Institute in Global Forest Watch 2.0, which unites the CGD FORMA technology with transparency and human networks for more effective forest conservation and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

Apart from Rio+20, preparations continue apace to launch a Green Climate Fund whose operational outlines were agreed in Durban. The Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and UNDP organized a meeting in London between 27 and 29 February that brought together development effectiveness and climate finance practitioners to share lessons and develop work programs to promote Effective Climate Finance. The meeting discussed the need for the climate finance community to learn from the past mistakes of development assistance, as highlighted in a recent paper that Nancy Birdsall and I wrote, Adaptation Finance: How to Get Out from Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

Michelle de Nevers