JoAnne DiSano

Director
Division for Sustainable Development
Department of Economic and Social Affairs
United Nations

It is a pleasure and honor for me to take part in these opening ceremonies and to welcome you on behalf of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. The significance of this Workshop should not be lost on any of us; it represents a unique collaboration between the U.S. Government, the United Nations, and our local providers of energy services, Con Edison and New Energy, Inc. The theme of the Workshop: Energy Efficiency, Global Competitiveness and Deregulation fits closely with concerns and issues being addressed by the United Nations in many of its policy deliberations, but most particularly in the context of the Commission on Sustainable Development whose mandate is to develop policy guidelines and monitor international commitments flowing from the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development.

The Earth Summit was significant because it did much to set-out the role of business in achieving sustainable development. Although Agenda 21, the action plan resulting from UNCED, lacks specific industry-related goals, it has proved to be the starting point for many new business initiatives with sustainability as their stated objective. Business and industry have a key role to play in meeting the challenge of sustainable development. Private industry controls the bulk of capital investment, provides millions of jobs and trillions of dollars worth of goods and services. Industry has the technical capacity, management skills and financial resources necessary to help the world achieve sustainable development. The active leadership of business is essential to achieving a sustainable global economy.

As early as 1993, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development claimed that the industrialized world would have to reduce its material throughput, energy use and environmental degradation by more than 90 percent by the year 2040 to meet the world’s growth and development needs within the planet's ecological capacity. Germany's Wuppertal Institute working along similar lines projected that successful transition to sustainable development would require a four to tenfold decrease in Material Intensity Per Unit of Service (MIPS) by the year 2010. Clearly these projections imply dramatic changes in the means of production, in energy use and in consumption of all kinds.

These kinds of changes will require substantial technological, organizational and human capital innovations to enhance productive and energy efficiency. Public and private sector organizations can and must increasingly utilize new technologies and managerial methods to boost productivity and economize on energy, natural resources and other material inputs. A strong partnership between business, government, international organizations and civil society groups, such as exemplified by this workshop, is the foundation on which sustainable development needs to be built.

Developing countries for their part face a different kind of challenge. They will need to nearly double their current electrical energy generating capacity over the next decade to meet their goals for economic development. This will require capital investments in the order of 1 trillion dollars. But investment in new generating capacity by itself will not be enough. Some of the need can be met through increased energy efficiency, conservation and improved technology. Industries in developing countries use two to three time as much energy per unit of output as do developed countries. Through conservation, increased efficiency and better technology, considerable savings could be achieved that would otherwise be needed to pay for imported oil and to build new power plants.

Improving the efficiency of energy conversion and end-use applications can lead to reductions in energy consumption per unit of product. Making the energy system more efficient contributes to improving local air quality and reducing regional acidification, and offers considerable potential for greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction. It also reduces the investment requirements of the energy sector for any given level of GDP.

Many technological opportunities exist for improving energy efficiency in residential and commercial buildings, industry, transportation, agriculture and forestry and I trust this workshop will address some of those opportunities. While numerous technologies to improve energy efficiency and to manage energy demand more effectively are readily available, new developments can also enhance the potential of this option further. Material efficiency improvements, including recycling of materials and management of waste, can also reduce energy demand, green house gas emissions and other forms of pollution. These improvements in efficiency can directly impact the bottom line and contribute to the competitiveness of companies in all regions of the world.

Developed countries, in North America and Western Europe have a particularly important role to play in promoting energy efficiency not only in their own countries, but in developing countries as well. Because of their technology leadership in many fields, developed countries can contribute directly through the transfer of environmentally sound technologies that promote greater efficiency and higher levels of productivity.

A key issue for developing countries is whether they can leap frog to a more sophisticated level of clean and efficient production. The issue for companies is whether they are prepared to share, on a commercial basis, these more advanced, cleaner and energy efficient systems. On the other side, the CSD has emphasized the need for recipient countries to foster an enabling climate that will stimulate the transfer of such technologies. Reducing trade barriers, encouraging competition, opening up markets to foreign collaboration, reducing corporate taxes and providing fiscal incentives to enterprises that transfer energy efficient technologies and other market reforms are likely to improve access to capital and investment.

The UN for its part provides advisory services and technical assistance to developing countries in the implementation of national energy efficiency programmes and in their efforts at energy market reform. UN programmes are supporting activities related to integrated resource planning, demand-side management, energy standards and labels for appliances and lighting, building codes, promotion of energy service companies, and access to financing. We are also supporting a global programme, called the Clean Cities Initiative. Under this programme local governments are being assisted in environmental monitoring, capturing energy from the urban waste streams, transportation energy efficiency, and clean industrial production processes. My colleague, Mr. Peter Mak, Chief of our Energy and Transport Branch in his presentation tomorrow will provide some additional detail about these programmes. Needless to say, what we are doing is not nearly enough to meet the tremendous needs in developing countries and increased foreign direct investment and more focused ODA is urgently required if developing countries are to realize the double dividend of enhanced environmental protection and global competitiveness.

You have a full agenda for the next two days, sharing information and experiences on recent advances in energy efficiency, deregulation and their impact on global competitiveness. From our side this will be a unique opportunity to better understand the linkages between particular national and company experience and international needs. The presentations over the next two days will make an important contribution to the ongoing international dialogue on energy issues that will take place between now and 2001 when energy takes center stage in the negotiations of the Commission on Sustainable Development.

* * * * * * *