Posted: Tuesday, 9 June 2009, Geneva | Author: Economic Commission for Europe
Officials from the United Nations regional commissions are working together to undertake their first joint study on energy efficiency. Meeting in Geneva on 4 June for the Global Energy Efficiency 21 (GEE21) project, representatives of the regional commissions agreed to consolidate each commission’s input for the study by the end of October this year.
The five regional commissions are the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), and the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA).
The GEE21 project was officially launched in Poznan, Poland, last December and aims to share the expertise acquired from UNECE’s Energy Efficiency 21 Project (EE21), which promotes the formation of an energy efficiency market in Eastern Europe, so that cost-effective investments could provide a self-financing method of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.
“Energy Efficiency 21 is one of the most interesting projects I have worked for in my 14 years at UNECE,” said Gianluca Sambucini, Economic Affairs Officer at UNECE’s sustainable energy division.
Over the next several months, the work of the regional commissions under the GEE21 will concentrate on assessing how they could effectively respond to the transfer, adoption and local adaptation of activities such as those carried out by UNECE in energy efficiency investments.
“GEE21 aims at fostering energy efficiency globally, promoting technology transfer and acquisition, through a more systematic exchange of experience on capacity building, policy reforms and investment project financing in the various regions of the world through the respective United Nations regional commissions,” stated Sambucini.
The efforts of UNECE in the EE21 project notably saw the creation in 2007 of a €354 million investment fund. More than 70% of the fund has already been used to finance energy efficiency and renewable energy investment projects in the European Union. A new investment fund is to be created to finance projects aimed at reducing CO2 emissions and generating carbon credits or tradable certificates in 12 countries of Eastern Europe, Central Asia and South-Eastern Europe.
Energy efficiency is widely regarded as the only self-financing method to fight climate change and it accounts for 54% of the abatement effort projected by 2030 by the International Energy Agency in its "BLUE Scenario" of the "Energy Technology Perspective 2008". However, little progress has hitherto been achieved.
“We had a very fruitful working session with the colleagues from the other regional commissions,” said Sambucini, adding, “We are now looking forward to consolidating each commission’s input into a first joint study by the end of October.”