EEP-Indonesia announces a call for proposals on biomass-based renewable energy, focusing on Central Kalimantan and Riau. Applications are invited from NGOs, companies, public and private initiatives, universities, research institutions, and consulting companies. The EEP encourages but does not require collaboration between Indonesian and Finnish organizations. EEP’s contribution to a project is up to €200 thousand. The deadline for applications is 30 April 2012.

More information here

ADB’s My View video contest, the annual competition for the best short film on key development issues, has had its deadline extended to 21 March 2012. The topic of this year’s My View is access to energy for development, and Energy for All hopes to see some creative entries that we can highlight during this International Year of Sustainable Energy for All.

We’d like to ask for your help in getting the word out on the contest and its extended deadline. Six weeks may not seem to be enough time to create a video, but past winners of My View have been notable for their simplicity, as you can see in the links below

• 2010 Winner of My View – Climate Change http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5hBO-VTrro&feature=player_embedded
• 2011 winner of My View – Water for All http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo9ymhT5hSA

A total of $10,000 worth of prizes is available in the contest’s two categories, with no age restrictions for contestants. Citizens of any of ADB’s 67 member countries are eligible to take part.

Registration for the contest is easy. Applicants need to complete a short online form at the My View website http://www.adb.org/MyView/ and then upload their videos to YouTube.com or Youku.com, tagging it with ‘ADB-MyView’. More details can be found on the official site: http://www.adb.org/MyView/

Activities on Energy for All:  RRCAP has recently developed biogas capacity building and demonstration projects for rural development in Cambodia and the Philippines, which provided villagers with renewable energy for lighting and cooking. Currently RRCAP is also developing a project on National Sustainable Energy Strategies, aiming to strengthen national capacities to formulate low carbon energy policies and strategies for the deployment of improved technologies and to increase access to clean energy

Contributions on Energy for All: RRCAP seeks to contribute to the partnership with its two decades of institutional and field experience in the region, and seeks interaction and collaboration with interested stakeholders for the development of new projects and activities.

Contact:

AIT-UNEP Regional Resource Centre for Asia and the Pacific (RRCAP)
Marco Silvestri
Email:  marco.silvestri@rrcap.unep.org
Country – Thailand

The UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD Rio+20) in June 2012 will focus on two themes: (a) a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication; and (b) the institutional framework for sustainable development. Acknowledging the importance of institutional framework.  TERI, the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) and Asia Energy Institute (AEI), with the support of ADB and the Energy for All Partnership have undertaken a study to examine what innovative institutional models and policies Asia has to offer in addressing energy access and expansion of clean energy use. It will contribute to Rio+20 by examining selected case studies from Asia and the Pacific that demonstrate policy innovations in the energy sector. Some 6 studies have been selected for detailed review out of a total of 55 cases. The roundtable aimed to present the initial findings of the study to relevant stakeholders and experts and to share perspectives and insights on relevant issues.

Dr. RK Pachauri (TERI) and Dr. Gil-Hong Kim (ADB) gave the opening remarks acknowledging the importance of the study for sustainable energy for all and emphasized the relevance for Rio+20. Pachauri mentioned that we’ve ignored the access problem for far too long, and that some fast tracking is now needed. The Millennium Development Goal discussions presumed that the market would take care of this, but it obviously didn’t. Ligia Noronha (TERI) explained the overall context of the study and its results so far. She remarked that actual mechanisms for delivering on the ground were missing in the documents, and that RIO+20 also does not explicitly consider energy intervention.

In advance of the regional roll out and the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit, some five modern lighting manufacturers or project developers and a same number of people from TERI were present for the WG discussion that focused on how to move forward and scale up. The manufacturers indicated that they would like to have access to working capital or to debt without providing collateral; this will enable them to realize scaling up; TA on innovative business models would also be welcome; some sort of consolidating agency which would be accessible by different manufacturers or developers was deemed of high interest too.

If interested, kind email your letter of interest and your CV (in English) to hr@lao-ire.org and contact@lao-ire.org.  For more information, visit,  http://www.lao-ire.org/get-involved.html.

On the sidelines of the regional roll-out and the Dehli Sustainable Development Summit, the Energy for All Steering Committee met in the afternoon on the 31st January 2012 in New Delhi to discuss latest developments in the Energy for All Partnership. In his opening remarks, Gil-Hong Kim, Director of ADB´s Regional Sustainable Infrastructure Division (RSID) highlighted the importance of this year and the contributions of the Partnership. Two new faces joined the event: Martine Provost from the Global Sustainable Electricity Partnership (G-SEP; formerly e8) and Robert J. van der Plas, the new team leader of the Energy for All Secretariat, based in the Netherlands. His new vision and recommendations for the future was followed by a discussion and up-date of the Steering Committee members on new developments.

The main messages he conveyed were: (i) considerable scaling up is needed if 100m beneficiaries are to be realized by 2015, and the ADB would be a good vehicle for doing so; and (ii) a strong focus is needed on the precise implementation mechanisms that can be used for realizing new access. The role for the Partnership is three-fold: (i) document the implementation mechanisms and prepare implementation manuals for applying these on a large scale; (ii) awareness raising at several levels, among PS members, among Governments, and among development organizations and partners; (ii) create human capacity, for developing new energy access activities, and above all, implement these in each of the countries where programs are launched.

In the evening, WBCSD president Peter Bakker participated in the High Level Panel of the regional roll out of the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All. The panel also included Kandeh Yumkella, the Director General of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization; Dr. Bindu Lohani, Vice President of the Asian Development Bank; and Erik Solheim, the Norwegian Minister of Environment and International Development.

In his remarks Bakker highlighted the WBCSD’s extensive programs, projects and publications dovetailing with the UN’s Sustainable Energy for All Initiative, which focuses on energy access, energy efficiency and renewable energy deployment.

In particular, he drew attention to a new report called Business solutions to enable energy access for all. It provides concrete recommendations to scale up business innovation and investment. The report was produced by the WBCSD’s Access to Energy Initiative, which has 21 participating member companies and is led by ERM, GDF SUEZ and Schneider Electric.

More information here

Today’s event brings together leading organizations, including The Energy and Resources Institute, UN-Energy, UNIDO, and the UN Foundation, to raise awareness of the importance of modern access to energy for human development.

Providing universal access to basic energy will require annual investments of around $48 billion according to International Energy Agency estimates. ADB has invested approximately $2.8 billion in access to energy projects since the launch of its Energy for All Initiative in 2008. Given the vast development needs, ADB also seeks to mobilize funds from the private sector through public private partnerships and by developing bankable projects that can attract cofinancing support.

The rollout event takes place ahead of the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit, which will take stock of progress made since the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit and set the agenda for future sustainable development strategies. The International Year of Sustainable Energy for All initiative advocates for universal access to energy, a doubling of the rate of improvement in global energy efficiency, and a doubling of the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix.

ADB will play a leading role in the international initiative through its Energy for All and Clean Energy programs, and through the ADB-led Energy for All Partnership, which seeks to provide modern energy access to 100 million people by 2015. In less than 10 years, ADB’s annual clean energy investment has gone from $225 million in 2003 to nearly $2.2 billion in 2011. The demand from developing member countries for clean energy investments is likely to increase in the future.  Read full story here.

Issued the same week as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched a global campaign to provide Sustainable Energy for All, the UNDP report confirms that there can be no development without energy, and that poverty cannot be addressed sustainably without paying due attention to energy services. The report adds that the poor need energy to get out of poverty, but energy alone is not enough.

The publication,  Towards an “Energy Plus’ Approach for the Poor,  reviewed 17 energy access projects across the region to find out what works and what does not work in breaking the vicious poverty-energy-poverty cycle.

The findings indicate that most energy projects adopt a minimalist approach, focusing on the basic energy needs of the poor for lighting homes, cooking and heating. However, “energy services per se do not reduce poverty,” says the report. “Instead, they transform people from being ‘poor without energy access’ to ‘poor with energy access.’”

Publications can be downloaded at: http://asia-pacific.undp.org/practices/environment/Publications/EnergyAccessReports.html