Sustainability Resources

Abu Dhabi Chosen to Host IRENA
Members of an expanded  International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) have chosen Abu Dhabi as the agency's first headquarters and French diplomat Hélène Pelosse as its first director-general.

A coalition of African and Arab nations celebrated locating the agency in the United Arab Emirates, praising the selection as a success for the developing world. Despite widespread political support, the chosen location and director-general faced criticism from within the renewable energy community due to concerns that nominating countries were attracting votes in exchange for nuclear energy deals.

Representatives from 136 countries [PDF] participated in a summit this week in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to decide the clean energy agency's headquarters and leadership. Prior to the vote, Australia, Costa Rica, Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom joined the agency.

Major industrialized countries such as the United States and Japan were initially hesitant to join IRENA because of the existence of other organizations that provide advice for renewable energy development, such as the United Nations and the International Energy Agency.

Hermann Scheer, a member of the German parliament who first called for IRENA's formation in 1990, said that neither of those organizations provides sufficient focus on renewable energy.

"The fact that 136 states have signed IRENA's statute will rebut the skeptics. There does not exist another international governmental organization which had so many members at its formation," said Scheer, who chairs the World Council for Renewable Energy, in a statement. "It is now crucial to swiftly set up a powerful organization and to endow it with the necessary resources to support member states in drafting policies to introduce renewable energies nationally."

The headquarters will be located in Abu Dhabi's Masdar City, a new planned city that aims to produce zero net carbon emissions and zero net waste. To raise support for hosting IRENA, the UAE government committed $22 million of annual support through 2015. The Abu Dhabi Fund for Development also offered $50 million in annual loans to finance renewable energy projects in developing countries.

"We in the UAE extend our hands to all countries of the world. The agency is not exclusively for the Emiratis. It is an international asset," UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan told the Emirates News Agency. "All countries of the world have a right in the agency."

Competing cities Bonn, Germany, and Vienna, Austria, withdrew their bids to host the agency at the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting. The countries' leaders forged a deal that will instead divide IRENA among the new headquarters in Abu Dhabi, a center of technology and innovation in Bonn, and an inter-organizational liaison office in Vienna.

The compromise "reflects the spirit of cooperation that is needed for IRENA to grow into a strong and effective organization," an IRENA statement said.

Copenhagen, Denmark, was the fourth city nominated to host the agency, but the Danish government withdrew from the competition prior to this week's meeting in an effort to support a Bonn location.

An Abu Dhabi location received support from the African Union, France, Spain, Italy, and several Arab nations.

Clean energy advocates raised concerns that the UAE and France were attracting votes for one other in an effort to support unrelated interests such as new nuclear energy projects. The advocates supported their complaints in part by pointing to deals that the United States and France finalized earlier this year to develop several nuclear reactors in the UAE.

Pelosse, the newly elected interim director-general, said in an interview with the Worldwatch Institute that these concerns were unfounded.

"The idea that IRENA would be tainted by nuclear interests is simply wrong," said Pelosse, the French Minister of State's deputy head of staff in charge of international affairs. "Firstly, it is not in its statutes. Second, there already is an international organization in charge of nuclear energy. There is no way IRENA is ever going to deal with nuclear energy."

Pelosse led last year's European Union negotiations to form binding targets of 20 percent renewable energy by 2020. She has also helped design France's renewable energy policy and the Mediterranean Solar Plan, an effort to develop 20 gigawatts capacity of new renewable energy resources in the Mediterranean region by 2020.

"Ms. Pelosse has established a long record of outstanding experience and profound knowledge of the renewable sector as well as strong communication and representation skills," an IRENA statement said.

The other director-general candidates were Juan Ormazabal of Spain, Arthouros Zervos of Greece, and Hans J?rgen Koch of Denmark.

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

This article is a product of Eye on Earth, Worldwatch Institute's online news service. For permission to reprint Eye on Earth content, please contact Juli Diamond at jtier@worldwatch.org

OPINION: Turn up the Heat in the Climate Battle
Are environmental groups still relevant as the world battles climate change? On the face of it, this seems a farcical question. Environmentalists have worked tirelessly to alert the public and decision-makers alike to the dangers of climate change and to advocate a fundamental shift away from fossil fuels. And on June 26, many celebrated when the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly approved the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) bill [PDF] - the first U.S. climate legislation ever.

But as the climate debate enters a decisive phase - with negotiations in full swing to hammer out an international agreement in Copenhagen this year - there is a darker side. With few exceptions, current national goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions are weak and typically push action to the distant, rather than the near, future. Although part of the environmental community has responded critically, other groups claim that more stringent climate action is simply not politically feasible - and that asking for more risks the collapse of any climate deal.

The Obama administration's chief climate negotiator, Todd Stern, has rejected calls for industrialized countries to cut their emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. He not only opposed such cuts as "not feasible" for the United States, but strikingly judged them as "unnecessary." ACES is muddying the waters by pegging reductions to 2005, rather than to the internationally recognized benchmark of 1990. The reason seems clear:  given the strong growth of U.S. emissions in the interim, proposed reductions of 17 percent relative to 2005 look much better than the measly 4 percent relative to 1990.

Even some of the European governments that paraded themselves as climate champions while George Bush was in the White House are now backtracking on climate goals. Strong corporate pressure, reinforced by the jitters of the global financial crisis, has given them pause. Rich countries are evading their historical responsibility for the bulk of emissions. Instead of strong domestic action, "offsets" are being presented as the great savior - asking poorer nations to shoulder the burden that wealthy countries are not prepared to bear themselves. From a national perspective, offsets may be an option; from a global perspective, they amount to a rearrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic.

Well, we are reaching the end of the road. In Worldwatch's State of the World 2009 report, climate scientist Bill Hare argues that fossil carbon dioxide emissions will need to come close to zero by 2050 - decades earlier than what most governments envision - and that deforestation needs to end well before 2030. The longer we delay serious action, the greater the danger of reaching destabilizing tipping points.

Segments of the environmental movement, especially grassroots-oriented groups, have been quite vocal in their criticism of current policies. But others have endorsed weak proposals, arguing that they can be improved upon later - without offering a strategy for doing so or a reason why the balance of forces should be expected to be more favorable later on. Their slogan of choice is "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Catchy, but is it convincing?

The ultimate outcome of any process is the product of ideas and proposals put forward by different actors, as well as the relative power of these actors. Environmental groups that fail to turn up the pressure are effectively narrowing the scope of what is politically possible. It is like waving a white flag while the battle is still raging.

Some may honestly feel that there is no other way - that status quo forces in government and the corporate world are too powerful. But there's also an inconvenient truth. Not rocking the boat often equals respectability in mainstream opinion for environmental organizations. Having access to the corridors of power, whether in Washington, Brussels, or other world capitals, gives the appearance of influence and importance - and surely helps in securing future funding.

While compromise and horse-trading may be essential in politics, the Earth's climate is not swayed by it. In light of the disappointing trajectory of climate policymaking, environmentalists need to rediscover their roots. Rallying public opinion is critical to gain leverage in the titanic struggle over the Earth's fate.

What is needed now is smart and persistent public messaging and mobilizing constituents so as to put legislators and corporate executives on notice: politics as usual will not save the planet. It is time to turn up the heat in the fight against global warming. The livelihoods, and lives, of hundreds of millions of people are at stake.

Michael Renner is a Senior Researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental research organization based in Washington, D.C.

Source: Worldwatch Institute