reegle Blog

After a very long first day with hundreds of interested people at our booth we just started the second day at Carbon Forum Asia. My impression is that the most important thing for most of the attendees here is to get practitioneers and decision makers on one table and discuss about possible solutions for the fight against climate change. For REEEP it is a great opportunity to showcase how easy it is to find information about clean energy topics on the www and the feedback we get about the functionality is very positive. I took this opportunity to showcase our new design and asked visitors for feedback - it seems like our conceptional and design team did a great job

Back to the conference: One of the main parts of this conference and exhibition is the so called ’sellers pavillion’ where about 60 representatives from developing countries in Asia and the Pacific involved in clean energy and CDM projects promote their solutions. This pavillion is intensivly used by credit buyers o meet face to face with project developers and explore business oppotunities.

Today several very interesting workshops are taking place and I am looking forward to the final day of Carbon Forum Asia.

At the moment I am attending the Carbon Forum Asia 2008, which is a Trade Fair and Conference focusing on the opportunities presented by Carbon Markets and mechanisms in the Asia Pacific region. If you are attending this Forum, you can find the reegle booth at the exhibition hall 401 (A15).

What happened until now?

The conference has been opened by a speech of Mr. S. Iswaran, Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry in Singapore. He stated that “Climate change is one of the biggest global challenges we face this millenium” and that it is “in our profound collective interest that we work towards a solution to sustain the world we live in”. He also mentioned that because of the global economic slowdown “governments will have to deal with compelling domestic imperatives” and that “this may adversely affect the process and progress of climate change negotations”. Nevertheless CO2 emssions needs “an urgent and collective solutio, with all parties playing commensurate roles, even in this period of global slowdown”.

After this opening session the exhibition opened for all participants and 258 exhibitors from more than 60 countries started to introduce their products and solutions to more than 3000 visitors.

At the moment Henry Derwent (IETA) is chairing the session about the actual state of the global carbon market which provides an overview about the most recent developments and market data in the Global Carbon Market.

In the afternoon there will be several other interesting session taking place and I am looking forward to hear more about Carbon Trading in Asia.

Will keep you up-to-date …

The Energy Globe Award has extended its deadline until 21.06.2008 for submitting projects. I would like to invite you to participate in the Energy Globe 2008 as I think it is a real great opportunity to promote good projects and create awareness for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency projects all around the world.

The Energy Globe Award is one of the most important environmental awards worldwide. The Award distinguishes projects that sustainably use our resources such as water, earth, energy and air or use renewable energy forms. This makes a significant contribution to climate and environment. Only if such harbinger projects are followed by many other projects can climate change be slowed.

The Energy Globe is awarded nationally and internationally in the categories earth, fire, water, air and youth. The first prize in each category of the international Energy Globe Award wins €10,000. Awards are made in a televised gala that is viewed worldwide.

See the Energy Globe Application site for further information and details on how to download the application form.

I just wanted to inform you about an interesting side-event at WIREC 2008:

Accelerating the Deployment of Renewable Energy Technologies

Organized by: Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP) with American Council for Renewable Energy (ACORE); Alliance to Save Energy (ASE); US Department of State (link); Environment Canada (link)
Date: 4 March 2008, 5:00pm - 6:30pm
Venue: The Washington Convention Centre, Room: 156

One must be a registered participant at WIREC to be admitted to the side event. Please see www.wirec2008.gov for more information.

Description (partly taken from americanrenewables.com):
At the request of the US State Department, the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP) has carried out regional consultation meetings in Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and Southern Africa. The consultations, with regional RE companies, energy utilities, financial institutions, regulators, NGO s and consumers, have assessed how national governments can help to accelerate the development and deployment of renewable energy technologies within their regions, focusing on the following areas:

• Agriculture and Rural and economic development
• Technology, Research and Development
• Finance and investment
• Commercialisation

Within these areas, the consultation process has focussed on understanding:

• What drives current successful investments in RE
• What policy tools and business models underlie successful RE investments
• What problems does the current policy and business environment present to potential RE investors/project developers

The outputs of the REEEP regional meetings/consultations are contained in a report which provides a clear assessment of the status and opportunities for renewable energy systems, and provide direct suggestions on how national governments and the international framework can help to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy systems within their regions. The report, which will be the focus of the proposed side event, provides a clear and specific regional message on what is currently working, what is not working, and what is needed for renewable energy systems to be developed, attract investment and be deployed in the delivery of sustainable energy services for development and environmental stewardship.

You can download the Agenda here

I would be very happy to see many people there and I am looking forward to interesting discussions with the representatives of the REEEP regional secretariats of North America, South East Asia, Southern Africa and Latin America.

The side event was well attended and the quality of the presentations were good. The UNEP presentation seemed more appropriate to the theme of the workshop and PwC presented their project plans.The presentation from Saurabh Kumar at BEE was also useful. Most of the other presentations ended up presenting their organisations or their projects rather than speak to the occasion. But all in all a good show. Majumdar, Chair of IREDA did a nice summary and conclusion at the end.

The DSDS opening ceremony was very impressive with two presidents and four prime ministers. It is interesting to see the climate divide and the difference in positions between both the developing and developed countries surface again. The president of Maldives who won the DSDS sustainable leadership award reminded both groups about the plight of his country and other small islands. It is unclear whether any action taken post 2012 will have singificant effect on reducing climate change impacts in the next 50 years but I hope we all do something about the problem as a civilised society.

The project managers meeting was organised at the TERI RETREAT near the Solar Energy centre. My second time at the RETREAT and liked it better this time. The after-dinner speech from Ajay mathur was very good. The level of participation was not as good as last year and were mostly managers rather than heads of organisations and so were the quality of the outcomes. We need to see beyond the mist of minor operational issues and create a strategic vision for REEEP programmes in such occasions. It is important to structure and orient this meeting to make it more strategic and less operational.  Anyway something to ponder about before the next installment…

Several meetings on the sidelines IREDA, BEE and Pachauri at TERI. There seems to be a healthy respect for REEEP and its activities across the board. We need to quickly leverage this into action on the ground through our actions/programmes.