http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=153394

 

THE technology and experience needed to eradicate Africa's energy poverty by 2030 was already available, United Nations (UN) Development Programme environment and energy group director Verlee Vanderweerd said yesterday.

 

At the forthcoming Durban climate change talks (COP17), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change will be gunning for international agreement on its Green Climate Fund, meant to pay for developing countries' climate change mitigation actions and potentially eradicate energy poverty.

Yesterday the framework convention's executive secretary Christiana Figueres said considerable advances were made during negotiations in Geneva earlier this week.

The climate fund - agreed to at the 2009 Copenhagen climate change talks - has pledges of $30bn by next year and $100bn a year by 2020. But the global financial crisis is one reason why turning pledges into cash has been difficult.

Ms Figueres said at the Geneva negotiations , which ended yesterday, advances were made on the "nuts and bolts " of how the fund would function, and on "broad agreement" on the importance of including the private sector .

There was clear ambition to create the fund, along with ensuring that it was country-driven and integrated into national development planning processes, she said in a statement.

Ms Vanderweerd said while the fund was aiming for $100bn a year by 2020 it was more likely that $400bn was needed. If the fund was wisely set up it had the potential of eradicating "energy poverty". Estimates were that 1,4bn people had no access to electricity and many used biomass for cooking and heating, adding to greenhouse gas emissions.

The UN was working on a plan to give everyone on the planet access to electricity by 2030, and to increase world energy efficiency and the global use of renewable energy sources by 30%, she said.

"That's why African ministers are here ," she said. The pre-COP17 meeting of Africa's agriculture ministers in Johannesburg is mandated to draft a statement and action programme to be tabled in Durban .

The fund would play a pivotal role in the successful operation of two other major new institutions agreed to at last year's climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, to speed up international action on climate change - a Technology Mechanism for adaptation and mitigation technologies and an Adaptation Framework. Both institutions are set to become fully operational next year.

The fund's "speedy operationalisation ... will be especially important, not least to vulnerable developing countries, given that a significant share of new multilateral funding for adaptation is to flow through the fund", Ms Figueres said.

It was on the basis of "adequate financial and technical support" to support developing countries' climate actions that SA voluntarily committed itself to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions .