Energy and Sustainable Development

The bottom line for our efforts during the CSD Energy Cycle should be whether we have helped increase access to modern, clean, healthy, and efficient energy services.

Simply put, energy powers sustainable development. Energy drives industry, boosts crop production, and increases jobs. Energy moves water, brings schools into the 21st century, and powers, lights, heats, and cools health facilities around the world. Energy services are essential for meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

For the 2 billion people who do not have access to modern energy services, and for the 4.5 billion people who do, the energy challenge is central to sustainable development. In focusing on this challenge, we can effectively address all four themes of the CSD’s thematic cluster. The linkages between clean energy, sustainable development, and climate change have been underscored on a number of occasions, including at the Gleneagles G8 Summit earlier this year. The linkages between energy, air pollution, and health are also clear: the World Health Organization estimates that 6,600 people die every day from air pollution, including 4,400 from indoor air pollution.

When I talk about the bottom line, I mean we all should identify specific, quantifiable metrics for the initiatives that we undertake individually and collectively. Let me give three examples:

 • Through U.S. government support for the Global Village Energy Partnership and other programs, 12.9 million people have received increased access to energy services since 2002.

 • Through the Energy Star program, which uses voluntary labels to promote energy efficiency, Americans saved enough energy last year to power 24 million homes and avoid greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those from 20 million cars.

 • And, with the assistance of the Partnership for Clean Fuels and Vehicles, initiated in 2002, 48 Sub-Saharan African countries will have eliminated lead in gasoline by the end of this year. This change should have a significant health impact for many of the 733 million people living in these countries.

For the CSD to be successful, it must galvanize these kinds of concrete, measurable results.

How CSD Can Galvanize Implementation

How can a 2-year cycle of a UN body galvanize concrete results? Let me suggest two ways:

Catalyze Information-Sharing

First, it can catalyze an effort to collect and share lessons learned and best practices in implementation. The CSD Secretariat can play an essential clearinghouse role in this effort, as it did with the CSD Water Cycle.

Chairman Aleksishvili has called for the creation of a matrix of lessons learned and case studies. We strongly endorse this approach. The United States has submitted nearly twenty case studies to the CSD Secretariat thus far. We are pleased to see that other delegations are doing the same, and encourage major groups to do so as well.

As an example, one of our case studies is on increasing energy efficiency, a critical component of increasing access to energy services. From a consumer perspective, energy efficiency involves working to change behaviors so that end-users consume less energy. On the production side, energy efficiency involves working with producers of goods and services so that they accomplish their task more efficiently. Approached from either perspective, efficiency will permit existing capacity to reach an expanded population, thereby reducing the economic, environmental, and social costs of providing energy.

In Bulgaria, like many other places around the world, financing energy efficiency is a challenge. A practical measure that can overcome that barrier is establishing a "partial loan guarantee facility" to stimulate lending for municipal energy efficiency projects.

Starting in 2004, USAID worked with United Bulgarian Bank (UBB) to develop a $10 million lending facility for municipal energy efficiency projects. Every loan issued by this facility is partially guaranteed by USAID's Development Credit Authority (DCA), which means that the risk of lending is lower. As a result of the decreased risk, more money can be lent to municipalities for energy efficiency projects. A similar facility operated in the region until December 2003, catalyzing $11.5 million in energy efficiency investments across 33 projects, resulting in annual savings of 400 gigawatt-hours of electricity.

The type of information contained in this case study allows us to move from general statements such as, "2 billion people lack access to modern energy services" toward answering specific questions like, "How can we help Bulgaria provide increased access to energy services for its population?"

The lessons from this and related case studies are applicable in other regions and situations. For example, USAID is currently working to set up similar financing facilities in Kazakhstan and Georgia. We hope that the Secretariat can compile these case studies into a user-friendly web-based tool that serves a practical toolkit for implementers around the world.

Spur Action

The second key role for the 2-year Energy Cycle is to spur concrete action both in and outside the UN. Through the simple act of priority-setting – focusing on energy issues for two years – the CSD can galvanize action from a wide range of public and private stakeholders and foster increased coordination and new alliances.

The mechanisms that deliver results are handled by specialists and project implementers in capitals and organizations around the world. These people and organizations have their own internal schedules and procedures that do not necessarily coincide with the timing of a particular UN meeting.

This suggests that all of us view our work during the CSD cycle not as five weeks of meetings in New York but as two years of concerted effort working through the many organizations available to us. In fact, the one hundred weeks we spend outside of the UN basement during the Energy Cycle will likely be as important, if not more so, than the time we spend at the CSD.

The United States has already begun to use the Energy Cycle to develop new approaches to advance implementation. For example, financing of energy projects will be critical to our success. Energy efficiency financing represents a unique challenge and has received insufficient attention over the years. To address this, the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP) will be hosting a global Energy Efficiency Investment Forum on the margins of the CSD-14 Session in May, with the support of the U.S. Government and a host of other organizations. In addition, the U.S. Department of Energy is working with the UN to convene a forum in February for the U.S. financial and investment community to discuss with the U.S. Government and multilateral banks the financing of international clean energy projects. In addition, we are planning to partner with the ASEAN Energy Center to hold an ASEAN Regional Clean Energy Financing Workshop to bring together energy financiers and project developers. We also look forward to a rescheduling of the financing roundtable originally planned for Tbilisi, Georgia earlier this week.

Furthermore, other organizations are planning events which can support efforts to increase access to energy services. For example, the World Bank will highlight energy and water projects during its 2006 "Development Marketplace," a competitive grant program for innovative, small-scale development projects. In addition, the World Bank has scheduled its annual Energy Week to complement CSD-14.

Let me give you one more example of an activity which has emerged early in the CSD Energy Cycle. At the Beijing International Renewable Energy Conference last month, the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) announced a new initiative aimed at building capacity for increased use of renewable energy technologies. In the coming months, NREL will use the Internet to provide training to other countries on a new "geospatial toolkit" which allows users to determine which renewable energy technologies are appropriate for their situation. We are interested in partnering with others in the future to expand on this pilot distance learning effort.

Finally, we plan to continue our efforts under the umbrella of the U.S. Clean Energy Initiative, launched at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. For example, through the efforts of the Efficient Energy for Sustainable Development initiative, the U.S. is leading a nine-economy Financing Task Force within the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum to implement clean energy investment recommendations adopted by APEC Energy Ministers. These recommendations are aimed at building self-supporting markets for efficient energy products.

Conclusion

In conclusion, let me underscore what may be the key change, and the key challenge, for the reformed Commission on Sustainable Development. These days, the results we deliver during a CSD cycle depend less on what we produce in the actual sessions in New York and more on what we do outside the halls of the UN.

The CSD has taken some important steps in recent years. Indeed, for the United States, the "new," action-oriented Commission on Sustainable Development is a prime example of what the United States hopes to see in a reformed and increasingly relevant United Nations.

By focusing on results delivered through the Energy Cycle, the CSD can reinforce the value of its reform and its direct relevance in improving people’s lives.