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| [PHOTO: UNifeed] |
Nairobi: Ahead of a high-level event Monday (24 September) at United
Nations Headquarters that will bring together world leaders, international
organizations, the private sector and civil society on Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon's 'Sustainable Energy for All' initiative, the head of the UN
Environment Programme, Achim Steiner said the energy sector should be a
"central player" in transitioning to a green economy.
In a recent interview for UNifeed, Steiner said that
'Sustainable Energy for All' was "one of the very encouraging outcomes of
the Rio+20 Conference" held earlier this year in Rio de Janeiro.
He believed the initiative's "triple thrust" -
access to energy, energy efficiency, and renewable energy – was "perhaps
one of the most promising avenues in which we can demonstrate that the
transition towards a low carbon green economy is very much also an opportunity
that the energy sector can drive and be a central player in".
Steiner said the economics of renewable energy have shifted
significantly. In contrast to a rise in prices for fossil fuels, he noted that
the price for wind power had come down by ninety percent since the 1980s.
Price drops have also occurred in photovoltaic technologies,
he said, with price reductions of forty to fifty percent in the world market
just in the last 18 to 20 months.
"The threshold for entering into a renewable energy
technology era is coming down almost by the day", he said.
Steiner said the question of financing therefore
"becomes critical", and called on international institutions,
national financial and planning institutions and the banking system to help
small and medium scale enterprises and households access the finance that
allows them to make that transition. -UNifeed