Countries urged to fight poverty by increasing access to renewable energy

A global financial mechanism is urging United Nations Member States and the private sector to join it in fighting poverty by improving access to renewable energy technologies.

"You've heard so much talk about the need for information technology to help alleviate poverty, but information technology runs on electricity, and if there is no electricity, then [there is] no hope of getting information technology, of getting a computer and the Internet," Mohamed El-Ashry, the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), told a press conference today at the UN in New York.

Mr. El-Ashry made a proposal yesterday to the Ministerial Segment of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development that invited donors - private and public - to join with GEF in bridging the gaps in access to both energy and information technology. "Everybody talks about the digital divide, but we also know about the 'energy divide,'" he said. "The key really is to link these two. [We have made] a concrete proposal and hopefully it can help close the gap between rhetoric and action."

GEF helps spread the use of renewable energy technologies by contributing funds towards up-front costs and improving access to credit by sharing the risks with local financial institutions through the provision of guarantees.

The Facility also acts as a reservoir of "best practices" for countries and organizations considering the implementation of renewable energy projects. "Using our resources as grant resources, not as loans, we are able to test to see how well [the projects] can work, then we share our lessons with others - multilateral and bilateral assistance institutions and the private sector," Mr. El-Ashry said.

Established in 1991 but revamped after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, GEF is the designated financial mechanism for the countries who signed the Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Since 1994, it has committed $580 million in grants for renewable energy in developing countries and mobilized another $2.5 billion.