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UNDP helps ink quadrilateral new energy tech transfer

By Chen Boyuan: 0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China.org.cn, August 20, 2014

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China will help African countries develop renewable energy industries following a new partnership forged on Tuesday, Aug. 19, between China, Denmark, Ghana, Zambia and the United Nations Development Programme in Beijing.

Mr. Guo Risheng, Director-General of representative of China's Ministry of Science and Technology (L) and Christophe Bahuet, Country Director of UNDP China (R) sign the deal on Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2014 in Beijing. [Photo by Chen Boyuan / China.org.cn]

The Renewable Energy Technology Transfer project will ensure that Chinese renewable energy technologies are "optimally responding to priorities and needs" in the two African countries, and that critical skills needed to make such technologies actually work on the ground are transferred and developed, according to the UNDP in China, under whose framework the deal was made possible.

Under the plan, Denmark will provide 29.25 million Danish krone (US$5.4 million) as the initial funding for the project, whose implementation will be supervised by the UNDP offices in Beijing, Accra and Lusaka.

The partnership will help achieve the objective of Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL), proposed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, by increasing access to energy through off-grid and community-based power.

The project is also part of the UNDP-China agreement for strengthened partnership signed in 2010 to promote South-South cooperation through innovative programs.

"UNDP is pleased to embark on this cooperation and is committed to making projects more impactful and more sustainable by providing 'software' support with the transfer of renewable energy technologies, rather than just relying on the traditional hardware of equipment or infrastructure," Xu Haoliang, UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Director of the Regional Bureau of Asia and Pacific, said on Tuesday at the agreement signing ceremony.

According to Xu, the joint effort to help with new energy development in Africa will not focus on hardware transfer, but will instead create conditions required to make adoption of renewables more effective. The new partnership will also seek to remove barriers and strengthen local capacities to respond to national priorities and meet local needs, he said.

The move is expected to "empower" people in Ghana and Zambia, where a large proportion of people, especially those living in poverty or living in rural areas, do not have access to an electricity grid.

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