Clean Tech Announcement by Energy Secretary Chu Good First Step, Says WRI's Jennifer Morgan

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced here today a five-year, $350 million international plan to distribute clean technology in developing countries.

Through the Climate Renewables and Efficiency Deployment Initiative (REDI), the United States and other industrialized countries will fund energy-saving technologies throughout Africa, Asia and other parts of the developing world.

“This is a good first step,” said Jennifer Morgan, director of the Climate and Energy Program at the World Resources Institute (WRI). “With more and more of these kinds of laudable initiatives being developed by the US and other countries, global coordination between them is needed to ensure maximum effectiveness. That’s why we need a robust and effective technology mechanism under the UNFCCC.

“There is a global demand for energy efficiency, wind turbines, compact florescent lighting, and solar panels to solve both climate change and energy-access challenges. This will begin to build up a fund and information store that will give local people in developing countries these technologies at lower costs.”

Morgan added, “Solving climate change demands a radical shift from the painfully slow process of distributing power-sector technologies, which usually takes 24 years from the time they are patented until they land in developing countries.”

Please visit some of WRI’s technology resources as well as its climate conference page.