Film is a powerful tool for explaining environmental issues. I first learnt this lesson while trying to enlist local communities in northern Vietnam to help protect a strange blue faced and critically endangered primate called the Tonkin Snub Nosed Monkey. After a morning spent bombarding local leaders with facts and figures, they were polite but unmoved.
In downtown Houston last month, flags were unfurled everywhere promoting LNG 17 - the biggest global gathering devoted to LNG, or liquefied natural gas, as well as its whole value chain. Bringing together industry, governments and experts on everything from "peak shaving" to floating liquefied natural gas facilities – to how LNG contributes to energy security, the conference proved a good platform to raise up and coming issues. To that end, a World Bank Group session at the conference reviewed our own gas activities, and featured a discussion on "Petroleum Contract Transparency - the new normal?"
Spring has arrived. Despite a late start, this winter lasted longer than usual in many countries, especially in various parts of Europe. And this year again, the melting snows reveal a trend that has been observed over the past several years: households are increasingly using wood to heat their homes. No, this time we are not talking about World Bank client countries where wood is known to account for large shares of energy consumption.
I’m back from the 2013 Clean Cooking Forum in Phnom Penh, and impressed with the insights shared by practitioners and household fuel experts from around the world. It’s good to see clean cooking at the center of the global development agenda. But to live up to expectations, we’ll need to keep working hard.
I’m on my way to Phnom Penh, Cambodia for the 2013 Clean Cooking Forum organized by the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. Consider this stunning fact: household air pollution from cooking with solid fuels kills four million people each year. That’s the finding of the latest Global Burden of Disease study, published in December 2012.
It’s 2013 and already, my calendar for the year is filling up with activities, projects and events. But this year, I’m even more excited than usual to look up at my wall, because this year’s calendar focuses on the World Bank’s Gender and Extractive Industries (EI) program. With a different cartoon each month, conceptualized by members of the Oil, Gas, and Mining team, the calendar features different dimensions of gender and the oil, gas, and mining industries, and the lessons we’ve been learning through our work in extractives-impacted countries and communities.
When most people think about energy, they see big power plants and smokestacks. What people generally do not consider is that it is much cheaper and more environmentally friendly to cut energy use than it is to build new power plants.
The problem is that saving energy is not simple. It requires changing deep-rooted behavior.
Whether it be from The Wall Street Journal, or YouTube, by now most of us have heard the arguments for and against development of “shale gas”, and as a member of the World Bank’s Oil, Gas and Mining Unit, hardly a day goes by that I do not receive a notice about an article, a presentation or a conference on this topic.
It’s been clear here at the World Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi that the International Renewable Energy Agency, or IRENA, is fast emerging as a leader in forging a more sustainable energy future. With 159 countries—plus the EU— having joined it, a staff of 70 and a $28-million annual budget, IRENA held its third Executive Assembly here, making an impressive show on the sidelines of the summit. One example is its Renewable Energy Roadmap, which attracted lively interest among delegates.
French President François Hollande put his country on the Sustainable Energy for All train here at the World Energy Future Summit yesterday, affirming France's support for the initiative, whose advisory board is co-chaired by World Bank President Jim Yong Kim and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. In a speech devoted to the theme of preparing for the "après pétrole" era, Hollande highlighted three steps: first, create international funds for renewable energy investment pooling resources from petroleum exporting and importing countries; second, radically rethink our model of urbanization to make it less energy intensive; and third, secure a Global Climate Change Agreement for 2015, France stands ready to host the CoP and facilitate an agreement.
