TaTEDO Participated in the European Parliamentary hearing for “Better Funding of Modern Energy Services Access for the Poor” in Brussels, Belgium

Tuesday May 11th, Hon. Gay Mitchell and Hon. Nirj Deva who are members of the European Parliament in collaboration with Europe External Policy Advisors (EEPA) and Hivos hosted a successful hearing on energy and development issues. The main  objective of this hearing was to lobby for the increase of the funding of renewable energy projects by the European Commission.

 

 Right to left; Saroj Rai (BSP-Nepal), Eco Master (Hivos, Netherlands), Estomih Sawe (TaTEDO, Tanzania) and the European Commissioner Mr. Andris Piebalgs participating in discussion during the European Parliamentary hearing.

Participants of the hearing were members of the European parliament, representatives from European Commission for Development, the Executive Director of TaTEDO, Mr. Estomih Sawe and Mr. Saroj Rai who is the Executive Director of Biogas Sector Partnership of Nepal.

Participants heard presentations by renewable energy experts Mr. Saroj Rai of Biogas Sector Partnership-Nepal and Mr. Estomih Sawe from TaTEDO on the energy challenges and development realities in their countries. They highlighted the difficulties developing countries face in trying to increase implementation and efficiency of renewable energy with limited funding.

A further presentation from Mr. Deepak Dhital from the Embassy of Nepal hailed Nepal as a nation with the second largest hydropower potential (after Brazil) and pointed to micro-hydropower and biogas as successful programmes for rural communities that should be supported by the international community.

During his presentation Mr. Sawe informed that, Over the last four decades, there have been efforts to invest on support of the poor in the developing countries to access modern energy services. However to-date, more than 1.6 billion people have no access to electricity and over 3 billion people mostly in developing countries still depend on solid biomass fuels to meet fundamental energy needs for cooking, heating and lighting.

Access by all to modern energy including renewable energy services is central to poverty reduction, achievement of the MDGs and fighting climate change. Developing countries on their own have neither the financial nor the technical capacity to design and implement their own policies and strategies to ensure poor majority access to modern energy services.

On the other hand, the efforts and support of the international aid community including the EC have been insufficient in quantity and quality to address the growing problems of the poor access to modern energy services. There are clearly big gaps in funding, technology and local capacity, which could be supported by the international community to significantly address the growing energy access problem.

Hivos believes that European Union spent too little money on renewable energy as such the energy access problem is inadequately addressed. Renewed political will and commitment of the EU including that of the rest of the international aid agencies i.e. UN and the World Bank, etc. and of course governments of the developing countries is required if the energy access poverty is to be addressed. If you want to work effectively, you need to lobby the African link to the European. "I am glad that I was in Brussels for the opportunity, I told those who can help to address the problem." Mr. Sawe said.