Executive Director of the Green Climate Fund (GCF), Héla Cheikhrouhou, has announced that she will step down in September 2016, at the end of her current term as head of the Fund.
GCF executive director Hela Cheikhrouhou. Photo credit: news.gcfund.org
Ms. Cheikhrouhou, who made the disclosure on Friday, was appointed by GCF’s Board in June 2013 to serve as the Fund’s first Executive Director and to establish the necessary infrastructure and mechanisms to make the Fund operational.
During her tenure, she set in motion the Fund’s first resource mobilisation process that resulted in more than $10 billion equivalent in pledges from 43 countries.
Ahead of the adoption of the Paris Climate Agreement in December 2015, she worked with the GCF Board to secure the approval of $168 million in funding for its first round of eight projects and programmes, signalling the end of the Fund’s launch phase and kick-starting the flow of climate finance through the Fund to developing countries.
At the operational level, Ms. Cheikhrouhou oversaw the establishment of GCF’s Headquarters in the Republic of Korea, including the recruitment of permanent staff members and the rolling out of institutional policies and procedures.
At its upcoming 12th meeting from 8 to 10 March 2016, GCF’s Board will discuss steps to appoint a successor and ensure a smooth transition of leadership.
To ensure sustainability and supply security, an International Energy Agency (IEA) report prescribes a new balance between regulation and competitive markets
A power grid
Electricity markets are undergoing massive transformation, as the push for low-carbon power generation shifts the industry towards high investment in renewables and other new technologies even as demand stagnates or declines in many countries.
Building the electricity markets of the future, Re-powering Markets explains, requires a comprehensive framework that encourages low-carbon investments and operational efficiency but also keeps security of supply as a top priority. That requires efficient markets, which are best achieved by introducing prices that reflect supply and demand conditions as often as possible and as close as possible to locations where the energy is generated or consumed. Markets are adopting technology that allows such pricing, including day-ahead, intraday and real-time trading, as well as by zone to stimulate cross-border trade. The detailed price information needs to be transparent to communicate the cost of electricity in specific circumstances as well as the relative value of different forms of electricity generation so that all participants, even from neighbouring markets, learn where and when to operate and invest.
Furthermore, efficient markets unlock flexibility to deal with renewables’ variability, like when and where the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine – or when and where wind and solar generation is abundant – as well as weather forecasting errors and network congestion.
Besides efficient markets, the shift to a low-carbon energy system requires a robust carbon price to help reveal the right value for various technologies. That is part of the regulation with long-term arrangements that is necessary to attract investments in a timely manner and at the scale required. Investors, governments and consumers all have to share the risks in the transition, Re-powering Markets explains, to ensure efficient and lowest-cost evolution.
More than just generation is at stake. Networks, too, are critical: improving and expanding power grids, including across borders, helps ensure successful integration of higher shares of wind and solar power as well as increases energy security. Proper governance is necessary to see the bigger, often transnational, picture critical to a modern electricity system: options examined in the book include transmission auctioning. Regulation of distribution must also be modernised to take into account the potential of batteries as well as consumers who also produce renewable electricity.
As the markets evolve, though, shortages of capacity can result in scarcity prices. While these prices are critical to incentivise generators to produce as well as to get consumers to reduce demand, Re-powering Markets makes clear the need for an adequate regulatory framework during hours of capacity shortage.
Besides looking at price spikes, the book examines other ways regulators can cope with the huge uncertainty of decarbonisation pathways and policies, including capacity mechanisms that pay for maintaining adequate generation to meet politically set reliability standards. It also details the opportunities that demand response offers through dynamic pricing and the pooling of consumers through new technologies, including the impact of increased electrification from widespread adoption of electric cars and other new technology.
In the end, there is no definitive market design for the low-carbon energy systems of the future. But governments and industry around the world must adjust as new technologies prompt constant evolution, and Re-powering Markets shows them how to navigate that transformation by developing markets that provide secure, sustainable and affordable electricity.
Christiana Figueres speaks at TED2016 – Dream, February 15-19, 2016, Vancouver Convention Centre, Vancouver, Canada
Christiana Figueres. Photo credit: Bret Hartman / TED
In 2009, six months after a spectacularly failed climate change summit in Copenhagen, Costa Rican diplomat Christiana Figueres was appointed executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Her job: Leading the next round of international climate change negotiations.
At that time, no one believed that we could ever get a global climate change agreement. “In fact,” Figueres says, “Neither did I.”
Tasked, essentially, with saving the planet — with full responsibility and absolutely no authority, as all governments are sovereign — Figueres panicked.
In her first press conference in her new official capacity, a journalist asked Figueres if she thought a climate change agreement was possible. Her response: “Not in my lifetime.”
“You can imagine the faces of my press team,” she says, “who were horrified at this crazy Costa Rican woman who was their new boss.”
Six years later, that horror has turned to optimism.
On December 12, 2015, in Paris, under the United Nations, 195 governments came together and decided, unanimously, to intentionally change the course of the global economy in order to protect the earth and improve the quality of life for all of us.
So how did this remarkable achievement happen?
“Impossible is not a fact, it’s an attitude,” Figueres says, thinking back on that first press conference. “And I decided, right then and there, that I was going to change my attitude, and I was going to help the world change its attitude on climate change.”
She had no idea how we were going to solve climate change, but she knew we had to change the tone of the conversation. “There is no way you can deliver victory without optimism,” she says.
So she channeled courage, hope, trust, solidarity and the fundamental belief that we humans can come together and help each other to better the fate of mankind. And for six years, she has stubbornly and relentlessly injected optimism into the system.
Pretty soon, she began to see changes happening, precipitated by remarkable changes in technology.
“We began to see that clean technologies, in particular renewable-energy technologies, began to drop in price and increase in capacity,” she says. These new technologies bring us cleaner air, better health, better transportation, more livable cities, more energy security and more energy access to the developing world. “In sum, a better world than what we have now,” Figueres says. Perhaps more important, the economic equation changed, and the realisation that clean technologies could improve the bottom line set in across industries.
The shift caused a change in perspective on the part of governments, who realised it was now in their national interest to engage in sustainable development. They were ready to converge onto a common path, and 189 governments submitted comprehensive climate change plans, the measurement and reporting of which is legally binding, to the UN.
“The checkpoints that we’re going to have every five years to assess collective progress toward our goal are legally binding,” Figueres says, “and the path itself towards a decarbonised and more resilient economy is legally binding.”
Whereas before we had a small handful of countries who had undertaken reduced, short-term emission reduction commitments, now we have all countries of the world contributing with different intensities and approaches to a common goal.
“Once you have all of this in place and you have shifted this understanding, then you see that governments were able to go to Paris and adopt the Paris agreement,” Figueres says.
Figueres describes the day that agreement was signed: 5,000 people, jumping out of their seats, crying, clapping, screaming, yelling, torn between euphoria and, still, a disbelief at what they had just seen.
“I’m the first one to recognise that we have a lot of work still to do,” Figueres says. “We’ve only just started our work on climate change … But I do believe that we have come, over the past six years, from the impossible to the now unstoppable.”
Seventeen US governors have agreed to jointly pursue clean energy goals, including better energy efficiency and higher rates of renewable energy, modernising the electricity grid and promoting electric and alternatively fueled vehicles.
California’s Governor Jerry Brown in 2015 convened international leaders from 11 other states and provinces to sign an agreement to limit the increase in global average temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius
The governors’ Accord for a New Energy Future makes an economic case for expanding cooperation between states on renewable energy by supporting the growth of innovative US companies.
The document cites extreme weather events including sea-level rise, droughts, floods and wildfires as reasons to increase resilience of existing electrical grids and the overall US economy with the help of improved energy efficiency and renewable energy from sources such as wind, solar, hydro and geothermal.
The new agreement comes in the wake of a recent Supreme Court ruling that put a hold on the US Environmental Protection Agency Clean Power Plan for greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
It also comes in the wake of growing climate action on the part of regions around the world.
Last year, California’s Governor Jerry Brown convened international leaders from 11 other states and provinces, collectively representing more than $4.5 trillion in GDP and 100 million people, to sign an agreement to limit the increase in global average temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius.
The agreement, called the Under 2 MOU, provides a template for other states and provinces and played a major role in building momentum for an effective outcome of the UN Climate Change Agreement in Paris last December.
The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC) said at the weekend that it has intensified recovery of oil from the February 14, 2016 spill at the Forcados Terminal export pipeline.
Shell’s General Manager, External Relations, Igo Weli
The oil bigwig disclosed in a statement on Saturday that, supported by industry group Clean Nigeria Associates (CNA) and other oil companies, it has deployed specialised equipment to contain the spill. The firm added that it has likewise mobilised clean-up teams and contracted a specialised aircraft to join in the response. Production into the terminal and crude oil exports were stopped soon after the spill was discovered.
SPDC spokesperson, Gbenga Odugbesan, stressed that diving teams which inspected the 48-inch diameter export pipeline reported extensive damage that is consistent with the application of external force. Following this incident, the SPDC Joint Venture is working with relevant government agencies to review the security situation around its critical assets in the Niger Delta, he added in the statement.
General Manager External Relations of SPDC, Igo Weli, was quoted as saying: “This incident is regrettable but our response is comprehensive including multiple flights over the affected area to monitor the impact and deployment of clean-up experts from within and outside Nigeria. Oil recovery will continue while we finalise repair plans pending the conclusion of the ongoing Joint Investigation Visit (JIV) process. We appreciate the support of the communities, regulators and security agencies who are taking part in the investigation.”
Odugbesan noted that, meanwhile, SPDC has procured relief materials for distribution to communities.
For three days from Monday, February 15 to Wednesday, 17 February 2016 in Mexico City, over 65 women and men working on issues related to gender and biodiversity in Mexico came together to share experiences and provide input into the development of a gender-responsive National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP).
Mexico City, the sprawling, densely populated and high-altitude capital of Mexico hosted the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) forum. Photo credit: paradiseintheworld.com
Mexico is said to be the first pilot country taking part in a project supported by the Japan Biodiversity Fund to build capacity of developing country Parties to integrate gender into their biodiversity policy, planning and programming. The project intends to work with at least three pilot countries to integrate gender considerations into their revised NBSAPs.
The Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) together with the International Union for
Conservation of Nature (IUCN), are working in partnership with the Government of Mexico to engage experts in gender and biodiversity, community leaders, and representatives from women’s groups from across the country to undertake this intensive exercise, the first of its kind. Lead Mexican government ministries and agencies on gender and biodiversity issues have provided strong support to this initiative, specifically the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT), the National Commission on Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO) and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (Inmujeres).
According to the CBD, the commitment of the Mexican government is a key ingredient in ensuring that the perspectives and inputs of this wide range of stakeholders are not only incorporated in the strategy but also in the implementation of gender-responsive biodiversity actions in the years ahead. In the lead-up to the 13th meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Convention (COP13), to be held in Cancun in December 2016, Mexico’s role as a leader in addressing and showcasing gender considerations relevant to biodiversity conservation and management marks a significant step forward towards the implementation of the CBD’s 2015-2020 Gender Plan of Action.
The 2015-2020 Gender Plan of Action was updated to align with the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-
2020 and its Aichi Biodiversity Targets. The Gender Plan of Action includes a framework of actions to be
undertaken by the Secretariat and identifies possible actions to be carried out by Parties, which include the integration of gender considerations into NBSAPs. The launch of this project through the first pilot initiative with the Government of Mexico demonstrates that there is a clear interest and commitment from Parties to bring the objectives of the Gender Plan into action.
Representatives from CONABIO, IUCN and Inmujeres opened the workshop.
Condoms have been the most effective way to prevent sexual transmission of HIV. For discordant couples who want children, this can be a challenge. This report shows how a new drug on trial can give these couples hope.
Pregnant women at Oriade community in Lagos say they will continue to patronise traditional birth attendants because the only primary health centre there is not well equipped.
In this report, I examine how challenges of their peculiar environment threaten their lives and the lives of their unborn children.
