Tuesday, October 20, 2009

RE: ISES Calls for Feed-in Tariffs Worldwide

Here is the resolution from the International Solar Energy Society (ISES) congress that I was at last week. Department of Energy, take note... 100% Renewables by 2050. Frank

http://public.ises.org/news/SWCResolution.pdf

ISES Solar World Congress 2009

Johannesburg, South Africa, 11-14 October 2009

Resolution

The ISES Solar World Congress 2009 hosted by the Sustainable Energy

Society of Southern Africa in Johannesburg, South Africa, attended by

participants from all over the world resolves as follows:

The global target of 100 % renewable energies is both attainable and

necessary by the middle of the current century. This is motivated on

grounds of ecological, economic and social sustainability.

The unacceptable backlog in energy supply in the third world countries

can only be covered cost effectively and in time by the use of renewable

energies. Especially the industrialised countries have to increase their

efforts in transitioning to renewable energies.

The world's governments are called upon to implement without further

delay policies that have been proven internationally to be the most

effective and efficient in the rapid transition to a renewable energy

world, giving priority to renewable energy and refraining from any kind

of caps that may slow down renewable energy deployment.

As a guiding principle, local and rural communities and people should be

actively involved and benefit directly from renewable energies.

Governments should especially encourage and support community power

projects and distributed generation as well as investment in renewable

energy manufacturing facilities in order to foster the local creation of

jobs.

The Congress applauds the first steps taken by the South African

Government in introducing the renewable energy feed-in tariff. The

Congress requests government to urgently address concerns expressed by

the public and by potential investors about aspects of REFIT policy.

These include transparency, certainty, removal of contradictions between

legislation and regulations governing the REFIT and providing a roadmap

with clear commitments and timelines to its implementation.

The introduction of a Green Energy Act is strongly recommended as

crucial to providing an overarching and comprehensive framework for

renewable energy uptake so that in the near future the necessary steps

will be taken to attract local as well as international investors.

The Congress strongly recommends the world's governments to establish an

obligation to use renewable energy for water heating as well as space

heating and cooling in residential, industrial, commercial and public

sector buildings.

On the international level, the introduction of a global feed-in tariff

system is recommended as a primary instrument to foster international

technology transfer and finance scaling up of renewables, especially in

the third world. Such a global feed-in tariff has the unique potential

of overcoming the blockage in the current climate change negotiations.

For offgrid and non-electrical systems, further intelligent financing

mechanisms such as large-scaled microcredit and soft loan programmes

should be applied. All aspects of capacity building for renewable

energy, including resource assessment, have to be given priority in

education as well as in research and development. This is ineluctable in

order to create awareness and knowledge of the true and full potential

and vast variety of renewable energies as well as the true threats of

fossil and nuclear energies.

The Congress welcomes and endorses the strong support and the

cooperation of all the renewable energy technologies through the

International Renewable Energy Alliance.

The Congress is delighted by the recent establishment of the

International Renewable Energy Agency Irena and urges all renewable

energy proponents worldwide as well as the world's governments to give

full support to the establishment process in order to make sure that

IRENA can realise its leadership role on our way to a renewable energy

world.

Johannesburg, 14 October 2009

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