Renewable energy projects can help reduce poverty

Renewable energy is the fastest growing energy technology in the world and has a major role to play in reducing poverty while protecting the environment, according to the World Bank.
In its report Improving Lives: World Bank Progress on Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency in Fiscal Year 2006, released recently, the bank said its annual commitments for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects totaled $668mn — nearly double the 2005 level.

The funding, supporting 34 projects in 61 developing countries, is “an environmentally sustainable way to address the problem of one and a half billion people in the world who do not have access to modern energy,” said Anil Cabraal, the bank’s lead energy specialist.
The US Agency for International Development (USAid also is working to expand access to modern energy services in both rural and urban areas in the developing world by helping governments establish legal and regulatory regimes attractive to private investors while safeguarding citizens’ interests, and through multilateral partnerships, the agency said.
With three-fourths of people who live in sub-Saharan Africa and nearly 60% of people in South Asia lacking access to electricity, there is a ‘global crisis in energy’, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz said in a November 2006 speech in Australia.

Gulf Times