Energy has always been important for UNECE. When UNECE was founded in 1947,
it took over the European Coal Organization, which had been created urgently
towards the end of the Second World War. The first practical task of the UNECE
Coal Committee was to help alleviate acute post-war coal shortages. East-west
energy cooperation expanded thereafter to include work on the production,
consumption and trade of coal, electric power and natural gas. Energy security
became a priority during the 1970s “energy crisis” as east-west
energy trade and cooperation allowed western consuming countries to diversify
their sources of oil and natural gas supplies away from the Middle East. As
energy security has risen to the top of the economic agenda again during the
past few years, the UNECE Committee on Sustainable Energy has responded both
as a forum for an intergovernmental dialogue and through the practical work
of its expert groups and technical assistance projects.
Secure and Sustainable Energy Supplies
There are a number of key reasons why energy security has emerged again
as an overriding economic concern. During 2006, steeply rising oil import
demand in developing countries and the narrowing margin between oil supply
and demand drove up prices. The volatility of oil prices is further aggravated
by international tensions, terrorism and potential supply disruptions. Hydrocarbon
reserves and resources are abundant globally, but they are concentrated in
a few geographic regions, some of which are economically vulnerable and unstable.
Even developing these reserves in some countries is difficult because of the
restricted access of oil and gas companies. While energy-consuming countries
seek the security of energy supplies, energy producers seek the security of
energy demand to diminish the risks associated with large long-term investments.
Clearly the range, magnitude and complexity of these problems are daunting.
Sustainable energy development is just as challenging. Ensuring the environmentally
benign use of energy resources and their availability for future generations
will not be easy to achieve. But it does offer a positive long-term dimension
to the urgent need for secure energy supplies. In fact, a sustainable energy
future is most likely to be a consequence of prudent energy security policies
pursued today. The Committee on Sustainable Energy is structured to promote
international cooperation on exactly these policies and measures.
• Energy security, so vital to member countries, has
been addressed through the Energy Security Forum that brought together high-level
representatives of the energy industries and the financial sector under the
auspices of the Committee. In 2006, the Committee decided to pursue this important
issue directly during its annual meetings.
• Energy reserves and resources need to be classified
and evaluated using a reliable, global common system such as the United Nations
Framework Classification, so as to increase transparency and knowledge on
the future availability of fossil energy and mineral resources as well as
to better manage these resources over time. This is the subject of much interest
and work by one of the expert groups under the Committee.
• Energy efficiency can both reduce import dependency
for importing countries while freeing up additional resources for export in
energy exporting countries. The UNECE Energy Efficiency 21 Project, as well
as Regional Advisory Services, provides self-financing methods for reducing
greenhouse gas emissions through energy efficiency improvements that can also
reduce import dependencies and alleviate fuel poverty.
• Coal, one of the most secure sources of energy,
offers an indigenous fuel to many UNECE countries so long as its production
and use can be made environmentally acceptable by introducing clean coal and
zero emission technologies. This challenge forms part of the Committee’s
work on Cleaner Electricity Production from Coal and Other Fossil Fuels as
well as a United Nations Development Account project.
• Coal Mine Methane can enhance energy security by
providing opportunities for inter-fuel substitution and indigenous energy
production while at the same time reducing emissions of methane, a potent
greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. This is one of the newer avenues of work
under the Committee that is also supported by a technical assistance project.
• Natural Gas, today’s fuel of choice and the
so-called transition fuel providing the bridge between the present and a much
cleaner, environmentally benign energy future, is an important activity of
the Working Party on Gas and the UNECE Gas Centre.
In every important respect, the need for secure and sustainable energy supplies
poses problems that will not go away and that probably cannot actually be
solved. Member States can only hope to manage them better. In order to do
this, however, they will need open a new chapter in international energy cooperation.
A New Energy Dialogue
At its annual session in November 2006, delegations
recommended that the Committee on Sustainable Energy undertake a broad-based
intergovernmental expert dialogue on energy security in one or more of
the following areas:
• Data and information sharing, and increased transparency;
• Infrastructure
investment and financing;
• Legal, regulatory and policy framework;
• Harmonization of standards;
• Research, development and deployment
of new technologies; and
• Investment/transit safeguards and burden sharing.
During its forthcoming 60th-anniversary Commission session, UNECE has been
requested to provide guidance to the Committee on Sustainable Energy regarding
its future programme of work, in particular which areas of energy security
should be addressed first in enhanced expert dialogue on the subject, so as
to contribute to a prioritized implementation of the Committee’s programme
of work.
Mr. Jean-Christophe Füeg
Chairman, Committee on Sustainable Energy
Over the past 60 years, UNECE has offered a forum to Governments of the
UNECE region to meet and develop common understandings to resolve and move
forward on international issues of mutual concern. During its annual meeting
in 2006, the Committee on Sustainable Energy discussed how this neutral UNECE
platform might address current energy challenges and how best to mitigate
tensions among member States regarding energy. Clearly, this will require
a renewed commitment from UNECE countries to the principles underlying energy
relationships and trade, energy security and sustainable energy development.
Each policy for promoting sustainable energy development has a corollary
in the policy measures for enhancing energy security. For example, soaring
transport fuel demand is a crucial but largely unresolved problem for UNECE
member States, but one which might be addressed by additional taxes on petroleum,
inter-fuel substitution to biofuels and natural gas, lightweight materials
in vehicle construction, and hybrid vehicles. Clearly, solutions are needed
that will have significant economic consequences for the transport, energy,
environment, forestry and agriculture sectors.
Sustainable energy development touches, to a greater or lesser degree, on
all economic sectors and all UNECE work areas. Promoting sustainable energy
policies calls for cross-sectoral consensus building to arrive at measures
that can be implemented through multi-disciplinary means in each sector over
the long term. UNECE has the capacities needed to address such problems. The
Commission serves as a consensus-building forum for debate on cross-sectoral
issues. Technical Committees and subsidiary expert groups work in each economic
sector. UNECE has the independent analytical expertise and the ability to
deliver technical assistance, as well as the long-term intergovernmental mechanisms
to establish agreed norms, standards and legally binding Conventions.
Some of these capacities will need to be reoriented and adapted to new uses,
however. This can be done most effectively by drawing on the experience of
member States and assimilating this at the international level. A reorientation
of UNECE cross-sectoral work on key issues such as sustainable energy development
could potentially benefit from these national experiences.
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