Activities

Projects

• Solar and Wind Energy Resource Assessment (SWERA)
  Renewable sources of energy, solar and wind in particular, can meet several times the world’s energy demands. Making use of these resources saves on national energy import costs, can generate national income in the form of energy exports, and drives innovation and job creation in this increasingly competitive energy market segment.
  
  Wind energy resource potentials differ from location to location. Through a range of well-established techniques mapping these potentials is possible. This allows financiers to begin to determine the size of the investments required to exploit the resources assessed. This in turn makes it possible to calculate return-on-investment figures – which can be higher than those for traditional energy projects.
  
  UNEP is partnering with the IEA to generate credible data for use in integrated quantitative assessments within finance, resource and policy, with a view to ultimately hastening the deployment of renewable energy technologies. The goal is to bring together resource assessment data, renewable energy policy effectiveness analyses and project financial risk data, to inform national energy sector decision-making.

• Solar Water Heating Market Transformation and Strengthening Initiative (GSWH)
  The goal of the project is to accelerate global commercialization and sustainable market transformation of solar water heating, thereby reducing the current use of electricity and fossil fuels for hot water preparation. It will build on the encouraging market development rates already achieved in some GEF program countries and seek to further expand the market in other GEF program countries, where the potential and necessary prerequisites for market uptake seem to exist.

  The first phase of the project will support i) the establishment of a global knowledge management component, and ii) a bundle of specific country programs for 6 countries: Albania, Algeria, Chile, India, Lebanon and Mexico implemented under the UNDP National Execution Modality (NEX). UNEP DTIE will integrate the activities globally and implement the global knowledge management component, including the dissemination function reaching out to 10 additional countries where projects may be initiated or markets influenced through information sharing in a second phase of the project. Work in the country programs will be articulated around five subcomponents to address the common major barriers to solar water heating development: policy and regulations; finance; business skills; information; and technology.