The first international conference of the Johannesburg Renewable Energy Coalition, founded during last year’s world summit on sustainable development, has taken place in Brussels.
Its main purposes were to bring together ministers and regulatory bodies from its 80 or so member countries and to engage the EU more actively in its deliberations. In both of these aims it can report some success. The conference took place during the EC’s Green Week, and was attended by prominent Green Jürgen Trittin, Germany’s environment minister, together with ministerial level politicians from the UK, Brazil, Norway and New Zealand. Moreover the Commission has agreed to take on the secretariat of the JREC.
Action to realise the JREC’s plan of implementation, to ‘urgently increase the renewable share of global energy sources’ agreed at the world summit, seems no nearer, but an extensive series of conferences and regional renewables meetings has been planned as part of the organisation’s ‘roadmap’.