United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed the Director of The Energy Center, KNUST as a Technical Group Member of his High-Level Group on Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All).  The Secretary-General announced this appointment at a press event organized in the Dag Hammarskjold Auditorium at the United Nations on 1 November 2011.  Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said when announcing the High-Level Group that “from job creation to economic development, from security concerns to health and the status of women, energy lies at the heart of all countries’ core interests”.  

The press event was used to launch the Secretary General’s SE4All initiative which will advance the United Nations General Assembly’s designation of 2012 as “the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All” by mobilizing action from a broad range of stakeholders and also serve as a major contribution to the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), June 2012 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  The SE4All initiative will seek to achieve the overarching goal of Sustainable Energy for All through a package of three interlinked global targets by 2030: achieving universal access to modern energy services, doubling energy efficiency, and doubling the renewable energy share in the overall global energy mix.

The High-Level Group is co-chaired by Kandeh Yumkella, the Chair of United Nations Energy and Director-General of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), and Charles Holliday, Chairman of Bank of America.  The members of the Group will develop an action agenda that will mobilize action by all stakeholders in support of energy access, energy efficiency and increasing the share of renewable energy.  A range of commitments and partnerships will be announced at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in 2012.  

Principals of the High-Level Group include Suleiman Jasir Al-Herbish (Director-General, OPEC Fund for International Development), Adnan Amin (Director General, International Renewable Energy Agency), Steven Chu (United States Secretary of Energy), Ditlev Engel (President and CEO, Vestas), Peter Löscher (President and CEO, Siemens), Achim Steiner (Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme), and Chen Yuan (Chairman of the Board of Directors, China Development Bank).  Members of the Technical Group include Fatih Birol (International Energy Agency), Abeeku Brew-Hammond (Ghana Energy Commission and The Energy Center, KNUST), Vijay Iyer (World Bank), Daniel Kammen (University of California, Berkeley) Vijay Modi (Columbia University), and Nebojsa Nakicenovic (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis).

For more information on the SE4All press event and the High-Level Group please click here

For a video clip on the press event please click here