and in turn increase the productivity of enterprises while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Both projects also aim to provide skills and jobs to local people. A project in operation in Cuba is helping the country to become less dependent on imported fossil fuel to meet its growing energy needs and, at the same time, reduce its greenhouse gas emissions through the widespread use of renewable energy. Cuba’s Isle of Youth (Isla de la Juventud) is its second largest island with a population of around 100,000. The island’s extensive pine forests and abundance of Atlantic winds, sunshine and water provide the ideal resources for renewable energy. The UNIDO project, launched in 2006, demonstrates the technical, economic and financial viability of sustainable renewable energy production in line with MDG 7 (ensuring environmental sustainability). One of the project’s aims is to foster private investments through the Risk and Replication Management Fund and encourage economically viable markets, environmentally sustainable forestry management, mandatory certification standards and local manufacturing capacity for renewable energy technologies. Progress achieved so far includes the installation of a 50 kilowatt biomass plant, a 1.65 megawatt (electrical) wind
farm, four wind measurement towers to record wind data and a nursery forest plantation that will produce up to 36,000 tons of biomass per year. The bidding process for a 3.8 megawatt (thermal) biomass plant for the meat industry is ongoing. During 2012, $2.2 million of the Risk and Replication Management Fund was fully capitalized, allowing for the signature of the loan agreements for three major renewable energy projects: a 500 kW gasification plant and two new biomass boilers for the meat processing industry. The Organization’s activities within the framework of the Secretary-General’s Sustainable Energy for All initiative were highlighted at a number of international forums during the year under review. Together with the Government of Ghana, GEF, the ECOWAS Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency and the Global Forum for Sustainable Energy, UNIDO organized a high-level energy forum in October in Accra on the theme “Paving the way for Sustainable Energy for All in West Africa through renewable energy and energy efficiency”. The main outcomes of the forum included the adoption by ECOWAS Energy Ministers of resolutions on the ECOWAS policy on renewable energy, energy efficiency and small hydropower as well as the
“Our rivers will produce green, renewable and sustainable energy, giving us hope that economic success and national security will be ours for years to come,” said the President of Sierra Leone as he and the Director General of UNIDO laid the foundation stone of a hydroplant. Located on the Bankasoka River at Port Loko, the three megawatt hydroplant was developed by UNIDO together with the Government of China and will bring immediate relief to some 8,000 households in local communities in terms of irrigation, sanitation and clean drinking water. Financed entirely by the Government of China, it will also give a boost to small and medium businesses, particularly those working with cassava, flowers, fruit and vegetables and minerals. Other beneficiaries include a hospital in Port Loko and several schools in the area; schoolchildren will now be able to do their homework in the evening under proper lighting. Currently, traditional biomass in the form of fuel wood and charcoal for cooking accounts for an estimated 84 per cent of total energy use in Sierra Leone. The new hydroplant will help conserve forests and reduce greenhouse emissions. It will also reduce Sierra Leone’s dependence on oil imports for which it pays a price it can ill afford while it is struggling to rebuild the economy.
68 The green growth pathway