Energy Justice Conference Concludes With Call to Action from Andrew Romanoff

September 17, 2012

Andrew Romanoff, the former Speaker of the Colordao House of Representatives, delivered the keynote address at the 2012 Energy Justice Conference on the CU Boulder campus and challenged the attendees to look for local and sustainable solutions to problems in "the other third" of the world. 

Now Senior Advisor to IDE, an international development organization based in Golden, Colordao, Romanoff congratulated the conference on its ambitious goals and urged those in attendance to keep working together in ways that alllow residents of underdeveloped nations to help themselves forward. The Other Third Conference brought experts from around the world to Boulder, to examine how the international community and local citizens might deploy Appropriate Sustainable Energy Technologies (ASETs) to offer sustainable energy for the under-developed, “Other Third” of the world.

A complete list of speakers can be found by following the link below.

www.theotherthird.org

The conference opened with a Keynote Opening Session addressed by the world’s premier advocate of sustainable energy for all, Dr. Kandeh Yumkella, the Chairman of UN Energy, and the Director-General of the United Nations Industrial and Development Organization (UNIDO).  He will be joined by Timothy Wirth, the President of the UN Foundation, which spearheads the global campaign to promote clean cook-stove technology.

The eight (8) sessions that followed featured leaders in both thought and action, concerned about energy poverty. These sessions will traverse the ethical foundations for addressing questions of energy poverty, the pivotal importance of energy for development, the meaning of access to energy, the nature and type of ASETs, the policies of the EU, US and UN dealing with sustainable energy for all, and practical areas where geo-physical groups, NGOs and faith organizations could converge to move toward shared goals.

The ability to harness energy is fundamental to economic and social development. Worldwide, almost 3 billion people have little or no access to beneficial energy resources for cooking, heating, water sanitation, illumination, transportation, or basic mechanical needs. Energy poverty exacerbates ill health and economic hardship, and reduces educational opportunities, particularly for women and children.

LINK HERE TO CONFERENCE INFORMATION