Roger at IAEA

The summer months of 2005 were fascinating, spent at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. I worked with Dr. Ivan Vera in a follow up to IAEA’s successful Indicators for Sustainable Energy Development (ISED) project. This multi-year, multi-agency effort developed a set of indicators for the energy component of sustainable development, and then applied the ISED approach in seven countries to analyze energy sector trends in achieving sustainable development, and to identify potential means of improving energy policies to accomplish such goals.

The Guidelines and Methodologies document (published earlier in 2005) was one of five IAEA documents highlighted in Oslo in December when Dr. El-Baradei and IAEA accepted the Nobel Prize. We are now producing a follow-up publication (that will be completed in 2006) with case study analyses for Brazil, Cuba, Lithuania, Mexico, Russia, Slovakia and Thailand.

Roger at Spittelau waste-to-energy plant

[…and as an aside, for those of you who know my work in solid waste combustion: I definitely had to have my picture taken at the world’s best-looking waste burning/district heating facility when I was in Vienna — the Spittelau incinerator, designed by the artist Hundertwasser — and located at the place where I transferred from the bus to the subway on my trips into the city.]