Jakarta

I was in Jakarta in late March on behalf of IFPEN to give a GE ‘Oil and Gas University’ presentation at Pertamina, the Indonesian national oil and gas company. Pertamina is the world’s largest producer and exporter of LNG, and my two-day presentation covered the role of economics in environmental management; the Kyoto Protocol and carbon markets; market-based instruments for renewable energy and energy efficiency; and the role of energy within the international environmental system. Twenty-eight engineers and technical staff members attended the course, which was held in Pertamina’s Learning Center in the city.

Ms. Puni

While in Jakarta, I was also fortunate to be able to meet up with Ms. Tri Mumpuni and some of her colleagues. Ms. Puni is the Executive Director of IBEKA, a community-based group which works to provide energy and electricity-based services in rural villages throughout Asia. The group has worked before with UN ESCAP, and has particular expertise in micro-hydro applications.

You might recall that I worked with UN ESCAP in late 2009 and 2010 on energy access issues, and I was very pleased recently to find out that the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has accepted our proposal for a ‘Pro-Poor Public-Private Partnership’ (5P) to help improve energy access for the rural poor in five Asian countries. One innovative element of the proposal is that it will link the 5P process with international carbon markets, and IFAD will be providing $1.35 million of the $2.21 million project funding (with UN ESCAP and the private sector providing the rest). Ms. Puni’s group pioneered the 5P approach several years ago, and Indonesia is one of the five countries involved in the UN ESCAP/IFAD project – so I anticipate that she will be even busier (if that is possible!) over the next several years. (If interested, you can read a summary of the proposal in Annex II of IFAD’s President’s Report of 6 December 2010.)