Vienna, 19 June 2015 - United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Achim Steiner attended the Vienna Energy Forum, where he took part in a number of high-level meetings and chaired a panel of experts discussing the multiple benefits of energy efficiency.
In chairing the panel, he facilitated discussion among representatives of Denmark, India, Japan, Viet Nam, the International Energy Agency, the UN Foundation and the Korea Energy Management Corporation. The experts were able to share lessons from national energy efficiency implementations and success stories from the corporate world.
Noted in the discussion was an IEA estimate that energy efficiency measures can contribute 40 per cent of the CO2 reductions needed by 2050 to limit temperature increases to 2 °C. There are many other benefits to improving energy efficiency, but these are often overlooked and not assessed as systematically. A recent IEA report categorizes these 'multiple benefits' and captures a reality that is often overlooked: "investment in energy efficiency can provide many different benefits to many different stakeholders."
UNEP has also championed the benefits of energy efficiency, particular the en.lighten initiative. Since 2010, the initiative has supported 44 countries to develop lighting policies and adopt efficiency standards that will deliver efficient lighting to 1 billion people. It has also created thousands of green jobs, generated US$2.75billion of electricity bill savings and reduced CO2 emissions by an estimated 14 million tonnes per year.
While in Vienna, the Executive Director attended numerous management team meetings to discuss multilateral environment agreements.
