SDG Asia Workshop

• Collaboration among neighboring countries is key to advance renewable energy development as countries in many regions must integrate their electrical grids and coordinate renewable energy expansion to keep electricity supplies stable and efficient. 
  
• Pursuing similar objectives including reducing energy cost, and increasing energy efficiency and grid stability, the group of North-East Asian countries has agreed to establish a regional mechanism for energy integration. The North-East Asia Regional Power Interconnection and Cooperation Forum (NEA-RPIC) will meet annually to facilitate information sharing and promote coordination among stakeholders. The initiative was launched during a conference on North-East Asia Regional Power Interconnection, organized by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) and partners.

http://www.eria.org/RPR_FY2015_09.pdf

• Yet Iris Marlene Espinal, Carmen Lourdes Zambrano Cruz, Alnora Casy Estrada and Ingrid Miranda Martinez are engineering an energy secure future. They all from remote corners of Honduras, are leading efforts to install, maintain and repair solar energy equipment in their communities. So far they’ve installed more than 200 panels, each generating 85 watts of power for household and other uses.
  
• The women learned their skills through the solar energy programme at the Barefoot College in Tilonia, India. Their six-month “solar engineers” study programme was made possible through a partnership between the Government of India and the Small Grants Programme (SGP), a programme supported by the Global Environment Fund (GEF) and UNDP.
  

• “In addition to providing us with light, we can use the radio and TV,” says 69-year-old Juanita Zambrano from Los Hornos. “We can also charge our cell phones and bulbs. We can listen to the news, read the Bible, talk… and we have less risk of fire.”
  
• “We didn’t have any diplomas like students at a normal university,” says Alnora Casy. “In India, we learnt using a practical approach. We brought back a lot of knowledge to benefit our communities and, in a sense, to help them to escape from poverty.”
  
• “Without any light our children cannot study at home,” says Juanita from Los Hornos. “We now sleep at nine and the children can study at night.”