Regional conference on renewable energy issues Sana’a DeclarationEstablishment of regional center for renewable energy, project funding [Archives:2004/733/Business & Economy]

Mahyoub Al-Kamaly
The Regional Conference on the Renewable Energy held in Sana'a on 21-22 April 2004, called on industrial and advanced states and also international organisations to work for building a regional center for renewable energy for sustainable development in Yemen to be specialized in conducting researches on energy technologies.
The conference in which 22 Arab, Islamic, and European countries had participated, in addition to 11 regional and international organisations, called on industrial countries to implement their material and technological pledges to the countries of the region for the continuous development of the self-potentials of those countries for generating energy, water desalination and also the technological cooperation with the participant countries in exploitation and use of both solar and wind energy.
Sana'a declaration issued by the conference had also affirmed the importance of the public sector participation and scientific research centers in the area as well in developing requirements of sustainable development such as energy technologies in addition t providing financial grants and loans by advanced countries to the developing states for importing clean energy from the places of its production.
The conference had in its recommendations depended on Abu Dhabi declaration on future of environmental work in the Arab homeland and the Arab declaration on sustainable development of 202 and Abu Dhabi's declaration on environment and energy in 2003 and Dubai declaration on trans-frontier air pollutants in 2004.
The conference expressed its great consideration for the contribution of the government of Federal Germany with 500 million euros to the development of renewable energy in the developing countries as it would host a world conference on renewable energy next July.
The conferees had been unanimous that the constructive employment of sources of renewable energy sources would help develop sustainable development of the developing countries through:
– fighting poverty and providing energy in rural and remote areas,
-increase in providing energy and its efficiency as well as multiplicity and diversity of its national and regional sources,
-the possibility of using the renewable energy in areas of desalination of water and improving bases of industrial development.
The conference had come out with strategic resolutions among which were:
the development, dissemination and distribution of technologies energy efficiency and preservation of available energy, cleaner technology and encouragement of increasing activities of research and evolvement in areas of various technologies of energy. The resolutions also urged industrial and advanced states to extend helping hand to the developing countries that depend on exporting and consuming fuel in the process of developing their economies.
The conference was organised by the ministries of electricity, water and environment in Yemen in association with the ministry of environment in Federal Germany and the donor parties to Yemeni electricity sector. Among the senior participants in the conference were the German minister of environment Jurgen Trittin, a number of German businessmen and investors in the field of new and renewable energy and Al-Hassan binTalal, chairman of he Arab Intellectual Forum.
Electric power production sector in Yemen suffers from many problems, more serious of which is that some of the stations that provide the main network have exceeded their presumed capacity and they are permanently exposed to failure and therefore it has become a serious matter to look for means for overcoming those problems.
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