Irena elects Kenyan as first director general

Dubai: Adnan Z. Amin, the permanent director general-'designate' of Abu Dhabi-based International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena),  will be able to mobilise the much needed technology and funds for propagating renewable energy across the world, diplomats who witnessed his election to the prominent post, told Gulf News.

Irena aims to assist its 149  member states to define their strategy in all renewable energies: bio energy, geothermal, hydropower, ocean, solar and wind.

Although Amin has won the election, at the moment  he is  termed as the director general- 'designate' as the recommendation of the meeting which elected him has to be approved by the first assembly of the Irena, being held on Monday and Tuesday in Abu Dhabi, a diplomat who attended the meeting said.

“He will become the permanent director general of the agency after the ratification, although it is only a technical process,” he explained.

The diplomats did not want to be named as they were not authorised to speak to the media

When contacted, an official spokesperson of the agency did not want to comment about the elections, saying everything would be officially announced later.

As Gulf News reported on Sunday, Amin, the current interim director general of Irena, won two third votes in an election held Sunday evening in the capital. He won 76 votes out of 112 votes whereas his rival candidate Pedro Marin, the former Spanish energy secretary, won 38 votes. One vote was invalid, the diplomats said.  

Although Irena has 149 members, including European Union and 148 countries, only 69 of them have ratified the statute so far.  And 113 countries participated in the elections.

The election of the permanent director general was the second crucial event in the history of two-year-old agency, after the selection of Abu Dhabi to house its headquarters in June 2009, marking the first headquarters of an international organisation in a Middle East city.

It is the second headquarters of an international agency in a developing country after Nairobi in Kenya which houses the headquarters of UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme). 

The UAE had strongly advocated the relevance of a developing country  hosting the Irena, in its campaign to win the bid for Abu Dhabi.

Now a  prominent UN diplomat from a developing country (Kenya) leading the agency has increased that relevance.

Ameen had served as the Director of the UN System Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB).

Prior to this role, he served as the Executive Director of the Secretariat of the Secretary-General's High Level Panel on UN System-wide Coherence. He also served for several years as the Director of the New York Office of UNEP and Special Representative of the UNEP Executive Director.

Since appointed as the interim director general, Amin initiated at least three ambitious projects which caught attention of the world.

As Gulf News reported, he has  planned to  prepare a ‘Renewable Readiness Report' on all world nations, which will give a clear picture of their legislative framework, incentives, targets and provisions in national development plan for adopting renewable energy. 

Since international negotiations to make a binding legal framework to combat climate change have not fully succeeded, one possible way to address carbon emission and poverty is scaling up the use of renewable energy, Amin, said in an exclusive interview with Gulf News.

A map identifying the areas with solar radiation and wind in individual countries, and a database of renewable energy technologies are the two major projects initiated by Amin.

"We are taking two regions to begin with - Africa and South Pacific islands.Tthe project will gradually move to all world nations,’ he had said.