UNITED NATIONS, May 10 (UPI) -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called for a greater focus on energy efficiency, increased investment in renewable energy sources and new technologies.
"We need a revolution in energy efficiency," he said at the start of the three-day Commission on Sustainable Development in New York Wednesday. "Conventional power stations waste 65 percent of the energy they generate. We must capture and use that excess heat, and make greater use of hybrid vehicles and other energy-efficient technologies."
The secretary-general also called for cutting the pollution generated by fossil fuels, for example through the use of clean coal, and pointed out that the high cost of oil imposes economic burdens on some poor countries while contributing to climate change.
The poor are particularly vulnerable to climate change and will need help from the global community to adapt to its impact, he added.
Some 1.6 billion people live with no electricity at all and have to rely on wood, dung and agricultural wastes, which have made indoor air pollution one of the world's top 10 causes of mortality or premature death, Annan said. Added to that is the immense opportunity cost of the many hours that people, mainly women, spend foraging for wood.
"We need new approaches. We need to scale up investment in mature renewables, such as wind, hydro and solar energy," he said. "We need to intensify research and development into promising longer-term sources such as tidal energy, ocean thermal conversion, hydrogen and fuel cells."
