United Nations Foundation (UNF)

The United Nations Foundation links the UN’s work with others around the world, mobilizing the energy and expertise of businesses and NGOs to help the UN tackle issues such as climate change, global health, peace and security, women’s empowerment, poverty eradication, and energy access. The UN Foundation leads several initiatives that support the three objectives of Sustainable Energy for All – most notably the Energy Access Practitioner Network, the Energy for Women’s and Children’s Health project, and the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.

In support of the Sustainable Energy for All initiative, the UN Foundation founded the global Energy Access Practitioner Network in 2011 to help catalyze efforts to scale energy access, and to mobilize and leverage the emergence of lower-cost and innovative decentralized renewable energy solutions for off-grid electrification. Although several technology-specific and regional networks already existed, it was the first and remains the leading entity facilitating global interaction between the public and private sectors, helping to provide a global platform for practitioners to share knowledge, drive new partnerships and promote accelerated action to address the challenge of energy access. The Practitioner Network today serves as a technology-agnostic “network of networks” to help foster greater global action towards the achievement of universal energy access, and to shine a light on the energy needs of communities that have typically been overlooked by large-scale electrical grid development that either doesn’t reach them, or is out of reach due to affordability.

From its inception in 2011, the Practitioner Network’s membership has grown dramatically, crossing the 2,000-member milestone in early 2015 and continuing to grow. Its membership is drawn from more than 170 countries and includes entrepreneurs, companies, social enterprises and NGOs as well as financing institutions and funds. The Practitioner Network supports primarily market-led decentralized energy applications focusing on rural electrification and catalyzes energy service delivery that can leverage improvements in education, health, livelihoods, the environment, and gender equity. It promotes new technologies and innovative financial and business models to help meet the needs of low-income consumers. It facilitates investment and funding opportunities by connecting energy service providers with private investors as well as public-sector financing, grants and competitions. It fosters new partnerships and facilitates the development and adoption of quality standards and approaches. It also serves as a valued global and country-level platform for convening policy makers and practitioners within the Sustainable Energy for All initiative, as well as through two country affiliates, Sustainable Energy Network Ghana (SENG) and Clean Energy Access Network India (CLEAN), helping to integrate the voice of practitioners into country action planning activities.

The UN Foundation considers improving women’s and children’s health a top priority and has initiated recent programmes to support women and children, including delivering life-saving vaccines and anti-malaria nets to children, fostering promoting clean cooking solutions, enabling access to family planning, and improving public health through mobile technologies. As part of the Sustainable Energy for All initiative, the UN Foundation is leading an effort with WHO and UN Women to increase access to, and encourage the effective and sustained use of, energy-dependent health services, with a particular emphasis on women in low- and middle-income countries. This multidisciplinary Energy for Women’s and Children’s Health project is bringing together partners from the energy and health sectors, government, business, and civil society to develop and deliver decentralized, sustainable energy solutions for health care in remote areas. Health facilities in Malawi, Uganda and Ghana have been surveyed for detailed energy needs assessments to inform a resource mobilization effort to support deployment of appropriate electrification solutions. The next phase of the initiative will demonstrate best practices to provide modern energy services to health facilities in a systematic and sustainable way and promote new ways for the health sector to evaluate access to energy as a determinant of health service quality and outcomes at country level.

The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves is a public-private partnership hosted by the United Nations Foundation that seeks to save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women, and protect the environment by creating a thriving global market for clean and efficient household cooking solutions. Today, nearly three billion people rely on open fires and simple stoves that burn solid fuels to cook their food. The smoke from inefficient cooking leads to 4.3 million premature deaths every year, as well as up to 25% of global black carbon emissions. Women and children spend many hours gathering fuel – up to 5 hours per day – or spend a significant portion of household income to purchase fuel.

The Alliance’s 100 by ‘20 goal calls for 100 million households to adopt clean and efficient cookstoves and fuels by 2020. The Alliance is working with its public, private, and non-profit partners to accelerate the production, deployment, and use of clean and efficient cookstoves and fuels in developing countries.
Serving as a connector, catalyst and facilitator, the Alliance has helped build a solid foundation for transformative change by working with our partners to spur innovation, develop standards, advocate for enabling policies, and expand the base of evidence on the benefits of clean and efficient cookstoves and fuels. The Alliance has also strengthened supply through increased fund¬ing to enterprises and entrepreneurs for development, training, and capacity building. This in turn has driven tens of millions of investment dollars directly to enter¬prises and businesses in the sector. The Alliance is also working to enhance demand by encouraging behavior change. There is also growing interest in the Alliance’s effective intermediary model and integrating clean cooking into broader development and environmental interventions.

By the Numbers

The Alliance’s Achievements So Far
• 30 million households reached with clean and efficient cookstoves by the end of 2014 and 43 million households projected by the end of 2015
• Alliance partner base grown from 19 to 1,300+ partners
• 200 enterprises strengthened by the Alliance; 28 have collectively increased cookstoves production by over 300% and doubled fuel production
• $400 million grant and investment pledges mobilized
• $265 million in carbon finance attracted to the sector

Projected Impacts of the Alliance’s Work by 2020

• 640,000 lives saved, including 170,000 children
• 2.1 million jobs created
• 1.9 billion trees saved
• 1.6 billion metric tons of CO2e saved
• 61% reduction in spending on fuel per household
• 6.2% of household income saved
• 102 hours saved annually per household collecting fuel