For Immediate Release
March 25, 2022

NEW YORK – The Foundation for Renewable Energy and Environment’s finance and research teams are working with local communities and national stakeholders to fulfill Sustainable Development Goal 7, or SDG 7, adopted by the United Nations and calls for “affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all” by 2030.

Examples of our actions include:

FREE contributed for six years to Seoul’s International Sustainable Energy Advisory Council (SIEAC). FREE’s president served as Special Advisor to the City’s Solar City Initiative, including the preparation of a book the documenting the city’s achievements to rapidly decarbonize Seoul’s footprint.

FREE has mapped the potential of rooftop solar for 6 world cities, taking lessons learned from its work in Seoul.

FREE has also worked with the Korea Institute of Energy Research to combine advanced techniques to measure building energy efficiency and rooftop solar potential and for Daejeon,¹′² a city of 1.3 million residents and home to several of Korea’s advanced research institutes and laboratories. The work provides a model for urban planners to assess the ability of cities to meet their present and future needs with two of the most potent sustainable energy technologies available to societies everywhere.

¹“Inferential- and measurement-based methods to estimate rooftop “solar city” potential in megacity Seoul, South Korea.” 2022. Job Taminiau, John Byrne, Jongkyu Kim, Min-Hwi Kim, Jeongseok Seo. WIREs Energy and Environment. 2022;e438. https://doi.org/10.1002/wene.438

²“Infrastructure-scale sustainable energy planning in the cityscape: Transforming urban energy metabolism in East Asia.” Job Taminiau, John Byrne, Jongkyu Kim, Min-Whi Kim, Jeongseok Seo. WIREs Energy Environ. 2021;e397. https://doi.org/10.1002/wene.397

For Immediate Release
March 25, 2022

NEW YORK – The Foundation for Renewable Energy and Environment’s collaboration with the international community has produced advancements that address a host of climate change needs.

Collaboration with the United Nations
FREE is an official observer and participant in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC. As an official observer, FREE participates at meetings and conferences in the UNFCCC process, debates with researchers from non-governmental organizations, and contributes briefing papers to the public record of UNFCCC meetings of the Conference of Parties.

The UNFCCC, or “Convention,” is the United Nations entity tasked with supporting the global response to the threat of climate change. The Convention is the parent treaty of the 2015 Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. It was adopted by 196 Parties at the 21st Conference of the Parties, or COP 21, in Paris, on December 12, 2015, and entered into force on November 4, 2016.

FREE members participated at COP 21 and contributed to discussions that lead to the Paris Agreement. FREE’s contribution to COP 21 focused on the promotion of a “polycentric strategy” to initiate and implement programs to realize just and sustainable solutions to climate change. FREE President Dr. John Byrne and FREE Research Director Dr. Job Taminiau participated in the proceedings and submitted a position to the UNFCCC, “A Polycentric Response to the Climate Change Challenge Relying on Creativity, Innovation, and Leadership.”

FREE members have actively participated in UNFCCC proceedings since the 1997 Conference of the Parties 3 in Kyoto, Japan. FREE members have participated by submitting position papers and attending eight of the Conference of the Parties meetings.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Dr. John Byrne, FREE president, has participated in scientific assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, as a contributing author and expert reviewer. The IPCC is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change.

Dr. Byrne has contributed since 1992 to Working Group III of the IPCC. His work is published in IPCC assessments which led to greater global awareness of the problem and the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to the Panel.

Endorsement of FREE’s SEU Model from the Asian Development Bank

FREE’s work on sustainable energy financing has received international attention, including an endorsement by the Asian Development Bank. On June 24, 2011, Asian Development Bank’s Report, Second Annual Asia-Pacific Dialogue on Clean Energy Governance, Policy, and Regulation, said that as part of the priority to facilitate the scale-up of energy efficiency and renewable energy, the Communique recommends policy-makers to consider “establishing a Sustainable Energy Utility (SEU). […] to fund energy efficiency and renewable energy as infrastructure investments.”

FREE members developed the Sustainable Energy Utility, or SEU, model to address energy and environmental crises in an environmentally, socially and economically sustainable manner.

FREE’s pioneering work on sustainable energy financing was also highlighted by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Energy Technology Perspectives (2016), a comprehensive review of technology and financing options for a low-carbon future. Stressing the need for “fast, radical, and effective policy action”, the IEA has featured one of FREE’s flagship innovations, the SEU model, in its annual Energy Technology Perspectives publication.

In 2016, the International Energy Agency (IEA) Energy Technology Perspectives said, “The Sustainable Energy Utility (SEU) has demonstrated its capacity “to address many barriers to tapping into the local sustainable energy potential.”

A White House announcement from President Obama recognized the Delaware SEU for its successful $70.2 million bond offering which received a AA+ rating by Standard & Poor’s. “The Sustainable Energy Utility (SEU) [is] a one-stop shop for […] energy efficiency solutions,” the White House said on December 2, 2011.

The FREE research team has recently published their primary findings regarding the ongoing and rapidly accelerating growth of Community Clean Energy Choice (CCE) authorities in the United States, in particularly in relation to their solar energy offerings. In contrast to the conventional arrangement, where energy utilities determine the available energy options, CCEs enable community-wide energy decision-making. The research focused on the trajectory of CCEs in California, Massachusetts, and New York and explored how this innovation could shake-up the existing energy regimes in these states and accelerate the deployment of solar energy. The full research report, titled “Community Solar Governance: Institutional Design and Collective Choice Options”, is available via the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) or via the FREE research page where you can find all the research publications of the FREE research team.

Several Key Findings from the Research Effort:

The CCE authorities have grown rapidly over the years. For example, The figure below provides an overview of the growth of CCEs in California from 2010 to 2020. As you can see, the CCE innovation has rapidly grown to cover a sizeable portion of the state. Major population hubs like San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego are now part of the CCE movement. As we document in our report, this growth pattern is expected to continue in the following years, making FREE’s research a timely and necessary piece for understanding the possible implications.

Figure 1. Overview of CCE growth in California (2010 – 2020). Clicking the various areas of the map provides a pop-up with additional information.