This is a CTP of initiative: INFORSE ‐VE (Denmark)
1992: VE goes global VE participated in the NGO – Forum in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The forum was related to UN’s global summit on environment and development. The basic idea was to focus on sustainable energy and create a global network of local initiatives. INFORSE was established during the meeting in RIO on 4th June 1992 following the concern of several NGOs that energy questions played a rather small role in the discussions on sustainable development. The group made a basic policy paper – a strategy paper describing Sustainable Energy Development. The strategy described in this document is as follows: “This strategy should be seen as a single, but important part of a general strategy for sustainable development. A sustainable energy strategy must achieve a 60 % reduction of CO2 from the energy sector. This reduction has to take place in the industrialized countries, as they are the major contributors to energy-related CO2-emissions, the primary greenhouse-gas.” VE ended up being leading INFORSE, and even today GBO is both political spokesman of VE and head of INFORSE Europe. At the same time as INFORSE is created as an international network working with policies, VE starts to engage in concrete sustainable energy projects in developing countries. VE goes from an organisation focussing solely on Denmark to also engage in North-South questions – acting by solving concrete energy problems in a number of countries – for instance by developing solar cooking and simple wind turbines for water pumping.
Essential to the establishment of INFORSE were Niels I. Meyers’ international group of researchers, the international conference in Snekkersten ‘Global Collaboration on a Sustainable Energy Development’ on 25-28th April 1991, and the international contacts of Nordvestjysk Folkecenter. The conference in Snekkersten was an attempt to let representatives from developing countries meet representatives from industrialized countries to discuss possible solutions prior to the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.
VE had experienced a growing interest from abroad since the start in 1975, and Nordvestjysk Folkecenter had international visitors studying the technologies that Nordvestjysk Folkecenter had developed. GBO: There were a growing number of international contacts to Nordvestjysk Folkecenter, and these contacts were the first step towards building an international database concerning organisations dealing with sustainable energy. People related to VE were among the 3000 Danish young people that participated in ‘Next Stop Soviet’ in September 1989. Here they experienced a huge interest in sustainable energy in Eastern Europe. The Berlin Wall fell in November 1989. VE arranges an international seminar with participants from Eastern and Western Europe. VE begins to develop a database of organisations dealing with sustainable energy and publishes an international newsletter ‘Soft Energy’ (Later to become INFORSE’s ‘Sustainable Energy News’). VE’s engagement in developing countries was supported by a special Danish fund, targeting environmental projects in middle-income countries.
Energy and Climate concerned NGOs were in conflict with the US government. The US government had succeeded in moving the focus of the summit from energy and climate questions to a much broader scope. UN dropped to create an international renewable energy organisation. GBO: We worked hard to influence the official process, but in that respect RIO was a total failure concerning sustainable energy. This made VE draft the policy paper on sustainable energy, and initiate the formation of an international sustainable energy organisation. GBO: There was a decisive conflict with the US government. I remember how the head of the American delegation stood up and said that the US government under no circumstances would support this policy paper. Conflicts between different NGOs played a role for the way INFORSE ended up being organised.
It became more and more evident that it was necessary to create an international sustainable energy NGO and that VE was expected to play a major role in this, being frontrunner in relation to the technological development and in developing ways of involving civil society in the transition towards a society based on sustainable energy. (The 100 % sustainable energy vision is developed later).
VE learned a lot about acting in an international context. Even after INFORSE were established, VE continued to develop international projects, not only in Eastern Europe, but also in Asia and Africa. VE develops a permanent capacity for being part of projects in developing countries – which still is an important part of the organisation’s work. One of the important lessons learnt was about the importance to relate to the specific local context – what is a success as a civil society project differs from country to country.
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