Women Leaders in Climate Change Finance And Investment

- Thank you, Nancy, for that introduction, and I want to echo Nancy's thanks to everyone for making time in their schedules to be here today. I think it's really wonderful to have such a distinguished group here today to talk about these vital issues. And when I think about, you know, where we are today in our energy systems and thinking about sustainability going forward, you know, it's really about technology, it's about policy, and it's about finance. And finance is a critical leg of that stool in getting from where we are today in our energy system and where we need to be 5, 10, 20, 30 years from now. And so I'm going to talk a little bit about the policy side from our perspective, some of the major things that we have underway in the climate energy space. And then I'll return to the end to the finance part of it, and I'll be very brief in doing all of this. So last June the president put out a climate plan, as Nancy indicated. And I'm going to focus on the mitigation side of that, the parts aimed at reducing pollution. The major initiatives there include the first-ever carbon standards for new and existing power plants, the EPA-proposed standards for new power plants last fall, and is in the process of developing standards for existing power plants, the range of things in the energy efficiency space underway at the Department of Energy. There we committed in the plan to do another round of fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards for heavy-duty vehicles, EPA and Department of Transportation, as well as commitments to address emissions of methane and HFCs through a variety of mechanisms. So I think in the policy space, we are making use of the tools that we have as an administration to continue to ratchet down emissions here at home. At the same time, we're taking a variety of steps to better prepare as a federal government and then partnership with state and local communities for the impacts that we know -- that we're already seeing, that we know are coming. In 2012, weather-related disasters cost more than $110 billion in the U.S. We know that we're facing serious impacts today as well. And so I think we're doing what we can on the policy side, and clearly the policy framework is key to shaping the investment environment. But I think we're also interested, so we want to have a good dialogue there. But we're also interested in thinking about other ways and other ways we can partner with you to integrate the kinds of climate and sustainability considerations and to finance. So I think, really looking forward to being part of discussions today. And with that, I will wrap up my brief remarks, and I'm very pleased to introduce John Podesta, who's with us this morning. I think as you all know, John joined the White House last week as a counselor to the president, after having founded and served as present CEO of the Center for American Progress, after a tour of duty under President Clinton as the White House chief of staff. So please join me welcoming John. [applause] John Podesta: Thanks, Dan. And I wanted to be here this morning to demonstrate one of two possibilities, either than working on climate and energy in the White House is a very dangerous occupation or more importantly to say how important I think this dialogue and discussion is. The president asked me to return to the White House, and I -- as Dan noted, I did just last week -- to work with Dan and Nancy and the whole cabinet team to both ensure the implementation of the Climate Action Plan that you heard about, and to push forward with great vigor to transform our economy of one that's inefficient, high-carbon based, to one that's low-carbon based and is building a sustainability and to do it with the resolve that we have to build more resilience into the economy overall. So I was happy to come back and, amongst other things, really take a leadership role on that. And looking around the room, I feel like I made the right choice because we're going to get the job done. So there's an amazing group of leaders here in climate finance, both speaking and in attendance. You're the trailblazers, so it's important for us, I think, to hear from you as much as for us to hear from us. And I think -- I'd just make a couple of points. One is that climate change finance, as you all know, but I think needs to be more well-known, is not just part of corporate social responsibility but actually mainstreamed into the finance sector. [inaudible] is here, who's a colleague of Abby Joseph Cohen. And Abby, I guess, got a little bit banged up on the way to the show as well. But I remember Abby's work more than a decade ago that demonstrated that managing energy sustainability and climate change was not just an indicia of being a good person but was really an indication of being great managers and great companies. And it didn't matter what sector of the economy you were talking about, whether it was in the cleanest sectors or the dirtiest sectors, the responsibility to take a look at that was going to be a strong indicator of strong management inside the company. So I think it's good news for sustainability for, more importantly, I think for the economy overall that the recent report of the carbon disclosure project found that companies from the S&P500 on the 2013 climate performance leadership index more than doubled in 2012. People are paying attention to this and demonstrating the significance of incorporating climate change risk and opportunities into their overall business strategies. President, obviously, as Dan noted, understands that you can't tackle climate change alone. We need the robust participation of the private sector, as Nancy noted, and we have strong partnerships in biofuels in -- on HFCs, as was noted, working with the insurance industry to identify best practices. I think those examples and more show the critical role the private sector plays in partnering with the government. And I think that's especially true with the finance sector, which is why this is such an important meeting today. I want to speak just a minute about the international context because you'll hear later from Dr. Ishi, from Elizabeth, and others. But it's really, I think, the U.S. has contributed 7.5 billion in the fast-track finance commitment. That was made at the Copenhagen Accord. But that's on the way towards a 2020 commitment, which was announced in Copenhagen, of $100 billion a year going to clean energy finance. So moving forward, we really need to think about how do we ramp up to that level of investment both, not just from a national perspective, from a global perspective? I won't steal their thunder. They'll tell us how to do it. But I think that is a global challenge of the first order of magnitude. And I want to conclude by saying that I just had the honor of serving on Secretary - General Ban Ki- moon's high-level panel on the post-2015 development agenda, think about and look towards what is going to follow the millennium development goals and how we really end extreme poverty globally by 2030. And I think that report, which was well-received and co-chaired by the prime minister of the UK, by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and the president of Indonesia, really nested the ideas around eliminating extreme poverty in the vision of building sustainable economies, economies that were resilient, particularly for the poor, in economies that connected the poor to modern -- to the modern economy, particularly in information telecommunications and energy education and healthcare. And in order to do that, we're going to have to mobilize what our secretariat looked to be at a trillion-dollar level by 2030. And that's going to come from private sector through public-private partnerships, through concentration on building the right kind of systems. And it's really, I think, up to you to give us ideas about how you could reach that level of ambition, which the president in the last year State of the Union announced the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030. That's going to take a lot of effort to change current systems, but I think -- I believe that we're up to it and we can build a cleaner, more sustainable world and one that's filled with more justice as well. So thank you for letting me be here. [applause] - Thank you, Mr. Podesta. Now I'd like to invite Ambassador Cathy Russell to the podium, who is the U.S. ambassador at large for Global Women's Issues and is advancing the interest of women throughout the world. Cathy Russell: Thank you very much, Ashley. I appreciate it. It's nice to be here. It's nice to be back in the White House. I am at the State Department now, but I was at the White House fairly recently. I was Dr. Biden's chief of staff. So it's nice to be back, and it's especially nice to see John here. I worked with John the first time about 25 years ago, not to age me or John, for that matter. But it's really great to see him here. I'm really excited to be here and to see all of you working on such an important issue. All of us are here because we recognize a very basic fact that women really are critical to solving the immense global climate challenge and energy challenges we all face. I'm excited to have joined the State Department at a time when women and climate change issues are gaining momentum internationally. In fact, in due -- in part, due to strong leadership by the United States, particularly by Todd Stern, who John and I have both worked with in the past as well, and Secretary Kerry, by Secretary Clinton. Gender is now a standing agenda item at the international climate talks, which I think is incredibly important. Women at all levels are and will continue to be at the front lines of climate -- yes, I'm not John -- climate change and energy access solutions. Let me start by mentioning some interesting research on women and climate solutions at the corporate level. Studies indicate that adding women to higher positions in the private sector can result in a company's greater focus on longer-term sustainability. Companies with more women on their boards of directors tend to have stronger records, reducing carbon emissions throughout their value chains. At the other end of the spectrum, in villages throughout the developing world, women are also on the front lines of climate solutions. Let's take energy access as an example. Today, 1.3 billion people in the world still lack access to electricity. At least 2.7 billion people lack access to clean cook stoves and fuels. How do we make a dent in those numbers? I would suggest that one way is by focusing on women. Today, women are the primary users of technologies like solar lamps and clean cook stoves. They can be the key to increasing small-scale clean technology adoption rates and energy access in communities. Further, women and women's groups can serve as distribution networks to help fill the last mile gap in areas lacking energy access. To harness women's potential to increase energy access, the State Department has launched the partnership on women's entrepreneurship and renewables -- what we call wPOWER. It seeks to empower women -- more than 8000 women -- clean energy entrepreneurs across East Africa, Nigeria, and India to bring clean energy access to more than 3.5 million people over the next three years. This new public-private partnership brings together the MacArthur Foundation, the Global Alliance for Cookstoves, Care International, Solar Sisters, SSP India, the Wangari Maathai Institute for Peace and Environmental Studies, Women for Women International, and the Greenbelt Movement to provide necessary training, access to clean energy technology inventories, and microfinance loans to women entrepreneurs. We believe that this initiative will not just increase clean energy access, it will also yield a double dividend for families. As you all know -- we've heard this many times -- studies have shown that women disproportionately spend more of their earned income improving the well-being of their families and their children. By empowering women to become clean energy entrepreneurs, we improve not just their own lives but that of their families and their communities. We hope to build wPOWER over the next few years, and we would welcome any new partners who are interested in joining us. When we talk about women on the front lines, we unfortunately also mean the front lines of climate change impacts. Studies show that women and girls in developing countries suffer disproportionately from the effects of extreme weather events, some of which are relat4ed to climate change. For example, the people recently -- or recorded killed by the 1991 cyclone in Bangladesh, more than 90 percent were women and children. However, studies also show that with progress and education and gender equality around the world, fewer lives are lost from extreme weather events, regardless of the cause. By connecting our investments in climate resiliency and women, we can help increase gender equality and simultaneously decrease climate impacts. Much work remains in these areas and many others I didn't have the chance to touch on today. But the good news is that women are on the front lines of change everywhere. By tapping their potential on climate and energy solutions, we will move closer to a sustainable future for all of us. So thank you all very much for being here. Thank you for what you're doing. I look forward to working with you in the future, and I appreciate your attention. Thanks. [applause] - Thank you, Ambassador. Moving right along, I would like to now -- I'm honored to welcome to the podium Senator Jeanne Shaheen from New Hampshire. She is the only woman in U.S. history to be elected both a governor and a U.S. senator, so a real beacon of women's leadership here with us today. She has served in the U.S. Senate since 2009 and is a member of the Senate Committee's on armed services, foreign relations, appropriations, and small business and entrepreneurship. Senator Shaheen. [applause] Jeanne Shaheen: Thank you very much. It's great to be here with all of you and Cathy, as you were talking about the impact that women are having in their communities. I thought about the recent budget negotiations in Congress. And do we think it's an accident that we finally got a budget this year with Patty Murray as budget chair. And now we've got an appropriations omnibus appropriations bill with Barbara Mikulski as appropriations chair. I think there's a connection. [laughter] But anyway, I'm really delighted to be here with all of you. And I want to talk a little bit about what I'm working on in the Senate to address climate change. And what I have looked at where I think there's the best opportunity to move legislation forward is around energy efficiency. And it not only, I think, allows us to leverage public dollars for private investment, as John was talking about, which we know is really what we've got to do if we're going to address this issue, and you all are working on that. But it also, by the way, helps with job creation and economic growth; so environment, economy, jobs, and national security as well. So we are still in too many areas in the Senate and in Congress fighting the battle of whether climate change is real or not. I don't think anybody who lived through the last week, where we saw temperatures go from about 10 below with the windchill to 60 degrees in a week, should doubt the fact that something is going on with climate. And we need to think about how to address it. When I ran for the Senate in 2008, it's one of the issues that I was really wanted to try and work on when I got to the Senate. And I remember meeting with New Hampshire's Carbon Coalition during that campaign. And one of the things that they showed me is the survey that said that people think there's something going on with climate, but they're not sure what to do about it. And so that's why it's hard to get action. So this session where you all are in a place where you can really make an impact on climate is really exciting. And I was pleased to see the research that Cathy talked about and that the study that showed that 59 to 34, women are more interested in addressing sustainable investments than men. So I went to Congress, to the Senate, thinking that I was going to be on the Energy Committee, which I was for four years. And I was going to have a real chance to introduce legislation to address climate, and sat through four years on that committee where we had multiple bills. We had a sort of omnibus bill in the first two years that was a real climate bill. It wasn't as robust as the House passed on cap and trade, but it was an effort to address many of those issues, worked with John Kerry and Barbara Boxer, and nothing happened. So I got thinking about how do we message this issue? How do we work on policy in a way that is going to help us get past the climate change deniers that's going to be able to get Republicans and Democrats to come on board. And the key for me to do that is energy efficiency because the cheapest, fastest way to deal with our energy needs. And so Rob Portman, who was Republic from Ohio, and I got together at the beginning of the last Congress to work on legislation. And we agreed that one of the things we needed to do is to craft a bill that would be able to actually get through Congress. So to think of about how can we do something that may not have a whole lot of money in it, may not have a lot of mandates. No, it's not going to be cap and trade. It's not going to be a carbon tax. But how can we make progress on this issue? And another lesson for me was we can make a lot of progress incrementally. We don't have to have a magic bullet. And there isn't -- probably isn't a silver bullet to address this issue. But where can we find ways to get agreement to move policy in a way that will leverage those private investments that are so important. And so that's what we did. We came up with a bill -- the Energy Efficiency and Industrial Competitiveness Act -- also known as Shaheen-Portman. No, I like Washington because they name legislation after you. [laughter] This never happened in New Hampshire. [laughter] But it really attempts to do some of those things. It -- there are no mandates in the bill. There's not a lot of money in the bill, but it's really designed to try and leverage the private sector in a way that can encourage action that will address climate change, that will address pollution and the environment. And to date, we have over 250 groups and businesses that are supporting the bill -- everything from the Sierra Club to the Chemical Council. My figure when you get both of those onboard for a piece of legislation, you're doing pretty well. It's got the U.S. Chamber, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Natural Resources Defense Fund. And it addresses several of the areas that are most challenging, as we look at how can we deal with pollution that affects climate change. One is buildings. Forty percent of our energy use is in buildings. It would strengthen national building codes in a way that's voluntary. It will train the next generation of workers in energy efficient commercial building design and operation through existing university-based centers. It addresses the industrial manufacturing sector, which is the biggest user of energy in our economy by directing the Department of Energy to work through their advanced manufacturing office with the private sector to encourage research and commercialization of new technologies. It helps businesses reduce their energy use by becoming -- by incentivizing the use of more efficient electric motors. It uses a supply chain program that's modeled on the Energy Star program -- it's called Supply Star -- to help make companies' supply chains more efficient. And I found this one particularly interesting because one of New Hampshire's companies is Stonyfield Yogurt. And they are very interested in sustainable energy investments, and they've done everything they can to make their processes more efficient, to -- from -- their building that they're in to the manufacturing of the yogurt. And they said when they did that, they studied it and they discovered that they were still using a whole lot of energy. And they couldn't figure out why. And then they realized that it's because of the cows. The cows where they get the milk, of course, are one of the big producers of methane. And so looking at the supply chains and figuring in -- out how we can be more efficient is really critical. And then the bill also deals with the federal government. And how do we make our energy use in the federal government, which is the biggest user of energy, much more efficient? So we're excited about the bill. We think we can actually get it passed. We are working with a number of bipartisan sponsors to get new amendments into the legislation that will allow us to get it back to the floor. We were able to get it to the floor back before the government shutdown. And thanks to one of the senators who wanted healthcare votes, we didn't -- weren't able to advance it. But we have a real shot. And it will unleash the private sector investments that you all are so interested in working on. So thank you very much for everything that you're doing. And I look forward to working with you. [applause] - Thank you so much, Senator. I think it's clear from the leading voices that we heard from today, both men and women -- not just women -- how critical this issue is. So thank you very much to our opening speakers. Now I'd like to invite Elizabeth Littlefield up to the podium. Ms. Littlefield was appointed by President Obama as the president and CEO of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, which is the U.S. government's development finance institution. Ms. Littlefield. Elizabeth Littlefield: Thanks so much. Thanks so much, Ashley. And thanks -- it's a real pleasure to see all of you today. It's kind of daunting because all of you are the leaders that are moving and shaking and really advancing the field. And it's really just a privilege to be here. I'm particularly excited, personally, to be here in my capacity with OPIC because I actually believe, as do my colleagues at OPIC, that we really are at the point where this is the most predictable and powerful economic transformation that the world has ever seen -- the most powerful transformation, you know, of our time, ever. And how can we not get excited about a transformation that has the potential to change the way the economy is fueled from fundamentally a dirty, polluting, inefficient, expensive, and exclusive way of driving the economy to one that is clean, efficient, modern, cheap, symbiotic, and inclusive, as well as being an economy that can actually drive wealth and jobs in a way that a dirty economy can't. So that's the reason I'm excited about it. And that's the reason that we at OPIC are so focused on it. Now we focus on the international side and emerging markets. And there, I think, as you all know, it's actually happening more than anywhere else. It's happening in large part because in much of the poor world, the only way that people are going to get energy at all is through renewable energy, in many cases, many are off-grid distributed power. I think we know that 50 percent of the installed capacity last year was finally renewable. We've seen solar prices coming down, solar panel prices coming down. Wind is following suit. So it's really -- it's booming in a large part, the emerging markets where I have the privilege of having worked most of my career, is where it's happening kind of the most. In fact, I'm reminded when I go back to some 20 or 30 -- oh, God -- well, the late -- in the '80s when I was living in Africa at the beginning of my career, I lived in a house -- a little hut -- for 18 months. It had no running water and no electricity except for one or two hours a day. And that was between 1 and 2 in the morning because my particular village wasn't very politically connected. So our slot on the load shedding cycle was 1 to 3 a.m. And I lived like that for a year-and-a-half. So I have a sense of what it's all about. But let's come to -- since we're here talking about emerging markets -- at least that's my role here, and talking about OPIC, too -- let's talk a little bit about Africa. I think that you all know that Africa has unbelievably abundant renewable energy, right? 325 days a year of sun, there's plenty of wind in the west. In the east, you have hydropower, you know, throughout eastern and central Europe, Rwanda, Tanzania, the DRC -- plentiful hydropower. I think we've all heard of Inga Dam and the potential that Inga has. But geothermal as well -- all along the Rift Valley: Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda. There's a huge amount of renewable energy available in that continent, and yet a quarter of the people in Africa -- only a quarter -- have access to power. You compare that to Asia, where it's 60 percent of the people in East Asia and South Asia have access. And in the Middle East and North Africa and Latin America, it's over 90 percent have access to power. So only a quarter of the people in Africa have power. Now think about the fact that this is the fastest growing economy, taken as a whole, in the world! These countries are growing at 5 and 6 percent a year, and yet the power capacity's only growing at 1 percent a year. So you've got this incredible growth and demand, and yet down here is the growth in supply of power. That's a crisis waiting to happen. And the only solution for that crisis is clearly renewable energy, and particularly, I think off-grid distributed power. Just -- let's just -- we all talk about a, you know, a quarter of the world's -- of African population has no access to power. We all know what that means. But let's just think about what that means: A quarter of these people have access to power. That means that 600 million people on the continent of Africa have no access to any power whatsoever. That's the entire population times two of the United States, with no access to the ability to open a fridge or flip on a light switch. You know, these are people that are learning, teaching themselves, having babies, cooking, cleaning, washing with no access to power whatsoever. And remember that this is people that have every bit that -- human potential of you and me, but they're not realizing it because they don't have the basic things that we take so for granted. Sorry, I can get very passionate about this. But I'm getting off my talking points, so I will come back. [laughter] So all of this, Africa I speak of, in particular it's obviously the most acute case. But this is the backdrop for Power Africa and why I'm so grateful that the president has chosen to make Power Africa his signature international development initiative for his second term. And we are very privileged that OPIC, to be a key participant in Power Africa, we've [inaudible] contributed $1-1/2 billion, which I think we can make pretty easily, two of these $7 billion initiative and we're very proud to be a key part along with AID, who's coordinating the effort and the White House and others. Oh, sorry. I should mention Power Africa but also there's -- even the Senator Shaheen has gone, there's also a companion bill, as you may know of: Electrify Africa. I hope they change the name. [laughter] Electrify Africa, which always sounds a little painful to me. I hear the name is going to change in the Senate and the House, which takes the president's Power Africa bill and actually even extends it with even bolder ambitions. So this brings me to OPIC. And I've asked to speak a little bit about OPIC and what we've been doing in the renewable energy space, since we are convinced this is the most powerful and predictable transformation of our generation. So OPIC, as Ashley said, is the U.S. government's development finance institution. It's our role in life to help catalyze and stimulate private capital flows in the service of development in emerging markets countries. And we do that by providing the kinds of tools that will reduce risks and create incentives for investments to flow towards development and emerging markets: tools like long-term financing, like political risk insurance, like guarantees, and like support for private equity funds. So -- and I can't resist the temptations since the budget's coming out this evening, to point out that we're actually development that pays for itself. We generate tax revenue every single year for the taxpayer last year on our $17 billion portfolio. We generated about $425 million in revenues that goes straight back to the Treasury. This is a town where you can't not say that every chance you get, so. [laughter] So when I joined OPIC in 2010, just a couple of years ago, we decided to choose one sector priority and one regional priority. The regional priority is lower income countries, ergo, my focus on Africa. And our one sectoral priority is renewable resources. Now within that, of course, renewable energy is the easiest thing to finance commercially. So despite our interest in water and agriculture and forestry and ecosystems and species, we're very focused on renewable energy. Now you might say so we've set this as a priority but we're totally demand-driven. You know, we're a bank. We're an insurance company. We're an investment bank. How do we decide which way we're going to go unless clients want that? Well, we've found that clients do want it. And the fact that we've seen our numbers grow incredibly quickly is evidence of the latent demand there is for financing for renewable energy projects and emerging markets. For example, we had start -- in 2008, we were doing around $10 million in renewable energy financing a year. Fine. 2009, we grew -- it was $100 million. 2010, 300 million, and 2011, '12 and '13, we've been around a billion dollars a year in renewable energy in some of the poorest countries in the world. We've done big utilities scale geothermal in Kenya. We've done hydropower in the country of Georgia. We've done windfarms in Latin America, in Peru and Chile and St. Kits. We've done big utility scale biofuel, in fact, in Pakistan and Liberia as well as lot of distributed power solar and other -- big solar, actually, utility scale in Latin America as well. So all over the world, both utility and small scale, we've been doing, again, to the tune of about a billion plus a year. In fact, we're very proud. John Podesta mentioned earlier, Fast Start, and we're very proud that even though we're a small but vital agency, we were able to contribute about a quarter of the full U.S. commitment under the Copenhagen Fast Start commitments, which I think is something that we're very proud of. So -- okay, just one last thing. And maybe we can come to this if we have a chance for questions and answers. In addition to the volumes, which we're proud of, we've actually focused on trying to design specific products that address the gaps in the market, like, for example, we've designed a feed and tariff insurance product that will cover the risks of changes to the feed and tariff, which we think is a lot of the bases for which investors are making some investments in emerging markets -- the feed and tariffs. We've also designed things like subordinated debt for energy efficiency in an escrow-like product, leasing products for renewable energy products in emerging markets where it's too expensive to buy the stuff. And frankly for me, one of the most powerful and simple tools, which is a one-page piece of paper which we hope will get many logos on it, including GEF's, that has the 10 elements of a bankable PPA, which we hope will help bridge the trust gap between developers and countries that can cost six, nine months of negotiating just when everyone can agree that these are the things that PPA needs to be bankable. So as I close, after saying that, and again I welcome your questions and thoughts on that, I'd say that we have a number of projects, of course, are focused on women, women as clients, access to finance projects, many loan guarantee funds where we've created added incentives, additional guarantee levels for banks that will lend to women-owned businesses, for example. And in our client base, we're very proud to count really powerful women leaders in this -- working at the frontier and emerging markets. April Allderice who at Micro Energy Credits is bundling, and micro energy credits at the microfinance level to get carbon credits to subsidize the cost of those acquisitions; Deidra Bernitsky is CEO of Ormat, who's been a real big investor at the frontier. And so these are women clients that we count among our best. But I'd like to just, in speaking about women leaders, I've got one -- one, just one minute. I'd like to just recognize some very influential women in the administration who have been very powerful: Nancy Sutley, Heather Zycol, are here; Michelle Patron, as well as Jessica Brown, who's been a very powerful partner to us in Todd Stern's office. So just as I wrap up, I'd like to see -- I actually just got back from an incredibly powerful trip to Liberia where country that had 500 megawatts of power before the civil war is at 20 megawatts of installed capacity now. In a country of 4.5 million people, there's only 12,000 grid connections in the whole country. And there I spent the day with the first female head of state, elected the first, you know, female ambassador, a female econ officer, and two female entrepreneurs as we looked at building out distributed energy facilities throughout that country. So as we think about mitigation and adaptation, and we think about the north and the south, we think about supply and demand, I would just leave you with -- and we'll talk about the U.S. too -- just I would implore you to think about the fact that the power usage in emerging markets is very low. In Haiti, the average person is using the equivalent of one laptop per annum in power. In Ethiopia, it's one U.S. coffee maker per person per annum. So let's think about that balance as we think about going forward, these solutions for climate and women's role in it, because women get that [inaudible] better than anyone. So thanks very much. [applause] - We have time for just a couple of questions, and I'm afraid we'll have to use this standing mic here because we aren't able to have roving mics in this room. So if you could maybe two folks, if you have questions, step up to the standing mic there. Robin Brown: Hello, thank you for your remarks and for holding this event today. My name is Robin Brown, from Rockefeller and Company. And I'm just interested in your comments on the opportunity for renewables in places like Africa and how that fits into the context of providing access to electricity to people who don't currently have it. And in referencing that, I'm thinking can you provide any insight on your thoughts on how the deployment of renewable electricity may help to offset climate changes we increase access to electricity for people who are underserved while considering the fact that by providing renewables in these places, it might help to leapfrog these countries in avoiding the need for fossil fuels and the deployment of power grids that they don't currently have. Elizabeth Littlefield: Yeah, thanks very much for that question. No, I appreciate that because, you know, oftentimes I think we all hear that in Africa, you know, poor people shouldn't be forced to take renewable energy. We shouldn't apply our standards to them because it's so expensive. Well, it's not more expensive. It's actually cheaper. It's getting cheaper all the time. And, frankly, it's particularly cheap when you look at the alternatives for many African families, the three-quarters that have no access. Their alternative is to flying in diesel on prop planes to run a generator. I mean, solar's got to be easier than that, right? So it's actually a benchmark that's not hard to beat. And actually -- so leapfrogging is not going to -- it's clearly happening in the continent just like we're leapfrogging in Africa over, you know, check-cashing systems and other things with mobile banking. But I also would just point to the fact that many African countries, and those in other parts of the world, I think are very enlightened in their renewable energy policy. I mean, you look at South Africa, which put in place one of the most aggressive and progressive renewable energy policies and programs a couple years ago. They've got plenty of coal. They've got coal that'll last them 50 years, and yet they're aiming on putting 17,000 megawatts of renewable energy. Why? Because, first of all, they've only got 50 years' worth of coal. Second of all, they want to be at the forefront of this industry because they, too, think it's one of the biggest economic transformations of our time. They want their people to be part of that industrial growth and part of that economy, and also because they care about pollution and climate. So, I mean, for Africa -- South Africa to be at the forefront of that, when they've got plenty of fossil fuels, I think is indicative of what's sweeping the rest of the continent. And, you now, we've seen what 150 countries throughout the world have renewable energy programs; 130 or so of them have feed and tariffs or some equivalent to that. So I think countries throughout the world are picking this up. And I'm optimistic about their being in the leadership role. Thanks. - Thank you. - My name is Lourdes Aguilar. I work for IUCN, International Union for the Conservation Nature, on gender issues. And we're trying to build knowledge on the gender criteria for big energy projects and what they should be because we're very good at linking gender and energy at small scale. But what happen with the big projects? What are gender criteria and if you have any of those, we'll love to hear some of those from you. Elizabeth Littlefield: You know, I would probably defer to others in the room that know the gender issues as they relate to environment more -- probably more deeply than I do, actually. I'm sort of daunted about speaking about these issues in front of all of you. I would just say I came from the microfinance space. And, you know, in the microfinance world, I see some friends that were there 20 years ago in the microfinance world. You know, in the beginning, everyone in the conference rooms, every one of the conferences and the gatherings were all women. And then, you know, it got sexy. It got hot. [laughter] And it got successful and it got profitable. And it was starting to work. And then next thing you know, it's women are the minority in those rooms these days. I think the fact that we have a good gender balance in the renewable energy sector probably is a leading indicator that the sector is here to stay. - Thank you so much. - Thanks. [applause]