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MANILA, PHILIPPINES - ADB today signed an agreement to establish a knowledge hub on clean energy at India's Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).

Signing the Letter of Intent at ADB Headquarters in Manila were Bindu Lohani, Director General of ADB's Regional and Sustainable Development Department, and TERI Director-General R.K. Pachauri, who was speaking at ADB as part of its Clean Energy Week.

The clean energy knowledge hub at TERI will provide a gateway of knowledge and information on clean energy, energy efficiency, and issues related to mitigation and adaptation of climate change. It will also be the focal point for the collection, structuring, and dissemination of knowledge from a variety of resources.

“We are pleased to welcome TERI as host to the first of our planned knowledge hubs,” says Mr. Lohani, who is also Special Advisor to the ADB President on Clean Energy and Environment. “It is an internationally recognized center of excellence, with an existing network of academics, researchers, resident experts, and similar institutions involved in science and technology.”

TERI hosts the Secretariat for the Asian Energy Institute – a network of 15 research and academic institutions spread across Asia working on issues of energy and the environment.

Backed by a regional technical assistance grant of US$990,000 approved in December, the knowledge hub at TERI will be one of four to six hubs set up throughout the region over two years. Other existing research networks that have expressed interest in hosting a knowledge hub, which will focus on priority areas identified in ADB's Medium Term Strategy II (MTS II), include UNEP and AIT in Bangkok, Thailand, on reduce, reuse and recycle (3Rs), Tsinghua University in Beijing, People’s Republic of China, on climate change, and the AIM in Manila, Philippines, on public finance.

It is planned that the hubs will act as centers of excellence on emerging development topics, such as clean development mechanism, use of compressed natural gas and hybrid technologies in the transport sector, renewable energy, environmental technology, information and communications technology, as well as management techniques.

The knowledge hubs will:

• develop and strengthen Asia and Pacific’s regional capacity in generating innovative development concepts and technologies relevant to ADB and its developing member countries
• promote information exchange, knowledge sharing and networking among the regional institutes, government agencies, and academic institutions
• act as a regional think tank for ADB as well as developing countries, and create synergy with other existing knowledge management activities within and outside

ADB will provide the technical and training support needed to build the capacity of the selected organizations to capture, generate, and disseminate knowledge, as well as to translate national and international knowledge for local or regional use.

To ensure high synergy and knowledge sharing, these knowledge hubs will be linked with each other, as well as with relevant national organizations. To promote regional cooperation and integration, they will collaborate with existing knowledge networks in the region.

Further, they will be linked to international academic and research organizations to improve their access and capacity to learn and adapt the latest international development concepts to regional or local needs and demands.

Read the TA paper.

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