Topic: Encouraging Alternative Energy
Country: Benin
Delegate Name: Jacob Milam
School: Williamston High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Benin position papers GLIMUN 2015 committees
Main position: Focus on bringing cheap renewable energy to smaller developing countries.
Fellow delegates, we gather here today in the common belief that we can strive for a better future for not only our individual countries but all of our allied countries. Benin believes that most of the countries would agree that alternative energies could be very beneficial to the world, although there may be some countries here today on the opposing side of having more alternative energies. However for the countries that agree that we should be heading in the direction of alternative energies, we may not all agree on how to put the alternative energies in place, or what types of energy to use or what countries need them the most. In the end we need to improve the world’s renewable energy sources. Energy from renewable sources currently accounts for 5% of global energy supply, and with some money and hard work Benin thinks that we could eventually double that number if the countries that are gathered here today started the world on the right track, which is a goal that Benin believes could be accomplished.
In the country of Benin there are few renewable energy sources due to many reasons such as lack of the ability to transport energy, low electrical budgets, and lack of resources. The CEB, (the power generation and transmission company owned by Benin and Togo) has not been able to afford the required investments as there has been an everyday increasing need of more and more energy supply. Since Benin has not been able to obtain a sufficient number of renewable energy sources which is a similar statement could be made for many of the other developing nations, Benin has not been capable to provide sufficient amounts of clean energy to its citizens and businesses. In 2009, firms indicated that around 7.5% of value was lost because of power outages that totalled, on average, 24 days per year.
Benin believes that in order to effectively spread renewable and alternative energy throughout the world we need to focus on putting it into small developing countries, due to the fact that many of these countries would not be able to afford much of the starting costs of these new energy investments, or simply don’t have the resources to support them, for instance Benin cannot use biomass because we don’t have enough of the assets since our people rely on those natural resources so heavily, and we cannot reach out to the rural areas, which makes up almost 60% of our country. Developing countries are the main contributors to the high GHG(Green House Gasses) levels being that there are so many that do not have access to clean energy. If the smaller developing countries got the clean energy it would boost their economies while also working to decrease the effects of pollution in the world. While there are very many ways to provide clean energy and they all have different pros and cons depending on things like cost effectiveness or what works for the geography of the specific country that it is located in. But if the United Nations helps to provide alternative sources of energy to the developing countries, then we could choose individually how to implement the different types of energy into each country. By doing so it would not only provide an economic boost for many countries, but also a decrease in the pollution in the world.
