IRENA’s Dolf Gielen Readies for June’s World Gas Conference
Dolf Gielen has served as director of the IRENA Innovation and Technology Centre in Bonn since 2011. He oversees the agency’s work advising member countries on technology status and roadmaps, energy planning, cost and markets and innovation policy frameworks. Before joining IRENA, Gielen was Chief of the Energy Efficiency and Policy Unit at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). Previously, he was a Senior Energy Technology Policy Analyst at the International Energy Agency.
PUF's Steve Mitnick: Dolf, tell us a little about your organization, and yourself. What do you do each day?
Dolf Gielen: I'm the Director for Innovation and Technology at the International Renewable Energy Agency. We currently support one hundred and fifty-six member countries.
There are twenty-five countries in the process of becoming members. It's an organization with a global membership. Our mandate is to help countries accelerate the climate of renewable energy.
For us in renewable energy, there are six forms, such as biomass, wind, hydro, geothermal, marine, and solar.
Those one hundred and fifty-six members all want a lot of advice. This includes general advice about cost data or standards for renewable energy technologies.
But a lot of it is also tailor-made to the specific platform of the country. So, we will offer technical advice. For example, questions about how much renewable electricity can be integrated into a national power grid.
Or, how do we achieve sufficient flexibility in our power systems. Or, how can we move from our existing energy system to one with many more renewables? We get these types of questions, as well as others about project development. We try to leverage our internal capacity with country expertise to answer all these questions.