UN

The eyes of world leaders may be on oil-rich Libya, but the United Nations is also focused on another of its top priorities: the issue of the fact that 20% of world's citizens are living without power. In that vein, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon this week visited the Denver area to explore options for bringing electricity to those 1.4 billion people, most rural poor in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

The newest report from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), in cooperation with Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a clean tech analytics firm, shows that the combined impetus of stimulus funding, feed-in tariffs (FiTs) and renewable portfolio standards (RPS) generated a record $211 billion globally in 2010 in renewable energy investment.

As this year’s UN-sponsored climate change talks kicked off in Cancun, slow but steady progress is being made by those in attendance.

The 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference that was held in Copenhagen, Denmark last year set achievable standards for countries around the globe to reduce their carbon emissions and help curb greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere.

Yvo de Boer has announced he will step down as the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

de Boer has been the UN's climate change chief since 2006.  Citing a desire to pursue new challenges, he will step down from his position in July. 

By most accounts the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen was a failure.  The ineptness of the conference especially irked European policymakers who had hoped for much more.

"The time for talk is over."  President Obama seems to have captured the popular sentiment on global warming in his address to international delegates at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen (COP15).

An International consortium, including the UN, is lobbying world governements and the global auto industry to agree to a "50 by 50" initiative.