About the International Energy Agency (IEA)

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is an autonomous organization which works to ensure reliable, affordable and clean energy for its 28 member countries and beyond.

Founded in response to the 1973/4 oil crisis, the IEA’s initial role was to help countries co-ordinate a collective response to major disruptions in oil supply through the release of emergency oil stocks to the markets.

While this continues to be a key aspect of its work, the IEA has evolved and expanded. It is at the heart of global dialogue on energy, providing authoritative and unbiased research, statistics, analysis and recommendations.

Today, the IEA’s four main areas of focus are:

• Energy security: Promoting diversity, efficiency and flexibility within all energy sectors
• Economic development: Ensuring the stable supply of energy to IEA member countries and promoting free markets to foster economic growth and eliminate energy poverty
• Environmental awareness: Enhancing international knowledge of options for tackling climate change
• Engagement worldwide: Working closely with non-member countries, especially major producers and consumers, to find solutions to shared energy and environmental concerns

The main IEA decision-making body is the Governing Board, composed of energy ministers from each member country or their senior representatives.

They are supported by the IEA’s Secretariat having the following coordinates:

Where its staff of energy experts recruited on a competitive basis primarily from OECD member countries, supports the work of the Governing Board and subordinate bodies. The IEA Secretariat is headed by an Executive Director appointed by the Governing Board. The IEA Secretariat collects and analyses energy data, organizes high-level workshops with world experts on new topics and themes, assesses member and non-member countries’ domestic energy policies and programmes, makes global energy projections based on differing scenarios, and prepares studies and concrete policy recommendations for governments on key energy topics.

The IEA’s work is not limited to that done by its Secretariat’s staff. The Secretariat has facilitated the formation of its Energy Technology Network which comprises 41 Implementing Agreements, one of which is this one Implementing Agreement. Taken together these Implementing Agreements concern themselves with the key areas of energy technology. More than 5 000 experts from IEA member and non-member countries, and from industry, participate. The Agreements offer a flexible framework for the international co-ordination of basic science, research and development, and demonstration and deployment of energy technologies. Benefits include pooled resources and shared costs, harmonization of standards, and hedging of technical risks. More recent IEA technology initiatives include efforts at the behest of the G8 to organise an international technology platform to help accelerate the spread of low-carbon technologies globally. Details about the work and members of each Implementing Agreement, and how to contact them, are to be found in Energy Technology Initiatives, and the latest developments are available in an electronic newsletter, the OPEN Bulletin.

By clicking here, an excellent presentation that further introduces the IEA can be downloaded. Complete information is available from IEA’s web-site, http://www.IEA.org.