India joins Irena

India joined the International Renewable Energy Agency last week, becoming the largest energy consumer in the recently launched organization. "The fact that India, the world's most populated country after China, joined - it signals that large developing countries are taking this issue seriously," said Daphne Wysham, a fellow at the Washington, D.C-based Institute for Policy Studies. "The rest of the world should take notice."

Critics in the United States have questioned whether IRENA could in fact help India expand its renewable energy capacity. "Experience proves that such agencies almost always quickly become bureaucracies that are effective only at perpetuating themselves and that often become obstacles to progress," said Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, in an e-mail.

Rather than create an institution with permanent positions, Ebell said that ad-hoc international collaborations such as the Asia-Pacific Partnership have proven useful in exchanging clean energy technologies. Herman Scheer, a Social Democratic member of the German Parliament and chair of the World Council for Renewable Energy, has led IRENA's development since 1990.

IRENA's opponents in the United States have questioned the need for an additional bureaucratic institution when organizations within the United Nations and the International Energy Agency already focus on developing renewable energy.

Scheer responded that these organizations have not devoted sufficient resources or expertise to expanding renewable energy capacity, noting that a separate institution would ensure that clean energy receives additional support at a time when investments are growing.

Are we doing enough? Will joining such agencies help?