Press Release, 17 March 2009

The newly-founded world-organisation International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) already represents over two and a half billion people, over a third of the global population. After India joined IRENA as its 77th member, the number of people living in its member states and thus directly impacted by IRENA, rose to 2,7 billion. "This is an extraordinary success which nobody had expected“, said Hermann Scheer on Thursday in Berlin. "In the near future, when fossil and nuclear energies will be exhausted and substituted completely, the world population will use renewable energy. I am positive that many more countries will become founding members of IRENA prior to the next conference of its member states in June in Egypt."

IRENA was established in Bonn on 26 January 2009 by 75 countries. Among them were Argentina, Austria, Chile, France, Germany, Italy, the Scandinavian countries, Nigeria, Poland, Spain, South-Korea, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. On 11 February Belarus signed the statute, India followed suit on 17 March. Initiator of the worldwide renewable energy agency, IRENA, is member of parliament Hermann Scheer, who as president of EUROSOLAR, and chair of the World Council for Renewable Energy, brought forth the concept of IRENA in 1990 and launched the process towards the creation of this agency. With the decision to bring the IRENA concept to life, the Federal governments of Germany, Denmark and Spain jointly worked towards it’s establishment and have driven the idea forward. IRENA will accelerate and coordinate the introduction and use of renewable energy worldwide.