The database has been compiled by the university's interdisciplinary Energy and Environmental Security Initiative (EESI) and is sponsored by the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership, a public-private partnership founded at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development in August 2002.

The International Sustainable Energy Assessment (ISEA) database contains in-force energy treaties from all 192 countries in the world, dealing with some 45 energy-related subject areas.

EESI said the database had been designed to act as a repository for international policies.

REEEP chairman Morgan Bazilian said that international agreements would have a profound impact on the development of renewable energy and energy efficiency projects.

"These instruments play a critical role by supporting markets, facilitating technology transfer and capacity-building, and reducing financial barriers," Bazilian said.

"The ISEA project gives us an essential analytical baseline for understanding what's happening in the world of international agreements relative to energy technologies – and enables us to take the next step of figuring out the best ways of using these instruments to facilitate the growth of renewable energy and energy efficiency activities."

There are two versions of the ISEA database: an internal, password-restricted version that contains all 1700 agreements – 1100 of which involve the United States – and a free public version that contains about 500 agreements.

ISEA project manager Kevin Doran said that all agreements would eventually be added to the public-access database after the ISEA team has thoroughly researched and analysed each treaty.

"We plan to have all 1700 agreements available on the public site in the next six months," Doran said.

"In the meantime, we're happy to provide information on the treaties in the internal database on request."

Doran said the public database currently has 94 international agreements dealing with renewable energy technologies, of which 40% deal with solar energy.

The remainder of the renewable energy category is made up of agreements dealing with hydropower (23%), wind (11%), bioenergy (11%), and geothermal energy (11%).

The public-access database is available here].