The internship consisted of several tasks including drafting an equipment specification, familiarizing themselves with a biomass project in Argentina, drafting a Project Preparation Grant document and job description, researching and drafting a publication on biogas, completing SAP training to access project information, conducting a data quality exercise to update project fields, and writing a report comparing state-of-the-art sugarcane bagasse gasifiers. The largest task was the biogas publication which required researching biogas fundamentals, technologies, projects, policies, impacts and economics. Completing the SAP training provided valuable experience with project management systems.

1. Internship Summary
The Tasks/Assignments
Equipment Specification
Initially I was given the task to fulfill the background and outline of the equipment specification
for a Regional Center in Abuja, Nigeria. In summary it was rather simple as it consisted of summarizing
the project context and the situation of the target country. However, since this was my first ever
responsibility/ task in the internship, I took it as a challenge. I had to research equipment specifications of
other projects to which it was applicable, which was also greatly aided by two colleagues. It was
interesting to see how it was the unit’s responsibility to evaluate the specific equipment and their requests,
mainly because I have a technical background and felt that I could put it to very good use for this.
Argentina Biomass Waste project
The first task from my supervisor’s side was a thorough familiarization a biomass gasification
project in Argentina. I was given the project’s Project Identification Form (PIF) and familiarized myself
by reading through it and summarizing the PIF with, what I judged, the most relevant points. These points
included the main project components, the predicted outcomes, the stakeholders, the budget, the time
period, etc. The familiarization was essentially intended for devising a Project Preparation Grant (PPG)
phase document.
My initial draft for the PPG document required me to outline the intended activities for the
project that were outlined in the PIF, and also activities that were explicitly mentioned to be included/
subject in the PPG form. Therefore with a little research through existing PPG forms of other projects and
how they reverse engineering how they were formulated with respect to their prior PIF form, I managed
to draft a plausible list of activities to consider for this project’s PPG form.
For this project, my task also included drafting a Job Description for an external consultant/ party
to assign the project’s documentation responsibilities to. On a similar existing/ previously used JD form, I
was required to make changes to the respective sections to fit the new one’s context, duties and expected
outputs.
Biogas Publication
The biogas publication draft could be considered as my main assignment. It took up the biggest
fraction of my internship, since it was a more research based task. In short, it revolved around the
involvement of UNIDO in the energy sector of Biogas. Initially I researched on different aspects of a
publication of that type that UNIDO had published before. I soon started to narrow my ideas, and topics
to things such as an overview of biogas fundamentals and technologies, UNIDO’s ongoing biogas
involving projects, legal and policy frameworks for biogas, socioeconomic impacts of biogas as a
renewable energy, and business and economics of biogas. It was not confined to using solely the energy
branch’s resources, but also the agricultural branch based information, since a lot its potential lies around
the agro-industry.
This task broadened my understanding of the technology, the business opportunities and how
UNIDO is assisting its implementation in countries where it has the maximum potential and need. It has
also helped me understand the technicality and the importance of combining, different types of renewable
energies to meet modern energy demand and to level up to the energy supplied by fossil fuels
The publication also required me to research topics outside my field of study, including Circular
economy and gender mainstreaming (dealt with in UNIDO). Also, a lot of research went into the food
waste-to-energy concept. The Renewable and Rural Energy (RRE) unit does not have much experience as
of yet and therefore required external research to be done.

2. SAP – PPM 150 Test and Access
In order to be able to access some of the ongoing projects’ information, I was granted access to
the UNIDO profiles on the UNIDO’s SAP system. For this to be done, I had to take the PPM 150 courses
and test. In total I had spent two days on it. It was very interesting to see how project management is
structured. It taught me what information was to be complete with respect to the stage that a project was
at. Also, I believe that knowing how to use the SAP will be of high value in the future.
TC Data Quality Exercise
At my 3rd
branch meeting, the branch was introduced to the organization-wide Transparency
Initiative, and how it was going to be incorporated into the branch system. In order to be able to display
information on the new Open Data Platform, the SAP system was required to be complete. This basically
consisted of completion of certain fields within the Portfolio and Project Management. It is meant to
make the progress of projects more visible to external parties, of whose concerns it may be.
For Nina, I used Excel to tabulate all the fields and boxes that were complete, incomplete and not
available/ visible. This has also taught me what the major and the most important details of a project are
for external parties, and also how far certain projects of the RRE unit, are.
State of the art sugarcane bagasse Gasifier
This small report is with regards to an ongoing project in East Africa. For a sugarcane factory, a
gasifier is to be considered to process the output bagasse. Requested was a comparison of state of the art
gasifiers to that could efficiently process this bagasse.
This report was very interesting as it allowed me to learn more of the evolution and the modern
state of the art gasifiers. It was also an insight into the business of sugarcane waste management – an eye
opener as to how much potential energy is wasted and not used. I was able to compare various
technologies