UNITED NATIONS -- U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon shook up his year-old "Sustainable Energy for All" initiative yesterday with a new governance hierarchy.

The secretary-general used the podium provided by this week's annual U.N. General Assembly to tout the program he launched just a year ago as well as appoint new leaders. The effort, known as SEFA, is meant to double global energy efficiency and renewables as well as provide electricity to those who have none.

Ban announced that the initiative has won support from 60 participating countries and commitments of $50 billion from various development banks, foundations and private investors. He also announced a new set of leaders for the ambitious plan.

The overhaul means closely aligning the effort with the World Bank as well as bringing in the expertise of Bank of America's top executive.

Kandeh Yumkella, currently director-general of the U.N. Industrial Development Organization, has agreed to become chief executive of SEFA. The president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, will serve alongside Yumkella as co-chair of SEFA's newly formed Advisory Board.

And more muscle will come from Chad Holliday, chairman of Bank of America, who agreed to chair an executive committee to provide "operational oversight" to the program.

All the changes appear to be designed with funding challenges in mind. Helen Clark, head of the U.N. Development Programme, said adequate funding will define the program's success, so she supports setting up a trust fund to back it.

Justin Guay, Washington representative for the Sierra Club's international climate program, said he is concerned about funding, and that the priorities of SEFA are not in line with its basic intent.

"I don't see money going to off-grid, decentralized clean energy, which is what the [International Energy Agency] has clearly said is needed to meet the energy access goals," he said. "Essentially, financial flows are skewed to large-scale projects and grid extension, not to small-scale distributed clean energy projects that actually reach the poor."

Growing up with blackouts

As a university student in Sierra Leone, Yumkella studied by candlelight and often walked nearly 2 miles to wash by the river before returning to his dormitory. Even as a former minister of trade, he recalled, working through blackouts was common.

Yumkella said when it comes to energy poverty, "these issues are real to me."

With 1.5 million people across the globe living without access to modern electricity services, Yumkella said the biggest challenges for the United Nations will be helping poor countries develop strong enough governance systems to invite investment.

Much of the work isn't high-profile, he said, but helping policymakers formulate feed-in tariffs or sharing incentive programs to spur energy efficiency are the types of on-the-ground actions that countries need to boost energy access in a cleaner way. Meanwhile, he said, countries need to do the even harder work of persuading populations to accept increases to user fees or tamping down the political unrest that often scares the private sector away from the neediest parts of the world.

"I was at Wall Street this afternoon making another pitch to the venture capitalists," Yumkella said last week. "They will tell you that energy investments are long-term investments. If investors are going to risk that kind of capital over 20 years, they need a stable, predictable environment with investment guarantees."

Who finances off-grid power?

He gave the example of his home country. Even if war-torn Sierra Leone were able to design top-level renewable energy studies and put in place enabling public policies, "investors might not come," Yumkella said. "The risk profile is too high." Finding ways to help develop risk mitigation, he said, is a top priority for him under the SEFA initiative.

"This is the issue of the decade," he said. But, he insisted, delivering electricity access is going to be more closely tied to the private sector than other U.N. missions. "The energy issue is different than humanitarian assistance. You can send vaccines and you can send food to people. But the energy sector requires investment."

Despite these and other obstacles, Ban pitched the effort as a success within the first year. He announced several new commitments that he said highlight SEFA's initial success since going live in September 2011.

Among these:

• A $5 billion commitment from the Inter-American Development Bank for SEFA-related work in Latin America and the Caribbean.

• A plan from Royal Philips Electronics to install 100 light centers in rural Africa. The light centers are the size of a small soccer field and will use solar power to "extend the day" with fields of light in regions without electricity, the United Nations said.

• Creation of a renewables purchasing group for large end-users. The Green Growth Action Alliance will work with SEFA to help secure financing by pooling funds or renewable energy purchases, in an effort to bring in more lenders.

• A donation of 300 kilowatts of solar panels by Suntech Power Holdings Co., a Chinese maker of solar panels, to power a hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo.