Energy for a Sustainable Future

This report provides a high-level overview and specific recommendations for governments to help achieve universal energy access and reduce energy intensity. The report recommends that energy access be achieved through a combination of grid extension, mini-grid access, and off-grid access approaches. The need for government targets, access to financing, capacity building, and improved utility performance are also discussed

Increasing energy access: the rise of pay-as-you-go solar and innovative financing partnerships

Improving access to sustainable energy services and reducing the carbon footprint and deforestation of developing countries presents a substantial challenge to the development industry. This paper aims to critically assess two prevalent business models emerging to meet this challenge: financial institution-technology provider partnerships and the one-stop-shop, pay-as-you-go (PAYG) model. The authors find that collaborations between financial institutions and energy providers need to address grey areas such as product quality standards, marketing, and post-sales services, and incorporate feedback loops to continually evaluate the performance of the partnership. Pay-as-you-go presents an intriguing business case to leapfrog more traditional energy access programmes. However, more robust results from the field need to be reported before the PAYG movement can claim success. Ultimately, collaborative and integrated actions by all stakeholders are needed to achieve universal energy access.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Household electricity access a trivial contributor to CO2 emissions growth in India

Impetus to expand electricity access in developing nations is urgent. Yet aspirations to provide universal access to electricity are often considered potentially conflicting with efforts to mitigate climate change. How much newly electrified, largely poor, households raise emissions, however, remains uncertain. Results from a first retrospective analysis show that improvements in household electricity access contributed 3.4% of national emissions growth in India over the past three decades. Emissions from both the direct and indirect electricity use of more than 650 million people connected since 1981 accounted for 11.25% of Indian emissions growth or, on average, a rise of 0.008.0.018 tons of CO2 per person per year between 1981 and 2011. Although this is a marginal share of global emissions, it does not detract from the importance for developing countries to start reducing the carbon intensities of their electricity generation to ensure sustainable development and avoid future carbon lock-in. Significant ancillary benefits for air quality, health, energy security and efficiency may also make this attractive for reasons other than climate mitigation alone