CHAPTER 1
Introduction: The energy access and delivery challenge
Annabel Yadoo, Raffaella Bellanca, Ewan Bloomfield and Kavita Rai Access to clean energy is projected to remain an issue for poor people, particularly those living in rural areas, for years to come. In recognition of the importance of energy access for human development, the UN-led SE4All initiative has set a target to achieve universal energy access by 2030. This book aims to give energy practitioners guidance on how energy delivery models need to change in order to fully overcome energy poverty, including important lessons from well-known case studies. It also provides in-depth analysis of the barriers to sustainable, affordable and effective energy access and delivery, particularly for the poor, with recommendations for practitioners on overcoming these barriers.
Keywords: development, energy delivery model, energy poverty, modern energy services
Billions of people in the world remain trapped in energy poverty, through being unable to obtain the quantities of energy they require, in clean and usable forms. Energy practitioners continue to be faced with the challenge of designing systems to deliver access to a range of modern energy services, particularly where poverty and lack of infrastructure makes it most difficult. More recently, issues relating to climate change, and the notion of sustainable and secure supplies of energy for a still growing world population, are also adding complexity to the challenge. Worldwide, energy poverty remains staggeringly high; in 2011 over 1.3 billion people – 19 per cent of the world's population – lacked access to electricity, and 2.7 billion people – 39 per cent – still relied on traditional three-stone fires for cooking (OECD/IEA, 2011). The vast majority of these people (over 95 per cent) live in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia; worldwide 84 per cent of people who lack access to electricity in their homes live in rural areas (IEA, 2011). Based on current policies and future demographics, the International Energy Agency projects that over 1 billion people will still lack access to electricity in 2030, of which 85 per cent will live in rural areas, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, India and other parts of developing Asia. Similarly, the number of people relying on the traditional use of biomass for cooking is expected to remain at 2.7 billion in 2030, of which 82 per cent will live in rural areas (IEA, 2011).
There is a growing body of evidence which demonstrates that energy is a vital catalyst for human development, notably through improving health, education, food security, gender equality and the ability to earn a living. The high incidence of energy poverty thus provides a growing impetus for energy practitioners to increase their efforts on achieving the longed-for goal of clean energy access for all (DFID, 2002; GNESD, 2007). Since 2010, IEA has dedicated a chapter of its annual World Energy Outlook to the topic of energy poverty and how to achieve universal access to energy. In recognition of the importance of energy access for economic and human development, in September 2010 the United Nations (UN) launched an ambitious goal to achieve universal energy access by 2030, which has now evolved into the Sustainable Energy for All initiative (SE4All, n.d.). The year 2012 was also declared the UN International Year of Sustainable Energy for All, to try to help kick-start the initiative and push energy poverty up the global agenda.
This book has been written primarily for energy practitioners, and aims to provide a more integrated analysis of how energy has been delivered, and how this delivery needs to change in the future to fully overcome energy poverty. It gives an overview of what is meant by energy delivery, including a new definition of the term 'energy delivery model', as well as presenting important lessons from a number of well-known case studies of existing energy delivery models. It also provides guidance for practitioners on the key aspects of delivery model design. These aspects are integral to the success or failure of energy programmes, projects, and enterprises seeking to help people bring themselves out of poverty through access to energy in middle- and low-income countries. Finally, it provides in-depth analysis of some of the key barriers to sustainable, affordable and effective energy access and delivery, particularly for the poor, with recommendations for practitioners on overcoming these barriers.
Modern energy services for poverty reduction
Energy services are intrinsic to our basic survival. The ability to harness energy to meet human needs is not new; for hundreds of thousands of years, people have been burning wood to generate heat, light and warmth, and using the power of animals for transportation and harvesting food. Human societies have progressively learned to power their activities with increasing amounts of energy. This energy is then used directly for work (e.g. activities such as transportation of water or materials) or is converted from its natural source – wind, water, the sun, hydrocarbons and minerals – into mechanical power, transport, electricity, heating and so forth, as outlined in Box 1.1.
More technological ways of capturing energy to optimize work have been developed with time, from wind mills and sailing boats, to the industrial revolution, fuelled by the discovery of coal and petroleum. The convenience, and greatly increased productivity, of mechanized agricultural practices, and other modern energy services, have changed the way many societies are able to live, and have gradually been expanded to new populations and geographies around the world. Today, most people desire a reliable supply of electricity to mechanically process their agricultural products, to listen to the radio, to recharge their mobile phones, to watch TV, and to power a whole range of other electrical appliances. They also require energy to power a range of modes of transportation, a better quality of light to see by, particularly in the evenings, and efficient ways of cooking which do not emit unhealthy emissions, nor require hours spent gathering firewood. Many poor people in the world do not have access to these energy services, and this is finally being recognized as an injustice which energy practitioners need to overcome. It is believed that overcoming this injustice will require new and innovative energy delivery models aimed at the poor, which will be analysed in detail in this book.
Although people require access to energy, it cannot just be in any form. Households and small businesses require energy in modern forms that allow them to carry out the activities they need and desire to, in convenient, healthy and sustainable ways, usually referred to as modern energy services. Electricity can provide the equivalent light-hours 70–160 times more cheaply than more traditional fuels such as candles or kerosene, once the quality of the light service (measured in lumens – the total quantity of visible light emitted by a source) has been taken into account (Foster et al., 2000). Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) or efficient wood-burning stoves can displace inefficient three-stone fires (the traditional and cheapest cooking method used in most developing countries), which require long hours spent on fuel collection and contribute to deforestation and damaged health. According to the OECD/IEA (2010) 1.4 m people – mostly women and children – die each year as a result of inhaling smoke from traditional cooking stoves, approximately double the number of worldwide deaths from malaria.
As the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted, access to modern energy services is the 'foundation for all the Millennium Development Goals' (MDGs) (UN, n.d.). In this context, modern energy services aim to provide a higher quality service in terms of light, heat, speed, etc., including being healthier (reduced harmful emissions and improved quality of light), reducing household expenditure, and increasing resource efficiency, to allow target populations to move onto sustainable technological pathways for their own development (Bazilian et al., 2010).
Table 1.1 details the contribution of modern energy services to the MDGs, particularly those related to healthcare, education, food security, poverty reduction, gender equality, and environmental sustainability. Work is currently being carried out to develop a number of post–MDGs development goals, and access to a range of modern energy services will continue to be an essential prerequisite for international development. In addition, analysis has shown that the greatest incremental benefit of modern energy services is received by those who are currently at the lowest levels of human development, and currently have the lowest levels of energy access (OECD/IEA, 2004). These people should therefore be the primary target of future energy delivery models which aim to promote development through increased energy access. It is these delivery models that this book aims to assess in detail, through a range of relevant case studies from around the world, detailed inChapters 3 to 5.
Defining access to modern energy services
While modern energy services are increasingly recognized as a prerequisite for human and economic development (Munasinghe, 1987; Perlack et al., 1990; DFID, 2002; IEA, 2004; GNESD, 2007), there is still no universally accepted definition as to what is actually entailed by access to modern energy services, while the UN's definition of universality also creates some confusion, without clarity on whether all of a household's energy needs (cooking, electrification and mechanical power) must be met in order for the goal to be achieved. In future it is hoped that the research currently being conducted by the World Bank Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme (ESMAP) will help develop a global tracking framework for energy access. The UN is also planning to launch specific targets for universal energy access which should provide greater clarity.
Practitioners use varying assumptions for the 'definition of basic needs, fuels used and the efficiencies of energy-using technologies', preventing like-for-like comparisons of the current status and trends of energy poverty in different countries (Practical Action, 2010). Moreover, several definitions focus exclusively on the household level, excluding access for businesses and community services (for example, schools, health and community centres) yet these also have a significant role in reducing poverty. It should be noted that this focus is beginning to change through recent publications such as the United Nations Development Programme's 2012 report on energy and employment (UNDP, 2012) and Practical Action's Poor people's energy outlook 2012 (Practical Action, 2012), which focused on energy for earning a living. Box 1.2 outlines what it understood by the term 'access to modern energy services' in the context of this book.
Use of this term is important for emphasizing that people need access not to any type of energy, but to forms of energy that are clean and which allow them to use the energy productively to improve the quality of their lives. In addition, referring to the use of modern energy services emphasizes the importance of end-use technologies and the way that these technologies are employed to improve people's lives and livelihoods. End-use technologies include the appliances that all households require, such as clean burning cooking stoves, electric light bulbs, and efficient agricultural processing machines. As well as the energy itself, all people require access to a range of energy technologies, which will be detailed in Chapter 2. Access to these energy technologies allows households, businesses, and communities to use energy in the ways they desire to improve their lives in a number of ways.
They may also require support or training in making effective use of the technologies, and it is only when these aspects of access are addressed that the true impact of energy access can be achieved, and energy poverty can start to be effectively overcome. Organizations such as Practical Action have started to refer to this type of energy technology inequality as 'technology justice'.
To try to take this understanding further, the Poor people's energy outlook (PPEO) 2012 proposed the concept of 'Total Energy Access', which outlines a full range of energy services believed to be required by each household, as well as nine minimum standards for these energy services, as outlined in Table 1.2. These standards diverge from the IEA's approach by framing energy in terms of the energy services provided, rather than access to an electricity connection, for example. They also do not specify minimum electricity consumption levels, which are too general and do not provide information about what is specifically required by end users (i.e. a range of energy service levels). If an assessment is carried out and a household meets all of the minimum energy standards, they are then considered to have total access to modern energy services, defined as Total Energy Access.
It should be noted that this list does not include access to mechanical power, including static and mobile shaft power (static shaft power refers commonly to mechanized pumps, mills, hand tools, etc., and mobile shaft power to vehicles). This type of power is difficult to relate to individual household usage as it is often more closely associated with community energy usage. This matrix of energy services and minimum energy standards is currently being reviewed by the international community, spearheaded by the World Bank's ESMAP, and is likely to be updated in the near future so as to be able to provide a universal measure of access to modern energy services.
Delivering energy for development
A wide range of experts and organizations, among them multilateral institutions, non- governmental organizations (NGOs), private companies and social enterprises, have been involved in designing, developing, financing, and implementing access to energy programmes, projects, and enterprises in the developing world since the 1970s. (Note that in this book, a 'social enterprise' is defined as an enterprise that uses commercial approaches to achieve sustainability of supply, but having social as well as financial goals.)
Box 1.3 provides a very simplified and brief history of how energy access programmes aimed at reducing energy poverty have gradually changed over time, particularly concerning the gradual shift towards more decentralized governance, privatization, and focus on rural areas.
As discussed in the following chapters, the technologies used to deliver energy vary as widely as the approaches adopted by the institutions – both private and public. Some adopt a sector-wide approach (for example, the Netherlands Development Organisation, SNV, which has focused on building up market sectors for biogas in developing countries around the world). Others have engaged in activities on a more local scale, either within low-income commercial markets (for instance, the UK-based NGO SolarAid which has established micro-franchises for off-the-shelf solar products through its Sunny Money programme in East Africa), or in areas that currently lie outside the potential range for market-based approaches (for example, Soluciones Prácticas, Practical Action's office in Peru, which has set up, and helps maintain, renewable energy mini-grids in remote off-grid areas which are not currently viable for private-sector investment).
The entire process of delivering energy services and products is often referred to as an energy delivery model. The model encompasses the entire chain, from the initial energy resource, either fossil fuel-derived or renewable, as well as the technology choices, implementation process, and surrounding support and governance infrastructure, including any long-term maintenance arrangements. The concept of the energy delivery model will be explored in more detail in Chapter 2.
In its simplest form, an energy delivery model contains the three energy elements: the initial energy source, the conversion equipment, and the final energy appliances the end users require, as outlined in Box 1.4.
These three energy elements are outlined in more detail in Table 1.3. The table shows both non-renewable and renewable energy sources; the range of conversion equipment, ranging from solar through to biomass and geothermal technologies; and the final end-user energy appliances for use with electricity, packaged fuels, and mechanical power.
