Almost one third of the global population does not have access to electricity. It is predicted that this rate will reduce in the years to come, but also that the nominal amount will remain roughly the same - i.e. 1.5 - 2 billion people, the majority of them living in Africa and on the Indian peninsula.
The most pressing need for these people would be to get access to electricity for lighting. This would enable important activities in many families both for studying, for the household and for their trade. It would also improve their welfare since the alternative in a majority of cases is to use kerosene lamps that provide inferior light, are more expensive and emit far more carbon dioxide than most electrical alternatives. Poor people are kept in poverty because of their poor lighting!
The solution for many of these people is, however, not to be connected to a national grid, at least not for a long time. They must be offered off-grid solutions of which there are many and that can be designed for different size and circumstances. Unfortunately, the recommendations from many of the organisations that deal with energy, aid and assistance are obsessed with the regulatory frameworks of large-scale grid development and energy markets rather than practical solutions that are affordable to local people.
However, there are exceptions. One is the “Lighting Africa” project launched by IFC. It also has the formidable strength to illustrate the basic principle that low-intensity end-use (energy efficiency) has to be twinned with renewable (locally available) resources to make the “biggest bang for the buck”.
This IFC approach, where PV and WLED-lighting is focused, has targeted Kenya and Ghana as the “niche markets”. A success in the project “per se” would however also have a wider implication and would be beneficial also to PV and WLED for industrialised countries, since it inevitably also has to address the issue of product quality and will result in a volume growth for high-quality products. Such volume growth that also has an impact on costs (via the market learning). So, if there was ever a case of “multiple wins”, this is it.
But even if lighting is the most pressing issue, there are many other human needs that can be better satisfied with electrification. Water and irrigation, cooling and preservation, communication and security - to mention a few. There are also many more ways to make use of local, mostly renewable resources to make it happen. The key to making it really useful is, however, the combination of energy efficiency end-use and local resources, since that squeezes the most out of the available fuel. The G8 studied this in their “strategic pathway analysis” and checked it against some cases at the beginning of this century, but otherwise there is surprisingly little work done on the systems aspect of this problem.
Typically, studies focus on the availability of renewable resources and sometimes these also hint at the opportunities to harvest them. Another very typical feature of studies available is the recommendations for countries with low electrification to deal with regulatory matters and to adapt energy prices to world market making maximum use of the market mechanisms.
If these recommendations were correct it is hard understand why the electrification in the market economy India is lower than in centrally planned China. And if dictatorship and/or central decision-making is a key to success then it is hard to understand that electrification is lower in Zimbabwe than in Botswana. The truth might be that the development must take the abilities of those deprived from the good into account.
One study, however, made by people affiliated to the World Bank, views the full scope of the problem. It far from comprehensive, but it does map out the complexity and the possibilities. Who will take on this challenge?