Energy for Development Initiative
Advancing demand-driven solutions for affordable, reliable, clean energy to power sustainable development around the world.
Energy supply is increasing across the developing world, with new technologies like solar charging devices, mini-grids and rooftop solar systems bringing power to unserved and underserved communities. Affordable, reliable, clean electricity can help power life-saving health clinics, light up classrooms, fuel irrigation pumps and bolster economic productivity. These improved living standards can, in turn, generate a strong demand for modern, clean energy services.
But despite these improvements in supply, reliable and affordable energy services still remain out of reach for the farmers, small businesses, health service providers and others who need electricity to reach their full potential. Extending access to electricity for all will instead require a paradigm shift in how countries develop their energy systems – from better understanding users’ electricity and development needs to prioritizing affordability over increasing supply alone. Planners, for example, must consider what electricity services farmers will require to power more effective irrigation systems to help increase productivity and improve food security, or how much energy hospitals must have to keep operations running smoothly.
WRI is helping change this supply-side energy access model by championing an inclusive, demand-driven approach. We work with local governments, technical experts, national policymakers and service delivery organizations across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and India – countries that, together, account nearly a quarter of the world’s unserved population – to address this energy-development nexus by:
- Making demand for affordable, reliable and clean electricity visible. Energy Access Explorer leverages the power of satellite imagery alongside local data sets to visualize energy supply and demand, equipping electricity planners, investors, development practitioners and clean energy entrepreneurs with the information they need to close the electricity access gap. Off-grid developers, for example, can see where demand for electricity may be high, while development finance institutions can pinpoint regions in which electrification funding would achieve the greatest impact.
- Linking development organizations working in underserved communities to affordable, reliable and clean energy. We help organizations delivering health, education and agricultural services articulate their electricity needs, utilize clean energy technologies to advance their work and attract investment in renewables. In India, for example, we support nonprofits bringing improved water, sanitation and hygiene to rural communities; hospitals that offer critical care to some of the country’s most remote, hard-to-reach populations; and social enterprises that equip vulnerable youth with the technical skills and job opportunities they need to secure stable, more prosperous livelihoods. We also work with development organizations grappling with similar challenges across East Africa, including health clinics dedicated to improving poor communities’ access to medical services and nonprofits helping to connect smallholder farmers to lucrative European markets. Until recently, many of these organizations have relied on expensive, polluting diesel generators during frequent power outages – an electricity supply that often drains their already limited financial resources. But now with WRI’s support, our partners better understand their power needs and are investing in more affordable, reliable, clean energy technologies. From rooftop solar systems to renewable energy mini-grids, these new sources are helping cut costs and improve service delivery in some of these countries’ poorest, most underserved communities.
- Mobilizing finance for clean energy across unserved and underserved regions. We help service delivery organizations target opportunities to secure the funds they need to integrate renewable energy into their work. At the same time, we guide donors toward end-user financing for clean energy solutions that power sustainable development across India and East Africa.
- Integrating demand-driven, clean energy access approaches into national and local energy strategies. WRI also partners with nonprofit, sustainable development organizations to shape countywide and national level energy plans as well as advance inclusive, user-centric energy policies. In both Kenya and Tanzania, for instance, we are working alongside our partners to provide the energy supply and demand data that local governments need to understand their communities’ electricity needs, build these officials’ capacity to develop and implement effective, equitable energy plans as well as advocate for national decision-making processes to prioritize more affordable, decentralized, clean energy solutions.
To learn more about our work on energy for sustainable development, please reach out to Davida Wood. To stay updated on the latest research, analysis and commentary, subscribe to our newsletters Greening Governance and Energy Insights and follow us on Twitter @WRIGovernance and @WRIEnergy.
WRI’s Energy for Development Initiative advances demand-driven solutions for affordable, reliable, clean energy to power sustainable development around the world. Our partner organizations delivering health, educational and agricultural services across underserved and unserved regions include:
- Population Services Kenya, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving health outcomes by promoting functional, sustainable health markets and increasing access to high quality, affordable care to low-income communities across Kenya. Members of Tunza, a social franchise network of over 400 privately owned health clinics run by Population Services Kenya, struggle with high electricity bills and frequent outages, which compromise the delivery of their health services. Many Tunza clinics must instead rely on expensive, dirty diesel generators that pollute local communities' air and strain the network’s limited financial resources. With technical assistance from WRI’s Energy for Development Initiative, Population Services Kenya is now installing solar rooftop panels across Tunza clinics to lower costs and provide uninterrupted lifesaving care.
- Pan-IIT Alumni Reach for India Foundation (PARFI), a not-for-profit social enterprise committed to enhancing incomes of underprivileged youth across India through vocational and technical skills training programs. PARFI has trained more than 12,000 young people and created job opportunities for them in construction, manufacturing, apparel, telecom, nursing and catering around the world. Yet insufficient, unreliable electricity hinders the enterprise’s operations, making it difficult for PARFI to expand its services. To maintain power, PARFI has to rely on expensive, polluting diesel generators that only partially meet electricity needs during power outages and voltage fluctuations. Partnering with WRI, PARFI is now implementing clean energy solutions in its training centers to reduce operational costs and improve service delivery outcomes over the long term. With better infrastructure, PARFI aims to train and provide job placements to more than 58,000 youth in one Indian state alone, positively impacting the lives of over 200,000 community members over the coming years.
- World Vision, one of the world’s leading child-focused humanitarian organizations. With nearly 65 years of experience in India, World Vision India works in 140 districts, impacting 2.6 million children and their families in more than 6,200 communities spread across the country (24 states and two Union Territories). In Assam, a northeastern state of India, in which there continue to be challenges around access to reliable, affordable electricity, World Vision India is implementing a technical program to improve maternal and child health, nutritional practices as well as access to water, sanitation and hygiene facilities. But insufficient electricity supply impedes the delivery of key services in community institutions like hospitals, schools and childcare centers, also known as anganwadis. To improve electricity access in these facilities across Assam, World Vision India is working with WRI to assess energy needs at the institutional level, identify context-specific solutions and bring together the right set of technology and finance partners to support implementation.
- Emmanuel Hospital Association (EHA), a not-for-profit network of 20 hospitals delivering critical healthcare services to over 900,000 people in northern, northeastern and central India. These facilities cater to communities that live in remote, rural and inaccessible parts of the country. Inadequate electricity infrastructure remains one of the many challenges of working in these areas. Without reliable power, hospitals struggle to provide on-going life support to critical patients, run intensive care unit facilities, keep lights and equipment on during operations, store medication, administer basic diagnostic tests or maintain a sterile environment. Instead, staff must rely on diesel generators – a significant expense for under-resourced facilities that serve patients who often cannot afford care. Partnering with WRI, EHA is piloting renewable energy solutions in four hospitals across two states, Assam and Jharkhand, that will reduce operating costs, improve quality of care and allow medical staff to provide uninterrupted health services to their patients.
- The Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD), the official aid agency for the Catholic Church in England and Wales, which works with partners globally to help the poorest and most marginalized people, and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a policy and action research organization that promotes sustainable development to improve livelihoods and protect the environments that support them. Since 2013, CAFOD and IIED have been developing the Energy Delivery Model planning approach. This participatory planning process aims to design energy services that meet communities’ priority development needs, maximize outcomes across sectors and are financially, socially and environmentally sustainable. In Kenya, the 2019 Energy Act requires subnational authorities (counties) to develop and implement energy plans, creating an exciting opportunity to advance demand-driven, inclusive approaches. CAFOD and IIED are partnering with the County Government of Kitui and CARITAS Kitui to develop a County Energy Plan (CEP) with solutions tailored to meet county development needs integrated across multiple sectors. WRI is using its Energy Access Explorer tool to support the CEP development by helping visualize the energy supply and demand data that underpin successful solutions. Moving forward, CAFOD, IIED and WRI hope to replicate this inclusive planning process in other underserved counties so that energy services meet their development needs.
- Tanzania Traditional Energy Development Organization (TaTEDO), a nonprofit organization with over 25 years of experience implementing programs that increase access to sustainable, modern, affordable energy services and accelerate development across Tanzania, particularly for the country’s most vulnerable populations. TaTEDO works with a wide range of stakeholders – from electricity planners and entrepreneurs to investors and underserved communities – to advance inclusive, demand-driven sustainable energy strategies in rural areas, develop and improve delivery of low-cost technologies to underserved communities, and link clean energy entrepreneurs to finance. The organization also trains renewable energy technicians, helps facilitate installation of clean electricity systems, as well as supports local, national and international policymaking processes to create an enabling environment for sustainable energy. In collaboration with WRI, TaTEDO is building officials’ capacity in Chamwino District to create a demand-driven, district-level energy plan and to more effectively integrate renewable energy into local development strategies by using data and analytical tools that visualize the region’s energy supply and demand challenges. At the national level, TaTEDO and WRI are supporting more effective, equitable off-grid energy planning and decision-making within the Rural Energy Agency to improve access to sustainable, affordable, modern energy services.
- Dann Church Aid (DCA), a faith-based, yet non-missionary organization that works for poor, vulnerable and socially excluded communities across sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. In Uganda, DCA focuses on three key issues: 1) food security, livelihoods, energy and environment 2) humanitarian interventions and 3) public accountability as well as civil and political rights, with gender and youth as key considerations across all programming. Under its livelihood program, DCA Uganda works with an extensive network of smallholder farmers throughout the country, implementing projects that improve their access to agricultural markets in Uganda and around the world. Delivering affordable, reliable electricity services along these crop supply chains provides significant opportunities to boost farmers’ profits, from increasing productivity through irrigation pumps to reducing post-harvest losses with cold storage facilities. Working with WRI, DCA Uganda has begun to assess the energy needs of a project focused on exporting high-value sweet potatoes to the Danish market and will soon begin implementing strategies to electrify the supply chain based on the findings from the assessment.