Power For All Outlines Policies Necessary For Ending Energy Poverty By 2030
A follow-up report published by Power for All has outlined a suite of policies impoverished nations can adopt to accelerate the adoption of decentralized renewable energy products and services, which is a big step on the road to providing reliable electricity to the over billion people without access to energy.
In 2016, international coalition Power for All published a report that concluded the only way to end energy poverty by 2030 for the one billion rural poor was by accelerating investment in decentralized renewable energy (DRE) solutions such as mini-grids and rooftop solar technology. In a new report published last week, Power for All has outlined the need for policy leadership to grow alongside the necessary investment growth. Specifically, the report, Decentralized Renewables: From Promise to Progress, calls on countries working towards national electrification by or before 2030 to prioritize three specific policies and processes that the coalition believes will speed the achievement of universal energy access:
- Include decentralized renewable energy in national energy policy
- Integrate decentralized renewable energy into energy system planning
- Proactively engage in stakeholder-led policy design to speed the growth of the market
“National governments hoping to achieve universal access by 2030 without using decentralized renewables are neglecting powerful electrification tools,” the authors of the report noted. Further, the authors point out that “many countries are fighting a losing battle using business-as-usual approaches to reach electrification goals,” and that the DRE sector is actually outperforming some of the largest global utilities.
Largest Global Electrical Utilities
The report highlights a gap in necessary awareness of DRE technologies, including “restricted capacity to implement market-based solutions, and an outdated institutional architecture that values grid-equivalent levels of access, energy officials lack the information, incentives, and tools they need to deploy the DRE technologies and business models that will achieve their access goals faster.”
The report also analyzed DRE market growth in five leading countries — Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya, Bangladesh, and India — and policy “scores” developed by Bloomberg New Energy Finance in its Climatescope report. The analysis conducted by Power for All found strong evidence for the importance of five specific policy accelerators in low energy access countries. These five were:
- Reducing import duties and tariffs on DRE-related products
- Supporting the availability of local finance through loans, grants, and microfinance
- Establishing energy access targets or national commitments to electrification
- Establishing rural electrification plans or programs that incorporate DRE
- Establishing technical regulation through licensing procedures for mini-grid operators and adoption of quality standards
“While a correlation analysis cannot capture causality, it does help identify policy and regulatory trends across the most vibrant DRE markets,” the authors noted.
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