Energy at the Local Scale

Emerging economies are facing various energy challenges. One is meeting the needs of billions of people lacking access to energy services. Second is to be a part of the global transition to develop safe, clean and low carbon energy systems to meet the local needs. The other challenges are to understand the gender based, social, cultural and political norms of the local areas in these countries. All this needs to be implemented at an accelerated rate to meet the growing demand in these countries.  Thus energy at the local level has also to be need driven, satisfying the local consumer and efficient enough to effectively meet this long list of challenges.

The goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in these economies may be aligned with the pursuit of other energy-related objectives, such as developing indigenous renewable resources and reducing local forms of pollution. In general, the costs of most forms of renewable energy have declined substantially in recent decades. In the early 1990s, only hydropower was competitive with electricity generated by conventional power plants for on-grid applications. However, expanding markets and experience-proven cost reductions have since made wind and geothermal power competitive or nearly competitive with other, conventional sources. In dispersed, off-grid applications, intermittency may pose less of a problem and renewable technologies may be more cost-effective than the next available conventional option. In addition, the modularity of many renewable energy technologies facilitates their deployment in relatively small increments.  This can be advantageous in cost and risk to many developing countries.

Involvement of rural cooperatives for PV electricity by the world renound Grameen Bank of Bangladesh is a motivating case study for providing clean access to electricity. In 1996 it established a non-profit subsidiary – Grameen Shakti to administer loans for photovoltaic solar home systems to serve those who had no access to electricity. It found that long distances, poor transport infrastructure, periodically flooded and impassable roads, low literacy rates, lack of technical skills and transactions based on barter contributed to high transaction costs and difficulty in building consumer confidence in their product. In 1998, a Global Environment Facility (GEF) grant enabled to offer improved credit terms to its customers and install thousands of systems (G8, RETF, 2001)

Governments, NGOs, Inter-governmental organizations and other funding agencies need to cover the following in their policy agenda for energy resources at local level in developing countries:

-       Adopting and promoting at least the minimum energy standards for construction, basic appliances and vehicles. This will require re-direction of energy subsidies.

-       Researching and sustainably developing acceptable indigenous renewable energy resources through effective transfer of technology from developed countries. This would also need building of human and institutional capacity needed to support the process.