What is energy access? And how do people get it?

Drew Corbyn
Bourton on Dunsmore, Warwickshire CV23 9, UK, Bourton on Dunsmore
March 7th, 2012

The development community is gearing up for the target of Universal Energy Access by 2030. A large movement is gaining pace to challenge global poverty through access to energy, with the UN Secretary General at the fore.

But what is “energy access”? And how can every person in the world get it?

Agreeing on a definition for energy access – a seemingly basic task – is actually riddled with difficulties and the subject of much debate. When does a person move from not having energy access to having energy access? Is it when grid electricity arrives at their home? Or does a solar panel suffice? Is cooking on gas or electricity a must, or can we count an efficient wood stove as access? And do we only consider energy access for households, or do we need to broaden the definition to businesses and public services that also rely on energy?

 
How we define energy access is hugely important in determining how we tackle energy poverty. This is an increasingly important question as the big donors, banks and governments begin to channel vast sums of money and efforts into the Universal Energy Access initiative.

 
Furthermore, determining a plan of action for how billions of people can gain energy access – whatever that is – in the next 18 years is also a hot topic for debate. What can countries do to make the transition to modern energy systems for a whole population? And how can we ensure poor people are empowered to improve their lives through the process?

Practical Action recently launched the Poor people’s energy outlook 2012 report that helps to answer these questions.

You may have seen the PPEO 2010 that reported on energy use in the home, and how important energy is in improving people’s lives. This year the PPEO looks at the linkages between energy access and earning a living. It shows all the ways that energy is used for people’s livelihoods and businesses, and maps out how people can move from gaining an energy supply to increased incomes.

 
We hear from business owners in Kenya, Nepal and Peru describe how modern energy helps them increase their incomes. Mrs Sanchez owns a restaurant in Yanacancha village in Peru that gets electricity from the community micro-hydro system: “we’ve got electricity in the store, so I can run a fridge and the lights as well as the television which the customers like to watch while they eat”.

 
Change in energy access can start with one person, but it must eventually be at the level of the whole system. The PPEO outlines the policies, finance arrangements and necessary skills required to foster the change that could lead to universal energy access.

 
Practical Action is taking a lead role in contributing new knowledge on the linkages between energy and development, and presenting a poor people’s perspective at international debates. We are working at the highest levels to influence the approach and direction of the Universal Energy Access movement; promoting our understanding of people-centred development and the voices of people we work with.

Power to the people?

katiewelford
Kisumu, Kenya, Kisumu
February 27th, 2012

I have always thought of electricity pylons as giants walking across the land. I am not sure I have ever thought where they are going, just that they look like they have a sense of purpose.

Visiting a rural charcoal producer in Bondo district, western Kenya, made me think again about where these metal giants were off to. They walk through rural Kenya, but they do not stop there. They are striding along to towns and cities where people who can afford to pay for grid electricity access welcome them home.

Households in the countryside sit underneath electricity lines, but they do not benefit from them, relying instead on charcoal for cooking their food, and candles or kerosene for lighting.

Another thought struck me, though, as I stared up at this powerline: Is this energy access? And if so, for who? When it comes to collecting data, the terms ‘access to energy’ or ‘energy access’ are hard to pin down, and there is not one single definition. A government employee may pass through this village and, seeing the electricity lines, record them as having ‘access to energy’- the connection is possible, but, given the costs involved for these households, certainly not probable.

This is the main issue with using supply side data- you can count all the available pylons and the megawatts of electricity running through them until the cows come home, but if people can’t access it, then it’s just numbers really, isn’t it?

With the Poor people’s energy outlook reports 2010 and 2012, Practical Action has proposed a way of measuring energy access from the other perspective. They look at whether someone actually has a light source, and if so, the quality of that source. They measure what people really cook on, and how they keep their food cool. All of this can build up a more genuine picture of how poor people use energy, rather than if they have the potential to do so.

Half of humanity, 3 billion people, cook on traditional fuels every day, and their energy needs are not going to be met through connections to the grid any time soon.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Practical Action has shown for over four decades that off-grid sustainable solutions are possible to provide households with an energy supply.

However, we can’t do it alone. That’s why we campaign for Energy for All by 2030 with a broad network of civil society organisations. Why we have released the Poor people’s energy outlook report 2012. Why we have asked all of you to Make Your Point.

So what are you waiting for? Join us.

Now that’s razor sharp!

katiewelford
Bondo, Kenya, Bondo
February 14th, 2012

I’m lucky enough to be in Kisumu, Kenya at the moment for some PISCES project meetings (more on that in later posts). Today we went to a small town called Bondo to do some research on the charcoal markets and the challenges involved in producing this vital energy source sustainably.

We met a feisty group of young women who sell charcoal in the town market. During the rainy season, it is harder to make charcoal and transport it to town, so these women can struggle to buy any off the transporters and sell it for profit.

In order to combat this, as well as some of the other ups and downs that go with being self-employed, they have set up the Charcoal Sellers Bondo, a 17 member collective of men and women who transport and sell charcoal in the town. If someone doesn’t have any cash due to a sudden shortfall, then the rest of the group can help out, and they hope to put some money into a storage facility so that they can store charcoal in the dry season and sell it in leaner times.

It’s not rocket science, but helping to organise markets more effectively is so essential to their incomes, and something we work on at Practical Action. We left the ladies with a joke about the fact that many of them are unmarried or divorced, so they look after their charcoal better in the absence of a man- we all agreed the charcoal was probably better behaved anyway!

Just as we were about to head out of town, we saw a touch of genius. A gentleman riding a bike, but rather than heading down the street, he was stationary, and using the mechanical power to spin a stone that he was using to sharpen knives. Judging by this photo, you can see he was a bit of a poser, but I would be more than smug with myself if I had cornered that market. What a simple, brilliant use of an everyday technology.

What a brilliant day. Thanks Bondo!

Keeping Sri Lanka Green Hot

katiewelford
November 16th, 2011

“Practical Action has made an immense contribution to renewable energy in Sri Lanka! Everywhere you go there is solar or wind power and people will say it is thanks to Practical Action,” Professor R. Shanthini enthusiastically told attendees at the International Conference on Bioenergy, organised as part of the PISCES consortium visits. As someone who works for Practical Action, this is always great to hear.

Professor Shanthini is a chemical engineer interested in particular in the link between CO² emmissions and a country’s gross domestic product (GDP), which is one way of measuring how big a country’s economy is. Sri Lanka’s GDP is growing and it now has ‘middle-income country’ status, meaning that average incomes per person have gone up. Whilst this is in many ways welcome, it brings a new set of challenges and one of them is on energy.

As country’s go, Sri Lanka’s green credentials seem full of potential. The Government has a mandate to supply 20% of the country’s energy through renewable sources by 2020. There is an awareness and use of small-scale, off-grid renewables in the country, that Practical Action has, as Professor Shanthini said, made a fantastic contribution to- take a look at a small-scale wind case study here.

The challenge now is keeping this momentum up. As families get wealthier, the status quo is changing, and middle class families’ expectations are turning to energy supplied by fossil fuels. Rather than using an improved cook stove, such as the Anagi II model, kerosene is in vogue.

“We already use renewable energy in this country, and our struggle will be to keep it. Now only poor people use it, or economically disadvantaged people, but if we can make it very hot, or very stylish, if we can do something so that the poor people don’t feel like they are disadvantaged because they are using renewable energy. It is at that scale that we need it.”

Changing attitudes is certainly a tough one, and the need to do so pops up in some unexpected contexts. On our way from Kandy to Colombo for example, we stopped to chat with a lady called Chandrawathi who was cooking corn on a very smoky stove made out of an old oil drum for her roadside business. When we got back in the car, we learnt that sellers such as Chandrawathi were reluctant to use improved cook stoves as they didn’t produce smoke. For hungry drivers, smoky stoves means that food is freshly cooked, and so better stoves may mean less wood use and less smoke in your lungs, but it won’t sell corn.

Making sustainable energy choices is definitely not plain sailing, but it is influenced by government policy, and this is what the PISCES project is trying to do. By taking lessons from the success of the Anagi II cook stove, which is now used in hundreds of thousands of households across Sri Lanka (but not yet, as we have learnt, at roadside stalls), PISCES is now working on national clean cook stove standards, meaning more efficient, cleaner burning stoves for more people. Now that, Professor Shanthini might say, would be green hot!

Kilns in Kandy Could be Cleaner!

katiewelford
Kandy, Sri Lanka, Kandy
October 31st, 2011

I have just got back from a really interesting 2 weeks in Sri Lanka where I got a snapshot into the experiences of small- and large-scale businesses who use bioenergy efficiently and sustainably. And also some not so efficiently…

The lush green surroundings of Kandy have given way to a quarried valley and air misty with smoke. It catches your breath as you climb out of the car, and gets right into your nose and lungs. This is Digana, about 15km from Kandy, Sri Lanka, where a number of small, family-run limekilns line the valley.

Upali, a jovial 65-year old, has lived here all his life, and his father ran this operation before him. Fifty metres behind Upali’s house, a shirtless man steadily piles up lumps of limestone that have been blown off the rock face by dynamite. It is late in the afternoon but still hot, and this is certainly backbreaking and dangerous work.

Once broken down into smaller lumps the limestone is put through a grinder, then taken over to the kilns. Standing about 3 metres high, the limestone is fed into the top along with large lumps of wood that are burned to provide the heat. It takes two days for the limestone to pass from the top to the bottom of the kiln, which requires a continuous stream of energy. This process is essential to prepare the limestone to be used in cement mix. It is also used as a basic whitewash for walls, and is mixed with the Arica nut and chewed as a mild narcotic.

The process is hugely inefficient, and produces thick smoke from the wood, explaining the town’s air quality. Alongside the terrible health effects of breathing smoke like this on a daily basis, it is also not good for business. The wood cannot be sourced locally, and just one log costs around $0.6. Burning methods such as this account for deforestation on a wide scale, and the returns are slim, with Upali earning just $0.25 per KG of limestone produced.

The challenge presented here is complex. Upali learnt this trade from his Father, and not much has changed about this process in the 65-years he has been living here. Adapting mind sets to newer, more efficient ways of doing things requires a sensitive approach that may take some time, and local buy-in is essential.

Another huge barrier is the cost. Installing a modern kiln would be far more efficient, but the initial price is high. Without funding avenues such as microfinance loans and reasonable repayments, people such as Upali simply don’t have the savings to make the investment.

Read more about Practical Action’s work to tackle energy poverty here: http://practicalaction.org/energy-poverty. Upali is exactly who could benefit from increased knowledge, skills, financing and political commitment to energy, so that he can access clean, efficient and sustainable energy that will benefit both his health and his pocket. I was in Sri Lanka as part of the PISCES project, which is generating new research on sustainable and affordable bioenergy use, and is working to influence policy change in East Africa and South Asia, visit www.pisces.or.ke.

Jargon busting! How do you communicate research?

katiewelford
October 11th, 2011

For development practitioners, words and phrases like ‘value chains’, ‘bioenergy’, ‘gender and equity’ roll off the tongue, but for a lot of us it is not always clear what is meant by them. As I discussed in my last blog post, one of the challenges of working on the PISCES project is trying to reach (and interest) wider audiences when you are dealing with jargon.

One of the themes of the PISCES project is to ‘strengthen capacity’, which is really about working with individuals or groups to build their skills and knowledge in bioenergy (energy from biomass: think wood and charcoal). Through our partners at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Dar es Salaam, Masters and PhD students research a number of technical and social issues relating to bioenergy. You might call this ‘Training tomorrow’s bioenergy leaders’.

In early August I spent a few days up in rainy Edinburgh listening to some fantastic student presentations on PISCES and PISCES-related project. Their Powerpoint presentations, with some audio attached, can be viewed here. Whilst these are excellent presentations, I am always aware that these might not be the best way to engage people who don’t know a lot about the topic.

I don’t know about you, but with an arts and social science background, Powerpoint does not scream ACCESSIBLE to me! So I also worked with a smaller number of students to create some digital slideshows and podcasts. Below is one I made with Alannah Delahunty, and her research on ‘Gender in the Charcoal Value Chain in Western Kenya’.

Take a look at the 5-minute slideshow and let me know what you think: is this a good way of introducing people to a topic? Have you learnt anything new?

For more in-depth publications from PISCES and our international research on bioenergy, visit www.pisces.or.ke

This also ties in with Practical Action’s work on market mapping.

Cook your Tomatoes Using the Tin they Came in!

Stove made from old tin cans, a plumber's punch and a can opener!

When I was asked to present Practical Action’s stove work at a University in Northern Italy the last thing I expected to end up doing was making small wood burning stoves out of old tinned tomato and vegetable cans.

The workshop was organised by a collection of Italian Universities with presentations by several Italian NGOs and PhD students on various issues of stove production, mixed with short films from Tanzania and Chad, as well as a stove camp organised by Approvecho from Oregon, USA. Topics covered ranged from efficiency and health impacts of stove designs, through to usability, affordability and gender issues, always followed by in-depth discussions and debates.

I gave a presentation on Practical Action’s stove projects from around the world, which covers more than 20 years of experience.  This includes our long-term support of the Anagi stove in Sri Lanka and the Biogas sector in Nepal, through to our work on wood stoves in western Kenya and Alpaca dung stoves in Peru.  More recently, our stove work has focused on LPG stoves in Sudan, ethanol stoves in Kenya and two stove training projects in rural and urban areas of Rwanda.

On the second day we all switched between two workshops.  The first was on a range of appropriate technologies including a bicycle-powered water pump, a solar powered DJ platform, used for raising the awareness of improved stoves in Tanzania, and a solar fruit-drying rack. The second was very hands-on: we made our own super-efficient, low smoke emitting gasifier stoves from old tin cans, a plumbers hole punch and a can opener – materials available almost anywhere in the world.  It only took us about 10 minutes to make the stoves, and then using bits of twigs and pine cones found lying around the grounds, we all had our stoves roaring away, boiling water for our afternoon tea.

I’m now a true “tin can” stove convert and hope Practical Action will be able to introduce this incredibly appropriate technology to communities we work with in the very near future.

PISCES project – A red herring?

katiewelford
June 29th, 2011

A key project I am working on in my new role of Project Communications Assistant at Practical Action is the PISCES project, of which Practical Action Consulting UK, Sri Lanka and East Africa are all consortium members.

Naturally after my first few days at work, I had a chat with my Mum. It went something like this:

Mum: So, what are you doing at work?

Me: Well I am developing communications for the PISCES project

Mum: Oh, right. So is it to do with fish?

Me: No it isn’t actually; the acronym is a bit of a red herring (Sorry). It actually stands for ‘Policy Innovation Systems for Clean Energy Security’

Mum: Erm…OK. So what’s that then?

Me: The tagline is “New Knowledge for Sustainable Bioenergy.” Does that help?

Mum: Ah yes, that helps. Wait, no, on second thoughts, it doesn’t help me much.

And that reaction is understandable, because unless you work in Policy Innovation Systems for Clean Energy Security yourself, you might argue that this name isn’t exactly crystal clear.

So it’s become obvious to me that I need to do something very important: be able to describe PISCES to my Mum in a couple of sentences. This will obviously be a work in progress as I talk about the project more, but here’s a first stab at it- I’ll run it past my Mum and let you know what she thinks:

‘Through research in East Africa and South Asia, the PISCES project is developing new ideas on bioenergy (energy from biomass) that can influence national policies and ultimately improve energy access and livelihoods in poor communities. This is critical because bioenergy, in particular wood and charcoal, is relied upon by 2.5 billion of the world’s poorest women, children and men for their basic energy needs everyday.’

I would love to know what you think too, so please visit the website and let me know.

ELLA – Evidence and Lessons from Latin America

Carla
Peru, South America
October 27th, 2010

My name is Carla Giannina Acosta Navarro and I am currently working in Practical Action Consulting Latin America as a researcher on the new ELLA Programme.

As a researcher, my main goal is not simply to collect information.  Rather, I am focusing on organising and interpreting information in a way that allows me to understand better lessons from Latin America and how they can best be applied in different continents.  Moreover, I believe that information is a tool that can really help to improve the lives of people living in poverty.

An important aspect of the ELLA programme is that it will help fill the gap that exists in knowledge relating to evidence and lessons from development policy that is emerging from Latin America.  I believe that this programme could encourage researchers to make contact and interact around common themes and interest.  The incomes and livelihoods of poor people will only improve when policy-makers think and read more about real life experiences.  Furthermore, most think-tanks would probably agree that reading and thinking about evidence helps to generate new ideas to improve quality life and solve problems.

Energy in developing countries

My first trip away with Practical Action, to East Africa, has been with a focus on our energy work, and it’s already been quite an eye-opener to the challenges and opportunities for our organisation in the region. 

Practical Action is aiming to develop energy sources that can meet the needs of the very poor, while being affordable and without depleting the already stretched energy resources.  Soon after I arrived at the Nairobi office, located in a building shared with the YMCA of Africa, I was involved in the development of an energy strategy to look at the projects planned for 2010. 

This includes both on the ground projects to develop ethanol from sugar cane residues, new cook stoves that are efficient and reduce the health related problems of smoke inhalation, and work on developing better policies with regional governments that can tackle poverty reduction while addressing the impacts of climate change and deforestation. 

The various meetings included energy experts from Zimbabwe, Hawaii, UK, Sri Lanka, Nepal as well as Kenya, working very closely together to try and develop a strong strategy.

Although it’s been hard work trying to gain a better understanding of the numerous challenges that need to be overcome, including corruption, nepotism, the harsh environmental conditions many of the poor people in the region live in, its also been hugely inspiring. 

Whilst at the Kenyan office I was lucky to be a part of a moving farewell for a colleague who’s just completed a project in the Kiburu slums in Nairobi.  It was moving to hear the passion of her colleagues praising her tireless commitment to Practical Action’s work and wishing her well in her future career.  At the same time interviews were taking place for a new manager for the consultancy arm of the Kenyan office, who will have the responsibility of leading the small team to take the work of Practical Action to other countries in the region including Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.

Today I’m travelling overland to Arusha in Tanzania with colleagues from Sri Lanka and Kenya to attend a 3-day meeting on the 5-year Pisces project to improve policy in East Africa and south Asia on sustainable biomass use.  Practical Action is working with organisations in the UK, Tanzania and India to develop vital research which can help decision makers in the two regions to make more informed decisions on using their local resources to sustainably reduce poverty, provide employment and allow people to both adapt to the challenges of climate change whilst mitigating emissions.  The trip will include an update on the work going on in the four countries as well as visits to projects currently being implemented in Tanzania, which I’m looking forward to very much. 

Ewan Bloomfield

Practical Action Consulting