Energy Technologies for the Poor Technology for poverty alleviation: Relevance and Prospects in South Asia October 10-11

1. Energy Technologies for the Poor Technology for poverty alleviation: Relevance and Prospects in South Asia October 10-11, 2003 British Council, New Delhi Bikash Pandey Country Representative, Nepal Winrock International. bpandey@winrock.org.np

2. Where do the poor in South Asia get their energy from? • South Asia poor: dollar poor < $2/day 84%, <$1/day 41%, calorie poor 29%. • Biomass – cooking, heating. Primary energy 70% of population. • Biomass meets 33% (India, Pakistan) to > 80% (Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh). • Fossil fuel increasing - urban, biomass % decreasing but absolute amounts increasing into future. • Transportation needs met by fossil fuels. • Milling, water pumping, lighting, communications powered by national grid, diesel, or small-scale renewables.

3. Energy Consumption Nepal

4. Commercial Energy Consumption in South Asia

5. Meeting Millennium Development Goals – role of energy services • Halving extreme poverty • Halving the number of people living with hunger • Achieving universal education • Promoting gender equality • Reducing mortality/improving health • Ensuring environmental sustainability

6. Practical ways to meet goals • Use both centralized and decentralized services, innovatively. • Distributed services – non-electricity services, multiple institutions, polycentric, lower cost, shared investment by users. • Grid expansion – expensive but more versatile. Need for community mobilization.

7. Rural Energy Services - Nepal • 80,000 new households on grid per year, 30,000 in rural areas. < population increase. Money loser for utility. • Decentralized energy services – together reaching around 120,000 new households each year, all in rural areas: • Biogas: 20,000 Mainstream or alternative? • Solar PV: 15,000 • Micro-hydro:10,000 • Micro-hydro milling: 25,000 • Improved cook stoves: 50,000 • > 2/3rds investment by users.

8. Scenario - 50% of households with modern energy

9. Decentralized Rural Energy Services - Biogas • Implemented by Biogas Support Programme. • Family biogas plants: 100,000 installed by end of 2002; Around 20,000 new plants being installed in 2003. • Indicators of success • > 98% functioning well. • Real prices reduced by 30% in 10 years. • Feeding rate increased to 98%. • Average size down to 6.02 m3. • Higher per capita than India and catching up with China! • Successful model based on • Intelligently designed program • Independence in implementation • High Quality and Reliable Product!

10. Rural Energy Services - Biogas • Subsidy effectively used to leverage: • high quality installations and competition among 40 private suppliers; • Quality of after sales support; • Increase feeding rate by promoting smaller plants. • Substantial social benefits • Reduction in fuel collection, cooking and cleaning time of 3 hours a day • Health benefits from reduction in indoor air pollution • Better compost • Reduced deforestation and CO2 emissions • Global benefits: Plant pays for itself with the CO2 emissions abated over its life – 100 tons of CO2.

11. Challenges to Mainstreaming Distributed Energy Services • Models • Replication of working models • Market – based with Quality control, biogas and solar PV, • Community Mobilization, micro-hydro, plantations, • Scaling up numbers, capacity building. • New models needed • Making micro-credit available to the RET sector. • Income generation coupled with RET promotion. HELP. • Peoples’ participation in extending centralized services.

12. Challenges • Broadening of vision of “energy for the poor” • Non-electricity services • Centralized and decentralized working together • Keeping the focus - Sustainable long term funding from government, levy on commercial energy, carbon - CDM. • Governance - Keeping programs robust against political interference and corruption.

13. Thank you!