Browsing by Subject "Energy access"
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Item Llegó La Luz: a case study of the impacts of solar photovoltaic electricity in Las Balsas, Ecuador(2014-05) Leid, Leon Hoover; Knapp, Gregory W.In this thesis I study the impact of electrification using solar photovoltaic panels in the rural Ecuadorian community of Las Balsas. Many large-scale development organizations like the World Bank promote small-scale renewable energy technologies like solar photovoltaics as being crucial in helping poor rural communities generate more income. My research however, both in the field and in the literature, shows income generation from these projects tends to be minimal. I find that the introduction of solar electrification is most important for social applications like music, movies, cell phones, and lighting. FEDETA, the NGO that installed the solar photovoltaics, promotes the development project not as a neoliberal market-based income-generation project, but rather as a humanistic improvement in the “quality of life” of local residents. I analyze this goal of the project in light of the development theories developed over the past few decades. I question how well solar photovoltaics fits into the “small is beautiful” appropriate technology sector. While solar photovoltaic systems have the potential to build small-scale islands of autonomous electricity production in a more environmentally sustainable manner than grid electricity based on fossil fuels, I caution that this is not necessarily the most equitable way to provide electricity to the rural poor in developing countries. While solar home systems have much potential to provide (often minimal amounts of) electricity to extremely rural areas, the service provided is in many cases inferior to grid electricity. While solar photovoltaic technology does provide many potential benefits in areas not reached by grid electricity, NGOs and policy makers should be wary of seeing the technology as a panacea for sustainable development. Solar photovoltaics as a technology has a long way to go to provide energy services comparable to that offered by most grid systems. As with any technology its actual use is not predetermined, but rather is influenced by the local social and cultural contexts.Item Mapping energy access : a regional energy planning framework for rural electrification in India(2015-05) Subramanya, Vivek Shastry; Moore, Steven A., 1945-; Sletto, Bjorn IDelivery of modern energy services continues to be a priority in the global development agenda. Despite technological advancements and political efforts, some countries have only achieved limited success in their electrification programs. I take the example of India, where two-thirds of the total population are in rural areas, and only a little more than half of the rural households had access to electricity as of 2011. It has been so despite the early state-driven attempts and more recent national and state policies that aimed to deliver energy to all. In this thesis, I used complexity theory as a lens to investigate the energy access literature. I found this framework particularly helpful because of its emphasis on local knowledge and feedback loops. Essentially, certain types of knowledge are context specific, and a concerted effort is required to recognize this knowledge and bring it into the decision making process. I hypothesized that the delivery of energy access can benefit from local knowledge and regional planning, but it is not yet an institutional practice to do so. I applied a pragmatic multi-method approach to investigate rural electrification in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. First, I explored the historical context of electrification in Karnataka and found this to be a top-down process, much like in the rest of India. Second, I drew from a stakeholder focus group discussion to further substantiate this finding, and provided examples of useful local knowledge in the socio-political context. Third, I identified relevant energy access indicators and presented a spatial analysis to show the regional disparities in different indicators and the opportunities to strategize future policy implementation. Finally, I synthesized all the findings to develop a regional energy planning framework based on three key components: data management, stakeholder coordination and policy advocacy. I make the case that policy research organizations can initiate this planning activity in different states to develop locally relevant rural electrification policies that build on regional data and local knowledge.