Renewable energy

Traditional sources of fuel are used to meet the daily energy needs of most people. The use of charcoal and fuel wood is exhausting natural resources and degrading productive land, while their availability is declining against the demand of a growing world population. Currently, billions of people are confronted with challenges including access to energy, reliability and cost. Also enterprises are challenged by this ‘energy poverty’. Energy development has largely focused on large-scale infrastructure and the urban population, whilst energy poverty has rarely been the entry point for policy development. As a result, domestic small-scale Renewable Energy (RE) supply for cooking, heating and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), especially targeting rural and peri-urban areas, has received little attention and support.

Availability of sustainable, clean and reliable sources of energy is an essential driver for development: no country in modern times has substantially reduced poverty without a massive increase in its use of energy. In developing countries there is an opportunity to leapfrog energy poverty by realising use of RE where there is no access to fossil energy.

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