Energy Access

ETC's work on Energy Acces has a twofold focus:

• Public-private partnerships and support to local actors that provide energy access to the poor in a sustainable way
• The gender mainstreaming component of EA which aims at engendering national energy policies and energy access projects.

ETC Energy is committed to providing modern energy services to the poor in developing countries through business development support, capacity building, policy influencing and research.

Background

In many cases substantial improvements in income and quality of livelihoods require access to energy sources, in whatever form. Earlier studies have shown the difficulties of the poor to gain access to reliable and affordable sources of energy. Without this they tend to turn to scarce local resources such as trees, firewood, and dried manure thus accelerating processes of resource degradation.

In the past ten years, access to modern energy for poverty alleviation got more attention from policymakers and donors. The choice of technology is a discussion issue. Should all options of technology be made available or should financial and policy support be restricted to sustainable technology? The European Union initiated an Energy Facility of 220 million euro for poverty alleviation in ACP countries, for which only projects with sustainable energy could qualify.

The trend within development cooperation to work with output-based targets is understandable from a communication point of view; it makes it easier to present the results to the public. However, it increases the risk that national policy and national systems in developing countries are being passed over by donors that implement their own systems to get concrete results in the field on the short term. 

ETC and Energy Access

The main programmes of ETC Energy - EASE and ENERGIA - are well positioned in the (national andpolicy context of the forthcoming years. The opinion of ETC is that all options of technology should be available (‘full menu of options’) and we this os being advocate for in ETC's work.

Innovative partnerships between the private sector and NGO/GO agencies are needed to improve access of the poor to energy sources. ETC is committed to help create those partnerships and realise such access. Substantial capacity building of both private and public partners will be needed.