Laos Energy Modeling and Policy Analysis (LEMPA) Project

Meet the Laos Ener­gy Mod­el­ing and Pol­i­cy Analy­sis (Under­grad­u­ate!) Team:

The focus of this inter-dis­ci­pli­nary and inter-uni­ver­si­ty research group is to devel­op sus­tain­able ener­gy, water, and land-use sce­nar­ios for Laos, and to work with local stake-hold­ers on the costs and ben­e­fits for com­mu­ni­ties, the nation, and the region­al com­merce in ener­gy, water, food, tim­ber and oth­er commodities.

Aadi­tee Kudrimoti 

Bio: Aadi­tee is a fourth-year at UC Berke­ley study­ing polit­i­cal sci­ence and pub­lic pol­i­cy with a con­cen­tra­tion in ener­gy, devel­op­ment, and inter­na­tion­al rela­tions. Aadi­teeis orig­i­nal­ly from Tuc­son, Ari­zona, where she began to devel­op an inter­est in inter­na­tion­al envi­ron­men­tal affairs. At UC Berke­ley, Aadi­teeis work­ing on projects in the polit­i­cal econ­o­my of Chi­nese devel­op­ment finance, rur­al elec­tri­fi­ca­tion, and col­lec­tive action. Aadi­tee­has become espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed in how the rise of renew­able tech­nol­o­gy is influ­enc­ing ener­gy diplo­ma­cy around the world. She hopes to pur­sue a career in acad­e­mia and pub­lic pol­i­cy and work on gov­er­nance tools to build the bar­gain­ing capac­i­ty of LDCs against MNCs, for­eign state-owned enter­pris­es, etc. on the sub­ject of FDI and oth­er types of invest­ment. She sees SWITCH-Laos as hav­ing the poten­tial to serve as a crit­i­cal tool in assist­ing the increase of the Lao people’s bar­gain­ing pow­er over FDI in the ener­gy sec­tor and thus their auton­o­my in deter­min­ing their own eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment. Out­side school, Aaditee’s inter­ests include dance, food jour­nal­ism, and cooking.

Alex Lath­em

Bio: Alex Lath­em is a third-year under­grad­u­ate at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty. He is a physics major with sev­er­al years of expe­ri­ence using pro­gram­ming lan­guages, includ­ing Python SQL, C, and Bash, to ana­lyze sci­en­tif­ic data. Pre­vi­ous research projects Alex has worked on include astrom­e­try of near-Earth aster­oids and the cre­ation of a Hub­ble curve through the analy­sis of Type Ia super­novae. Alex spent the sum­mer of 2019 work­ing on the SWITCH mod­el for Chi­na, and is very excit­ed to apply the skills he learned there to a ver­sion for Laos. Out­side of research, Alex is also inter­est­ed in music, video game design, lin­guis­tics, and history.

Ash­ley Yip

Bio: Ash­ley is a sec­ond-year under­grad­u­ate study­ing envi­ron­men­tal sci­ence with an empha­sis in glob­al pol­i­tics. She moved to New Mex­i­co, where she devel­oped an inter­est in envi­ron­men­tal affairs. At UC Berke­ley, she is involved in a pre-law asso­ci­a­tion that helped her explore her inter­est in law and how she may inte­grate that into envi­ron­men­tal­ism. Off cam­pus, she is work­ing on a sex edu­ca­tion reform project in Sin­ga­pore with the Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion. She is con­stant­ly explor­ing the inter­sec­tion between pol­i­cy, edu­ca­tion, and the envi­ron­ment. She hopes to return home to Sin­ga­pore and pur­sue a career in inter­na­tion­al envi­ron­men­tal pol­i­cy or law with­in South­east Asia. Ash­ley chose to work on SWITCH-Laos not only because green­ing ASEAN’s eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment is essen­tial to tack­ling cli­mate change, but also because she is famil­iar with the demo­graph­ic. She has done research in regards to both urban and rur­al agri­cul­ture in Asia and the US, and led research for envi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment in busi­ness oper­a­tions. Out­side of school, her inter­ests include climb­ing, hik­ing, piano, and camper vans.

Rachel Ng

Bio: Rachel is a sec­ond-year Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence and Data Sci­ence major. A Sin­ga­pore-native, Rachel describes that SWITCH-Laos extreme­ly impor­tant to her because it is an impor­tant step towards the ener­gy secu­ri­ty of South­east Asia. She believes that the sus­tain­able elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of South­east Asia is key to region­al grid sta­bil­i­ty and ener­gy trade. She is pur­su­ing SWITCH-Laos as crit­i­cal in lead­ing the way towards sus­tain­able elec­tri­fi­ca­tion. Rachel is inter­est­ed in the inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty between cli­mate change and com­mu­ni­ty, explor­ing how com­mu­ni­ty based issues caused by cli­mate change can be alle­vi­at­ed through data. Fur­ther­more, Rachel is cur­rent­ly con­cerned about equal access to edu­ca­tion and vol­un­teers week­ly as a men­tor to ele­men­tary school stu­dents. In the future, she hopes to return to Sin­ga­pore and guide envi­ron­men­tal change through cre­at­ing an ecosys­tem of sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ties and busi­ness­es. Her hob­bies include dance, rock climb­ing and water sports.

Ziming Ma

Siddique, Samira

Sami­ra Sid­dique is an MS/​PhD can­di­date in the Ener­gy and Resources Group. Her stud­ies focus on the inter­con­nect­ed social, eco­nom­ic, and phys­i­cal process­es of urban­iza­tion and cli­mate change in Asia. She was pre­vi­ous­ly an inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment researcher at Math­e­mat­i­ca Pol­i­cy Research, where her work includ­ed an eval­u­a­tion of the Glob­al Pro­to­col for Com­mu­ni­ty-scale Green­house Gas Emis­sions in cities world­wide. Pri­or to that, she was a researcher at the Inter­na­tion­al Cen­tre for Cli­mate Change and Devel­op­ment in Dha­ka, Bangladesh, and at the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion. She received her BA from Wes­leyan Uni­ver­si­ty in the Col­lege of Social Stud­ies and the Col­lege of the Envi­ron­ment.  Sami­ra has inter­ests in ener­gy in con­flict set­tings,  and in urban cli­mate adaptation.

A 2018 paper sum­ma­riz­ing her research focus can be found in The Dha­ka Tri­bune, here, and in the RAEL Pub­li­ca­tions Direc­to­ry.

He, Gang

Pri­or to Berke­ley, he was a research asso­ciate with Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty’s Pro­gram on Ener­gy and Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment from 2008 to 2010.

SMART VILLAGES: New thinking for off-grid communities worldwide

Key­words: off-grid ener­gy; vil­lage pow­er; decen­tral­ized ener­gy, ener­gy ser­vices, ener­gy innovation.

 Overview:

Two crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant and inter­linked chal­lenges face the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty in the 21^st cen­tu­ry: the per­sis­tence of wide­spread ener­gy pover­ty and the result­ing lost eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ty; and inten­si­fy­ing human-dri­ven cli­mate dis­rup­tion. These crises are inex­orably linked through the ener­gy tech­nol­o­gy sys­tems that have so far pro­vid­ed the vast major­i­ty of our ener­gy: bio­mass and fos­sil fuels. Both the ener­gy ser­vice cri­sis and the cli­mate cri­sis have become increas­ing­ly seri­ous over the past decades, even though we have seen greater clar­i­ty over the indi­vid­ual and social costs that each has brought to humanity.

The Sus­tain­able Ener­gy Imperative:

The cor­re­la­tion between access to elec­tric­i­ty and a wide range of social goods is over­whelm­ing. How­ev­er, access to improved ener­gy ser­vices alone does not pro­vide a sure­fire path­way to eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ty and an improved qual­i­ty of life. In Fig­ure 2 we show the cor­re­la­tions that exist between elec­tric­i­ty access across nations and a vari­ety of mea­sures of qual­i­ty of life, such as the Human Devel­op­ment Index (a mea­sure of well-being based in equal thirds on gross nation­al income, life expectan­cy, and edu­ca­tion­al attain­ment). Oth­er indi­ca­tors stud­ied include gen­der equal­i­ty in edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ty, and the per­cent­age of stu­dents who reach edu­ca­tion­al mile­stones. All of these indices improve sig­nif­i­cant­ly and rough­ly lin­ear­ly with access to elec­tric­i­ty. At the same time, the per­cent­age of peo­ple below the pover­ty line, and child­hood mor­tal­i­ty, both decline with increas­ing ener­gy access¹.

Fig­ure 1: A vil­lage micro-grid ener­gy and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tem in the Crock­er High­lands of Sabah, Malaysian Bor­neo. The sys­tem serves a com­mu­ni­ty of two hun­dred, and pro­vides house­hold ener­gy ser­vices, tele­coms and satel­lite (dish shown), water pump­ing for fish ponds (seen at cen­ter) and for refrig­er­a­tion. The sup­ply includes micro-hydro and solar gen­er­a­tion (one small pan­el shown here, oth­ers are dis­trib­uted on build­ing rooftops). Pho­to cred­it: Daniel M. Kammen.

 Fig­ure 2: The Human Devel­op­ment Index (HDI) and var­i­ous addi­tion­al met­rics of qual­i­ty of life plot­ted against the per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion with elec­tric­i­ty access. Each data point is coun­try lev­el data a spe­cif­ic point in time. For addi­tion­al data, see Alston, Ger­shen­son, and Kam­men, 2015¹.

Today the gap between glob­al pop­u­la­tion and those with elec­tric­i­ty access stands at rough­ly 1.3 bil­lion, with ener­gy ser­vices for the unelec­tri­fied com­ing large­ly from kerosene and tra­di­tion­al bio­mass, includ­ing dung and agri­cul­tur­al residues. This ‘access gap’ has per­sist­ed as grid expan­sion pro­grammes and pop­u­la­tion have grown.

Grid expan­sion has rough­ly kept pace with the increase in the glob­al pop­u­la­tion. About 1.4 bil­lion peo­ple in 2013 are com­plete­ly off-grid, and many osten­si­bly con­nect­ed peo­ple in the devel­op­ing world expe­ri­ence sig­nif­i­cant out­ages that range from 20–200+ days a year.   The major­i­ty of these off-grid res­i­dents are in rur­al and under­served peri-urban areas. Cur­rent fore­casts are that this num­ber will remain rough­ly unchanged until 2030, which would rel­e­gate a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion and the economies of many of the need­i­est coun­tries on earth to frag­ile, under­pro­duc­tive lives with less options than they could oth­er­wise have. Tra­di­tion­al grid exten­sion will be slow­est to reach these com­mu­ni­ties. Unless the advances in both ener­gy and infor­ma­tion sys­tems that have occurred over the past decade are more wide­ly adopt­ed, there will be lit­tle if any chance to alter this trend.

Advances in off-grid systems 

Recent­ly we have seen an emer­gence of off-grid elec­tric­i­ty sys­tems that do not require the same sup­port­ing net­works as the tra­di­tion­al forms of cen­tral­ized pow­er gen­er­a­tion. These tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions are as much based on infor­ma­tion sys­tems as they are direct­ly about ener­gy tech­nol­o­gy. While tra­di­tion­al elec­tric­i­ty grids can grad­u­al­ly pay off (amor­tize) the costs of expen­sive gen­er­a­tion, trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion cap­i­tal equip­ment across many cus­tomers and across many decades, a new busi­ness mod­el is need­ed to rapid­ly bring ener­gy ser­vices to the rur­al and urban poor. Mini-grids and prod­ucts for indi­vid­ual user end-use such as solar home sys­tems have ben­e­fit­ted from dra­mat­ic price reduc­tions and per­for­mance advances in sol­id state elec­tron­ics, cel­lu­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nolo­gies, elec­tron­ic bank­ing, and in the dra­mat­ic decrease in solar ener­gy costs². This mix of tech­no­log­i­cal and mar­ket inno­va­tion has con­tributed to a vibrant new ener­gy ser­vices sec­tor that in many nations has out­paced tra­di­tion­al grid expansion.

The com­par­i­son between the util­i­ty mod­el of cen­tral-sta­tion ener­gy sys­tems and this new wave of dis­trib­uted ener­gy providers is instruc­tive. Tra­di­tion­al dynamo gen­er­a­tors and arc light­ing per­form best at large scale, and they became the main­stay of large-scale elec­tric util­i­ties. The clas­sic util­i­ty mod­el of a one-way flow of ener­gy from pow­er plant to con­sumers is now rapid­ly chang­ing.   The com­bi­na­tion of low-cost solar, micro-hydro, and oth­er gen­er­a­tion tech­nolo­gies cou­pled with the elec­tron­ics need­ed to man­age small-scale pow­er and to com­mu­ni­cate to con­trol devices and to remote billing sys­tems has changed vil­lage ener­gy. High-per­for­mance, low-cost pho­to­volta­ic gen­er­a­tion, paired with advanced bat­ter­ies and con­trollers, pro­vide scal­able sys­tems across much larg­er pow­er ranges than cen­tral gen­er­a­tion, from megawatts down to frac­tions of a watt³.

The rapid and con­tin­u­ing improve­ments in end-use effi­cien­cy for sol­id state light­ing, direct cur­rent tele­vi­sions, refrig­er­a­tion, fans, and infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy (ICT, as seen in Fig­ure 1) have result­ed in a ‘super-effi­cien­cy trend’. This progress has enabled decen­tral­ized pow­er and appli­ance sys­tems to com­pete with con­ven­tion­al equip­ment for basic house­hold needs. These rapid tech­no­log­i­cal advances in sup­port­ing clean ener­gy both on- and off-grid are fur­ther­more pre­dict­ed to con­tin­ue. This process has been par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant at the indi­vid­ual device and house­hold (solar home sys­tem) lev­el, and for the emerg­ing world of vil­lage mini-grids³.

Diverse Tech­nol­o­gy Options to Pro­vide Ener­gy Ser­vices for the Unelectrified:

With these tech­no­log­i­cal cor­ner­stones, aid orga­ni­za­tions, gov­ern­ments, acad­e­mia, and the pri­vate sec­tor are devel­op­ing and sup­port­ing a wide range of approach­es to serve the needs of the poor, includ­ing pico-light­ing devices (often very small 1 – 2 watt solar pan­els charg­ing lithi­um-ion bat­ter­ies which in turn pow­er low-cost/high effi­cien­cy light emit­ting diode lights), solar home sys­tems (SHS), and com­mu­ni­ty-scale micro- and mini-grids. Decen­tral­ized sys­tems are clear­ly not com­plete sub­sti­tutes for a reli­able grid con­nec­tion, but they rep­re­sent an impor­tant lev­el of access until a reli­able grid is avail­able and fea­si­ble. They pro­vide an impor­tant plat­form from which to devel­op more dis­trib­uted ener­gy ser­vices. By over­com­ing access bar­ri­ers often through mar­ket-based struc­tures, these sys­tems pro­vide entire­ly new ways to bring ener­gy ser­vices to the poor and for­mer­ly un-con­nect­ed people.

Meet­ing peo­ples’ basic light­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion needs is an impor­tant first step on the ‘mod­ern elec­tric­i­ty ser­vice lad­der’ ⁴. Elim­i­nat­ing kerosene light­ing from a house­hold improves house­hold health and safe­ty while pro­vid­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er qual­i­ty and quan­ti­ties of light. Fuel based light­ing is a $20 bil­lion indus­try in Africa alone, and tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ties exist to both reduce ener­gy costs for the poor, and to improve the qual­i­ty of ser­vice. Charg­ing a rur­al or vil­lage cell phone can cost $5 – 10/​kWh at a pay-for-ser­vice charg­ing sta­tion, but less than $0.50 cents/​kWh via an off-grid prod­uct or on a mini-grid.

This invest­ment frees income and also tends to lead to high­er rates of uti­liza­tion for mobile phones and oth­er small devices. Over­all, the first few watts of pow­er medi­at­ed through effi­cient end-uses lead to ben­e­fits in house­hold health, edu­ca­tion, and pover­ty reduc­tion. Beyond basic needs there can be a wide range of impor­tant and high­ly-val­ued ser­vices from decen­tral­ized pow­er (e.g., tele­vi­sion, refrig­er­a­tion, fans, heat­ing, ven­ti­la­tion and air-con­di­tion­ing, motor-dri­ven appli­ca­tions) depend­ing on the pow­er lev­el and its qual­i­ty along with demand-side efficiency.

Expe­ri­ence with the ‘off-grid’ poor con­firms the excep­tion­al val­ue derived from the first incre­ment of ener­gy service—equivalent to 0.2–1 Wh/​day for mobile phone charg­ing or the first 100 lumen-hours of light. Giv­en the cost and ser­vice lev­el that fuel-based light­ing and fee-based mobile phone charg­ing pro­vide as a base­line, sim­ply shift­ing this expen­di­ture to a range of mod­ern ener­gy tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions could pro­vide a much bet­ter ser­vice, or sig­nif­i­cant cost sav­ings over the life­time of a light­ing prod­uct (typ­i­cal­ly 3–5 years).

Mir­ror­ing the ear­ly devel­op­ment of elec­tric util­i­ties, improve­ments in under­ly­ing tech­nol­o­gy sys­tems for decen­tral­ized pow­er are also being com­bined with new busi­ness mod­els, insti­tu­tion­al and reg­u­la­to­ry sup­port, and inte­grat­ed infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy sys­tems^{5, 6}. His­tor­i­cal­ly, the non-tech­ni­cal bar­ri­ers to adop­tion have been imped­i­ments to wide­spread adop­tion of off-grid elec­tric­i­ty, and in some cas­es they still are. A lack of appro­pri­ate invest­ment cap­i­tal also ham­pers the estab­lish­ment and expan­sion of pri­vate sec­tor ini­tia­tives. Fur­ther­more, com­plex and often per­verse pol­i­cy envi­ron­ments impair entry for clean tech­nolo­gies and entrench incum­bent sys­tems. Sub­si­dies for liq­uid light­ing fuels can reduce the incen­tive to adopt elec­tric light­ing. In addi­tion, the preva­lence of imper­fect or inac­cu­rate infor­ma­tion about qual­i­ty can lead to mar­ket spoil­ing⁴ and is also man­i­fest­ed by a lack of con­sumer under­stand­ing and aware­ness of alter­na­tives to incum­bent light­ing technology.

Test­ing lab­o­ra­to­ries that rate the qual­i­ty of the light­ing prod­ucts and dis­sem­i­nate the results are an invalu­able step in increas­ing the qual­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness of new entrants into the off-grid and mini-grid ener­gy ser­vices space. The Light­ing Glob­al (https://​www​.light​ing​glob​al​.org) pro­gramme⁵ is one exam­ple of an effort that began as an indus­try watch­dog, but has now become an impor­tant plat­form that pro­vides mar­ket insights, steers qual­i­ty assur­ance frame­works for mod­ern, off-grid light­ing devices and sys­tems, and pro­motes sus­tain­abil­i­ty through a part­ner­ship with industry.

An Action Agen­da for Ener­gy Access:

The diver­si­ty of new ener­gy ser­vice prod­ucts avail­able, and the rapid­ly increas­ing demand for infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vices, water, health and enter­tain­ment in vil­lages world­wide has built a very large demand for reli­able and low-cost ener­gy⁷. Com­bin­ing this demand with the dri­ve for clean ener­gy brings two impor­tant objec­tives that were for many years seen as in direct com­pe­ti­tion with align­ment around the suite of new clean ener­gy prod­ucts that can pow­er vil­lage ener­gy services.

To enable and expand this process, a range of design prin­ci­ples emerge that can form a roadmap to clean ener­gy economies:

• Estab­lish clear goals at the local lev­el: Uni­ver­sal ener­gy access is the glob­al goal by 2030⁷, but estab­lish­ing more near-term goals that embody mean­ing­ful steps from the present sit­u­a­tion will show how what is pos­si­ble and at what lev­el of effort. Cities and vil­lages have begun with audits of ener­gy ser­vices, costs, and envi­ron­men­tal impacts. A num­ber of tools are often cit­ed as excel­lent start­ing points, includ­ing the cli­mate foot­print assess­ment tools like http://​cool​cli​mate​.berke​ley​.edu, and the HOMER soft­ware pack­age (http://​www​.home​ren​er​gy​.com) used by many groups to design both local mini-grids and to plan and cost out off-grid ener­gy options

• Empow­er vil­lages as both design­ers and as con­sumers of local­ized pow­er: Vil­lage solu­tions nec­es­sar­i­ly vary great­ly, but clean ener­gy resource assess­ments, eval­u­a­tion of the need­ed infra­struc­ture invest­ment, and, most often neglect­ed but most impor­tant, the social struc­tures around which suf­fi­cient train­ing exists to make the vil­lage ener­gy sys­tem a suc­cess.   In a pilot in rur­al Nicaragua, once the assess­ment was com­plete⁸ move­ment from eval­u­a­tion to imple­men­ta­tion quick­ly became a goal of both the com­mu­ni­ty and a local com­mer­cial plant.

• Make equi­ty a cen­tral design con­sid­er­a­tion: Com­mu­ni­ty ener­gy solu­tions have the poten­tial to lib­er­ate women entre­pre­neurs and dis­ad­van­taged eth­nic minori­ties by tai­lor­ing user-mate­ri­als and ener­gy plans to meet the cul­tur­al and lin­guis­tic needs of these com­mu­ni­ties. Nation­al pro­grammes often ignore busi­ness spe­cial­ties, cul­tur­al­ly appro­pri­ate cook­ing and oth­er home ener­gy needs. Think­ing explic­it­ly about this is both good busi­ness and makes the solu­tions much more like­ly to be adopted.

Ref­er­ences & Fur­ther Reading: 

1.  Alstone, Peter, Ger­shen­son, Dim­it­ry and Daniel K. Kam­men (2015) Decen­tral­ized ener­gy sys­tems for clean elec­tric­i­ty access, , , 305 – 314.
2. Alstone, Peter, Ger­shen­son, Dim­it­ry and Daniel K. Kam­men (2015) Decen­tral­ized ener­gy sys­tems for clean elec­tric­i­ty access, Nature Cli­mate Change, 5, 305 – 314.
3. Zheng, Cheng and Kam­men, Daniel (2014) An Inno­va­tion-Focused Roadmap for a Sus­tain­able Glob­al Pho­to­volta­ic Indus­try, Ener­gy Pol­i­cy, 67, 159–169.
4. Daniel Schnitzer, Deepa Shinde Louns­bury, Juan Pablo Car­val­lo, Ran­jit Desh­mukh, Jay Apt, and Daniel M. Kam­men (2014) Micro­grids for Rur­al Elec­tri­fi­ca­tion: A crit­i­cal review of best prac­tices based on sev­en case stud­ies (Unit­ed Nation­al Foun­da­tion: New York, NY). http://​ener​gy​ac​cess​.org/​i​m​a​g​e​s​/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​f​i​l​e​s​/​M​i​c​r​o​g​r​i​d​s​R​e​p​o​r​t​F​I​N​A​L​_​h​i​g​h​.​pdf

4. Casil­las, C. and Kam­men, D. M. (2010) The ener­gy-pover­ty-cli­mate nexus, Sci­ence, 330, 1182
5. Azeve­do, I. L., Mor­gan, M. G. & Mor­gan, F. (2009) The tran­si­tion to sol­id-state light­ing. Pro­ceed­ings of the IEEE 97, 481–510 (2009).
6. Mil­e­va, A., Nel­son, J. H., John­ston, J., and Kam­men, D. M. (2013) Sun­Shot Solar Pow­er Reduces Costs and Uncer­tain­ty in Future Low-Car­bon Elec­tric­i­ty Sys­tems, Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy, 47 (16), 9053 – 9060.
7. Sova­cool, B. K. The polit­i­cal econ­o­my of ener­gy pover­ty: A review of key chal­lenges. Ener­gy for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment 16, 272–282 (2012).
8. SE4ALL. (2013) Glob­al Track­ing Frame­work (Unit­ed Nations Sus­tain­able Ener­gy For All, New York, NY).

Clean Energy Solutions for Borneo

Rapid eco­nom­ic growth sus­tained in South­east Asia through­out the new mil­len­ni­um has led to a surge in large-scale infra­struc­ture projects to facil­i­tate indus­tri­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and con­sump­tion. The state of Sarawak, locat­ed along the north­ern coast of the island of Bor­neo, is the poor­est and most rur­al state in Malaysia but has long been a focal point for the devel­op­ment of large-scale hydro­elec­tric pow­er. At least six dams are sched­uled to be com­plet­ed in Sarawak by 2020 as part of a high hydro-poten­tial cor­ri­dor in cen­tral Sarawak. These forests have undis­put­ed glob­al and local sig­nif­i­cance eco­log­i­cal­ly, bio­log­i­cal­ly and culturally.

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with local grass-roots renew­able project devel­op­ers and riv­er pro­tec­tion groups we have explored the poten­tial for clean ener­gy alter­na­tives in the state through an inte­gra­tion of mod­el­ing tools: (a) mod­el­ing long-term util­i­ty scale elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion alter­na­tives in East Malaysia to deter­mine trade-offs across dif­fer­ent tech­nolo­gies; (b) explor­ing the poten­tial for rur­al com­mu­ni­ties in dam-affect­ed areas to sat­is­fy ener­gy access needs using local resources; © demon­strat­ing a rapid assess­ment method for esti­mat­ing the impact of mega-projects on bio­di­ver­si­ty. Each of these stud­ies pro­vides infor­ma­tion use­ful to the dis­cus­sion of alter­na­tives and fur­thers the analy­sis of green econ­o­my costs and ben­e­fits. Our pub­lished find­ings have influ­enced pol­i­cy dis­cus­sions at the Min­is­te­r­i­al lev­el and a mora­to­ri­um against the Baram Dam was announced in 2015.

Media cov­er­age of our research and the Baram Dam Moratorium: 

The Bor­neo Project, March 21, 2016 — Fan­tas­tic new video on “Devel­op­ment with­out destruc­tion” in Sarawak.

Mongabay, Octo­ber 20, 2015 — Indige­nous anti-dam activists con­verge in Sarawak from around the globe

Sarawak Report, Sep­tem­ber 25, 2015 — BMF Press State­ment: Vic­to­ry, Mora­to­ri­um on the Baram Dam in Malaysia

The Bor­neo Post, Sep­tem­ber 27, 2015 — Small is Beau­ti­ful: The Peo­ple Matter

Media cov­er­age of our June 28, 2015 press con­fer­ence in Kuch­ing, Sarawak:

The Bor­neo Post, August 11, 2015 — Ade­nan wants SEB to light up the rur­al areas

The Malaysian Insid­er, July 31, 2015 — Ade­nan puts Baram dam on hold, agrees to lis­ten to natives’ grouses

Radio Free Sarawak, July 15, 2015 — “Sjotveit should be out”, say Sarawakians

The Malaysian Insid­er, July 14, 2015 — Stop Baleh dam ten­der until envi­ron­men­tal study scru­ti­nised, says Sarawak PKR

Mongabay​.com, July 8, 2015 — Sarawak can meet ener­gy needs with­out mega-dams: report

BFM 89.9 — The Busi­ness Sta­tion (www​.bfm​.my), Radio and online inter­view, July 3, 2015, Clean ener­gy options in East Malaysia

The Dai­ly Express — East Malaysia, June 30, 2015 — Sarawak Mega Dam Project Study

The Bor­neo Post, June 29, 2015 — Bor­neo May See the End of Mega-Dams

The Malaysian Insid­er, June 29, 2015 — Activists say Ade­nan rethink­ing mega dams pol­i­cy in Sarawak

Free Malaysia Today, June 29, 2015 — Ade­nan May Drop Mega Dam Projects

The May­lay Mail, June 29, 2015 — CM pulls the brakes on Baram dam until he goes through detailed stud­ies, group claims

Inter­na­tion­al Rivers (2014). Bet­ter Solu­tions Than Megadams for Pow­er­ing Sarawak, Study Finds. World Rivers Review Vol 29. No 2. Page 5.

Ear­li­er media cov­er­age of this work on ener­gy alter­na­tives to coal and mega-hydropow­er projects includes this report in TIME Mag­a­zine:

Feb­ru­ary 22, 2011 — Bor­neo says no to dirty energy

Recent dis­cus­sions of the rela­tion­ship between mega-dams and earth­quakes has also been receiv­ing local cov­er­age in Bor­neo: http://​www​.the​bor​neo​post​.com/​2​0​1​5​/​0​6​/​2​8​/​d​a​m​s​-​f​a​u​l​t​-​l​i​n​e​s​-​a​n​d​-​q​u​a​k​es/

Program on Conflict, Climate Change and Green Development

For a video sum­ma­riz­ing the pro­gram, click here.

The impacts of cli­mate change are already being felt across Africa, lead­ing to greater nat­ur­al resource scarci­ty, which has con­tributed to vio­lent con­flict in Dar­fur (Sudan), Mali, and Soma­lia, among oth­ers. This trend is like­ly to con­tin­ue, as Africa is pro­ject­ed to be among geo­gra­phies most severe­ly impact­ed by cli­mate change. Though the path­way from cli­mate change to greater nat­ur­al resource scarci­ty to vio­lence is not a direct one, the risks of con­flict will increase as liveli­hoods are threat­ened due to greater scarci­ty of food, water or arable land. With low­er gov­ern­ment capac­i­ties and lim­it­ed fund­ing to adapt to cli­mate change impacts, and a rel­a­tive­ly weak con­flict prevention/​resolution archi­tec­ture in place, cli­mate change is like­ly to have an increas­ing­ly impor­tant impact on future con­flicts in Africa.

This assess­ment neces­si­tates new pol­i­cy plan­ning and devel­op­ment think­ing. Despite the threats, the broad­er glob­al inter­est in cli­mate change also presents sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ties to mobi­lize new inter­est and momen­tum for pro­mot­ing green devel­op­ment in Africa. This can con­tribute to an effec­tive con­flict pre­ven­tion strat­e­gy, and can also dri­ve increased invest­ment and more diver­si­fied economies, improved gov­er­nance and devel­op­ment out­comes, and greater polit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty. This project aims to build the the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal case for a new mod­el for green devel­op­ment, which can pro­vide both polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic returns, while deliv­er­ing both cli­mate sen­si­tive and con­flict sen­si­tive development.

Our 3–5 year goal is to seed and sup­port a suc­cess­ful “green” pilot in a still to be select­ed geog­ra­phy in Africa. A suc­cess­ful pilot will require polit­i­cal buy-in and local polit­i­cal cham­pi­ons, as well as new exter­nal invest­ment to sup­port green devel­op­ment projects. This can serve as a mod­el that helps demon­strate the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic poten­tial of a green approach, the eco­nom­ic poten­tial of a green frame­work to exter­nal investors, as well as effec­tive con­flict pre­ven­tion. It is our hope that the mod­el, once proven, will be scal­able in oth­er geographies.

Lewis, Joanna

Joan­na Lewis is an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Inter­na­tion­al Affairs (STIA) at George­town Uni­ver­si­ty’s Edmund A. Walsh School of For­eign Ser­vice. Her research focus­es on ener­gy, envi­ron­ment and inno­va­tion in Chi­na, includ­ing renew­able ener­gy indus­try devel­op­ment and cli­mate change pol­i­cy. She is cur­rent­ly lead­ing a Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion-fund­ed project on Inter­na­tion­al Part­ner­ships and Tech­no­log­i­cal Leapfrog­ging in Chi­na’s Clean Ener­gy Sec­tor. Her recent book, Green Inno­va­tion in Chi­na: China’s Wind Pow­er Indus­try and the Glob­al Tran­si­tion to a Low-Car­bon Econ­o­my, was award­ed the 2014 Harold and Mar­garet Sprout Award by the Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies Asso­ci­a­tion for best book of the year in envi­ron­men­tal studies.

Dr. Lewis is cur­rent­ly a non-res­i­dent fac­ul­ty affil­i­ate with the Chi­na Ener­gy Group at Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry. She also serves as an inter­na­tion­al advis­er to the Ener­gy Foun­da­tion Chi­na Sus­tain­able Ener­gy Pro­gram in Bei­jing, and is a Lead Author of the Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change’s Fifth Assess­ment Report. She was a mem­ber of the Nation­al Acad­e­mies Com­mit­tee on U.S.-China Coop­er­a­tion on Elec­tric­i­ty from Renew­ables and has con­sult­ed for many domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions includ­ing UNIDO and USAID. She serves on the Advi­so­ry Boards of the Asia Soci­ety’s Cen­ter on U.S.-China Rela­tions and the Amer­i­can Coun­cil on Renew­able Ener­gy (ACORE)’s U.S.-China Pro­gram. Dr. Lewis was award­ed a fel­low­ship at the Woodrow Wil­son Inter­na­tion­al Cen­ter for Schol­ars from 2011–2012, and was a Nation­al Com­mit­tee on US-Chi­na Rela­tions Pub­lic Intel­lec­tu­als Pro­gram Fel­low from 2011–2013.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, Dr. Lewis was a Senior Inter­na­tion­al Fel­low at the Pew Cen­ter on Glob­al Cli­mate Change and a researcher in the Chi­na Ener­gy Group at the U.S. Depart­ment of Energy’s Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry. She served as the tech­ni­cal direc­tor for the Asia Society’s Ini­tia­tive for U.S.-China Coop­er­a­tion on Ener­gy and Cli­mate, and has also worked at the White House Coun­cil on Envi­ron­men­tal Qual­i­ty, the Nation­al Wildlife Fed­er­a­tion and the Envi­ron­men­tal Defense Fund. From 2003–2004 she was a vis­it­ing schol­ar at the Insti­tute of Ener­gy, Envi­ron­ment, and Econ­o­my at Tsinghua Uni­ver­si­ty in Bei­jing and in 2010 was a vis­it­ing fel­low at the East West Cen­ter in Hon­olu­lu, Hawaii.

Nate Hult­man, Joan­na Lewis and RAEL under­grad­u­ates in Wash­ing­ton, DC

Household Energy, Cookstoves and Health

Bio­mass fuels (wood, char­coal, dung, and agri­cul­tur­al residues) are vital to basic wel­fare and eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty in devel­op­ing nations, espe­cial­ly in sub-Saha­ran Africa (SSA), where they meet more than 90% of house­hold ener­gy needs in many nations. Com­bus­tion of bio­fu­els emit pol­lu­tants that cur­rent­ly cause over 1.6 mil­lion annu­al deaths glob­al­ly (400,000 in SSA. Because most of these deaths are among chil­dren and women, bio­mass use is direct­ly or indi­rect­ly relat­ed to mul­ti­ple Mil­len­ni­um Devel­op­ment Goals (MDGs), includ­ing envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty, reduc­ing child mor­tal­i­ty, and gen­der equity.

Tak­ing indoor air pol­lu­tion mea­sure­ments in rur­al Kenya

Mak­ing char­coal, Kenya

Women gath­er­ing fire­wood, Zombe, Kenya

The Information-Energy Nexus for Energy Access

Dis­trib­uted ener­gy and infor­ma­tion (satel­lite TV) in Prizren, Kosovo

Homes built in Juba, South Sudan show­ing the lack of infra­struc­ture asso­ci­at­ed with these new units.

Mak­ing char­coal and mud fuel blocks in Kib­era, Kenya