Spotlight Kampala: Illuminating Energy Inequities in Informal Urban Communities

Spot­light Kam­pala is a mul­ti-insti­tu­tion­al research col­lab­o­ra­tion of uni­ver­si­ties and com­mu­ni­ty advo­cates that aims to shed light on the inequities faced by infor­mal urban com­mu­ni­ties in access­ing and uti­liz­ing elec­tric­i­ty. Our data pro­vides impor­tant base­line sta­tis­tics on met­rics of access like access rates, afford­abil­i­ty, sup­ply reli­a­bil­i­ty and qual­i­ty as well as an under­stand­ing of how com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers per­ceive and nav­i­gate bar­ri­ers to access. We aim not only to pro­vide sum­ma­ry sta­tis­tics, but to ground these learn­ings in the dai­ly lived expe­ri­ence of Kampala’s infor­mal res­i­dents. Com­mu­ni­ty par­tic­i­pa­tion is a core objec­tive of the work, with com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers involved in each step of research design, exe­cu­tion, and dis­sem­i­na­tion. The project also focus­es heav­i­ly on work­ing close­ly with local stake­hold­ers like the Gov­ern­ment of Ugan­da’s Min­istry of Ener­gy and Min­er­al Devel­op­ment, the util­i­ty Umeme Lim­it­ed, and com­mu­ni­ty-based orga­ni­za­tion like ACTo­geth­er Ugan­da and the Nation­al Slum Dwellers Fed­er­a­tion of Uganda.

For more infor­ma­tion and con­tact with the project team, vis­it the Spot­light Kam­pala web­site.

Xi Xi

Xi Xi is a Master’s stu­dent for the Ener­gy Resource group. Xi Xi uses inter­dis­ci­pli­nary meth­ods such as quan­ti­ta­tive mod­el­ing tech­niques and pol­i­cy analy­ses to assess impacts on emis­sions, ener­gy use, and oth­er socio-eco­nom­ic indi­ca­tors. Xi Xi looks for­ward to apply­ing her knowl­edge in the con­text of inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment. Xi Xi would also like to study how devel­op­ing coun­tries may be affect­ed by or ben­e­fit from ten­sions between Chi­na and the West relat­ed to China’s emerg­ing role in inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment and inter­na­tion­al cli­mate politics.

In RAEl she is research­ing US-Chi­na cli­mate pol­i­cy, decar­boniza­tion in Africa, and Chi­na’s role in Africa, among oth­er topics.

Pri­or to join­ing ERG, Xi Xi earned a BA from Welles­ley Col­lege. Xi Xi has worked for the Insti­tute for Glob­al Decar­boniza­tion Progress (iGDP), Abt, and the Mass­a­chu­setts Clean Ener­gy Cen­ter (Mass­CEC).

Xi Xi also enjoys trav­el­ing in their free time.

Kersey, Jess

Jess Kersey is a fourth-year PhD stu­dent broad­ly inter­est­ed in tech­nol­o­gy, reg­u­la­tion, and pol­i­cy to improve ener­gy access and cli­mate adap­ta­tion efforts across mul­ti­ple geo­gra­phies includ­ing East Africa, Latin Amer­i­ca, and island nations. Jess is also a research affil­i­ate of the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab and con­sults with ESMAP, the Asian Devel­op­ment Bank, and the Glob­al Ener­gy Alliance for Peo­ple and Plan­et.

Her cur­rent work focus­es on decon­struct­ing urban/​binary spa­tial cat­e­go­riza­tions and high­light­ing how exam­in­ing ener­gy pover­ty with greater spa­tial nuance reveals access bar­ri­ers for the grow­ing pop­u­la­tions in infor­mal and/​or peri-urban com­mu­ni­ties. She leads the Spot­light Kam­pala project, which is a mul­ti-stake­hold­er research part­ner­ship to under­stand ener­gy access afford­abil­i­ty, safe­ty, for­mal­i­ty, reli­a­bil­i­ty, and qual­i­ty in infor­mal settlements.

Jess holds dual bachelor’s degrees in chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing and polit­i­cal sci­ence from Vir­ginia Tech. She pre­vi­ous­ly worked as an ener­gy engi­neer with AECOM’s Ener­gy busi­ness line pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal, project man­age­ment, and busi­ness devel­op­ment sup­port for renew­able ener­gy, ener­gy effi­cien­cy, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty projects. She has a diverse engi­neer­ing back­ground which includes expe­ri­ence in ener­gy, con­struc­tion man­age­ment, and dis­as­ter relief both domes­ti­cal­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly includ­ing work in Haiti, Pana­ma, El Sal­vador, the US Vir­gin Islands, and Iraq.

Sam Miles

Sam Miles is a Ph.D. stu­dent in the Ener­gy and Resources Group, and in the Renew­able and Appro­pri­ate Ener­gy Lab at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berkeley.

His research focus is at the inter­sec­tion of the scal­a­bil­i­ty chal­lenge for elec­tric­i­ty mini-grids and the socio-eco­nom­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics of urban­iza­tion in Africa, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the arti­sans and entre­pre­neurs who con­sti­tute the ‘pro­duc­tive’ users of such ener­gy sys­tems. He will engage with these ques­tions as an INFEWS (Inno­va­tions at the Nexus of Food, Ener­gy, and Water Sys­tems) NSF scholar.

Pre­vi­ous to life at ERG, Sam worked as a free­lance writer cov­er­ing tech­nol­o­gy in emerg­ing mar­kets, an edu­ca­tor at the African Lead­er­ship Uni­ver­si­ty in Mau­ri­tius, and as an inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment con­sul­tant based in West Africa. He holds an MA in Inter­na­tion­al Ener­gy from Sci­ences Po — Paris and a BA in Ethics, Pol­i­tics, and Eco­nom­ics from Yale.

Annelise Gill-Wiehl

At ERG Annelise has con­tin­ued the study of com­mu­ni­ty ener­gy solu­tions, with both cook­ing and com­mu­ni­ty exten­sion ser­vices focal areas for her ana­lyt­ic and field studies.

Annelise Gill-Wiehl stud­ied envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer­ing and inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame.  There, she worked with the Keough School of Glob­al Affairs’ Asso­ciate Dean for Pol­i­cy and Prac­tice, Sara Siev­ers, through the Kel­logg Inter­na­tion­al Schol­ars Pro­gram. They inves­ti­gat­ed how to incor­po­rate the pref­er­en­tial option for the poor into pol­i­cy. Gill-Wiehl’s own research inves­ti­gates ener­gy infra­struc­ture and the bar­ri­ers to tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion. Gill-Wiehl and Pro­fes­sor Siev­ers pilot­ed a Com­mu­ni­ty Tech­nol­o­gy Pro­gram in Shi­rati, Tan­za­nia through a Kel­logg Research Grant.

While an under­grad­u­ate she interned for the Foun­da­tion of Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment in Masa­ka, Ugan­da. Addi­tion­al­ly, Gill-Wiehl con­duct­ed rough­ly 200 house­hold ener­gy sur­veys through an Expe­ri­enc­ing the World Fel­low­ship to inves­ti­gate ener­gy infra­struc­ture in Shi­rati. Her research inter­ests are at the inter­sec­tion of engi­neer­ing and pol­i­cy in the East African con­text. She hopes to pur­sue a PhD to fur­ther inves­ti­gate these issues.

The­sis Title: Pilot of Com­mu­ni­ty Tech­nol­o­gy Work­ers in Shi­rati, Tanzania

Jess Carney

Jess Car­ney is inter­est­ed in under­stand­ing how sus­tain­able ener­gy inte­gra­tion impacts pow­er grids and elec­tric­i­ty mar­kets. She received her under­grad­u­ate degree at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty in 2018, where she majored in Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence and minored in Applied Math­e­mat­ics and Sta­tis­tics. She has held intern­ships at the Inde­pen­dent Sys­tem Oper­a­tor or New Eng­land (ISO-NE), study­ing envi­ron­men­tal pol­i­cy and its effect on car­bon emis­sions and ener­gy prices, and at the Ver­mont Elec­tric Pow­er Com­pa­ny (VELCO), ana­lyz­ing the impact of high renew­able pen­e­tra­tion on sys­tem sta­bil­i­ty and inte­grat­ing state renew­able goals into trans­mis­sion plan­ning procedures.

She has wide-rang­ing inter­ests that include renew­able ener­gy inte­gra­tion, grid sta­bil­i­ty, ener­gy access, and ener­gy lit­er­a­cy and education.

Nia Novella Jones

A recent grad­u­ate of North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty with a B.S. in Indus­tri­al Engi­neer­ing with minor in Law & Pub­lic Policy.

I intend to research the inter­sec­tion of renew­able ener­gy tech­nol­o­gy, edu­ca­tion, and specif­i­cal­ly prison edu­ca­tion pro­grams focused on STEM. Ulti­mate­ly, my goal is to work with for­mal­ly incar­cer­at­ed cit­i­zens as they pre­pare for re-entry into soci­ety. I aspire to work with renew­able ener­gy projects in Africa to ful­fill my goal as devel­op­ing into a World Class “Ener­gy” Engineer.

Raghavan, Shuba

Shu­ba is the co-direc­tor of the Cal­i­for­nia Ener­gy Com­mis­sion spon­sored project

” Engag­ing Com­mu­ni­ties in the Design of  Sus­tain­able Ener­gy and Local­ized Futures  (SELF)”

Among her many pub­li­ca­tions are a num­ber that address­es the ener­gy-access-afford­abil­i­ty-cli­mate nexus, including:

1. The Cal­i­for­nia Demand Response: Poten­tial Study, Phase 3; Bri­an F.Gerke,Giulia Gallo,Sarah J. Smith, Jingjing Liu, Peter Alstone, Shu­ba V. Ragha­van, Peter Schwartz, Mary Ann Piette, Rongx­in Yin and Sofia Stensson. 
2. Trans­lat­ing cli­mate change and heat­ing sys­tem elec­tri­fi­ca­tion impacts on build­ing ener­gy use to future green­house gas emis­sions and elec­tric grid capac­i­ty require­ments in Cal­i­for­nia; Bri­an Tar­ro­ja, Feli­cia Chi­ang, Amir AghaK­ouchak, Scott Samuelsen, Shu­ba V. Ragha­van, Max Wei, Kaiyu Sunand Tianzhen Hong, Applied Ener­gy, 2018, vol. 225, issue C, 522–534
3. Build­ing a Health­i­er and More Robust Future: 2050 Low-Car­bon Ener­gy Sce­nar­ios for Cal­i­for­nia. Cal­i­for­nia Ener­gy Com­mis­sion. Pri­ma­ry Authors: Max Wei, Shu­ba Ragha­van, Patri­cia Hidal­go-Gon­za­lez, Con­tribut­ing Authors: Rodri­go Hen­riquez Auba, Dev Mill­stein, Madi­son Hof­fack­er, Rebec­ca Her­nan­dez, Eleonara Ruffi­ni, Bri­an Tar­ro­ja, Amir Agha Kouchak, Josi­ah John­ston, Daniel Kam­men, Julia Szi­nai, Col­in Shep­ard, Anand Gopal, Kaiyu Sun, Tianzhen Hong, and Florin-Langer James. Pub­li­ca­tion Num­ber: CEC-500‑2019-033; March 2019
4. Path­ways to Decar­bonize Res­i­den­tial Water Heat­ing in Cal­i­for­nia, Shu­ba V Ragha­van, Max Wei, Daniel Kam­men, Ener­gy Pol­i­cy 109 (2017) 441–451
5. Adop­tion of Solar Home Light­ing Sys­tems in India: What might we learn from Kar­nata­ka? Har­ish, Iychet­ti­ra, Ragha­van, Kan­d­likar, Ener­gy Pol­i­cy, Vol 62, Novem­ber 2013, pp ‑697–706.
6. Assess­ing the impact of the tran­si­tion to Light Emit­ting Diodes based solar light­ing sys­tems in India, San­tosh Har­ish, Shu­ba V Ragha­van, Milind Kan­d­likar, Gireesh Shri­mali, Ener­gy for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment, Vol­ume 17, Issue 4, August 2013, pp. 363–370.

A course in Climate Justice

For the UC Berke­ley Cli­mate Jus­tice course, syl­labus, click here.

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.