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.

Gordon Bauer

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.

Guangzhi Yin

Guangzhi is a PhD stu­dent in Ener­gy Sys­tems Analy­sis at Tsinghua Uni­ver­si­ty.  He has bach­e­lor’s degrees in Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing and in Man­age­ment from Tsinghua Uni­ver­si­ty.  He has been a vis­it­ing stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bath and at the Israel Insti­tute of Technology.

His work is focused on the role of car­bon pric­ing and renew­able ener­gy deploy­ment in China.

Guangzhi will be a vis­it­ing stu­dent at RAEL from Octo­ber 2019- July 2020.

 Cur­rent posi­tion:

Ph.D stu­dent in Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing, Tsinghua University.

Dongran Liu

Don­gran Liu is a doc­tor­al stu­dent in the School of Eco­nom­ic and Man­age­ment at North Chi­na Elec­tric Pow­er Uni­ver­si­ty.  She has research inter­ests in ener­gy mar­kets, opti­miza­tion and risk man­age­ment, and dis­trib­uted ener­gy resource planning.

At RAEL she is work­ing on mod­el­ing the future of the Chi­nese elec­tric pow­er sys­tem using SWITCH.  She is part of a part­ner­ship with Euro­pean ener­gy stor­age asso­ci­a­tions to exam­ine the mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties and car­bon ben­e­fits of the instal­la­tion of a range of ener­gy stor­age technologies.

She will be a vis­it­ing stu­dent in RAEL from Octo­ber 2019 — August 2020.

Cur­rent posi­tion:

PhD stu­dent, North Chi­na Elec­tric Pow­er University

Carrara, Samuel

Samuel Car­rara holds a Mas­ter Degree cum laude in Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing (Major: Ener­gy and Mechan­i­cal Plants) and a PhD in Ener­gy and Envi­ron­men­tal Tech­nolo­gies, both from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Berg­amo.
After work­ing as an engi­neer in the gas tur­bine field, he is now junior researcher at FEEM. His main research inter­ests include renew­able ener­gies, sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, ener­gy poli­cies, cli­mate and ener­gy eco­nom­ics, advanced ener­gy systems.

Ameli, Nadia

For my web­site, click here.

I am cur­rent­ly work­ing as Senior Researcher Asso­ciate at UCL Insti­tute for Sus­tain­able Resources  where I lead the finance research area of the GREEN-WIN project. I focus on cli­mate and sus­tain­abil­i­ty finance poli­cies and gov­er­nance arrange­ments in order to con­tribute to over­com­ing finan­cial bar­ri­ers to mit­i­ga­tion and adaptation.

Before join­ing UCL, I worked for the OECD (Green Growth Unit, Eco­nom­ics Depart­ment) as Marie-Curie Fel­low, a two-year research grant fund­ed by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion. At the OECD I analysed the effec­tive­ness of ener­gy poli­cies to boost ener­gy invest­ments in Europe. Pri­or to that, I worked for research cen­ters (FEEM and ICCG) and insti­tu­tions, includ­ing the Ital­ian Asso­ci­a­tion Ener­gy Eco­nom­ics, where I was respon­si­ble for the Eco­nom­ic area (2009–2013).

Dur­ing my PhD, I was vis­it­ing schol­ar at the Renew­able and Appro­pri­ate Ener­gy Lab, UC Berke­ley under the super­vi­sion of Prof. Daniel Kam­men (2010–2011). I have worked on a range of nov­el ways to over­come the first-invest­ment costs of ener­gy effi­cien­cy and renew­able energy.

I got my PhD in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion at Poly­tech­nic Uni­ver­si­ty of Marche and Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley (co-tutor­ship of doc­tor­al the­sis) with a focus on ener­gy financ­ing pol­i­cy. My research inter­ests include renew­able and ener­gy effi­cien­cy deploy­ment, cli­mate finance and ener­gy pol­i­cy.

Shiraishi, Kenji

Ken­ji is a Ph.D. stu­dent with the Gold­man School of Pub­lic Pol­i­cy and a researcher in the Renew­able and Appro­pri­ate Ener­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry. His cur­rent research inter­ests include empir­i­cal stud­ies and quan­ti­ta­tive mod­el­ing on the effec­tive­ness of renew­able ener­gy poli­cies in devel­op­ing and devel­oped coun­tries for effec­tive deci­sion mak­ing. He is also inter­est­ed in devel­op­ing bet­ter tools for quan­ti­ta­tive assess­ment of the mul­ti­ple ben­e­fits of cli­mate poli­cies such as ener­gy access, job cre­ation, and tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment and transfer.

Ken­ji has more than 10 years of pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ences in the area of Japan’s and inter­na­tion­al envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies as a Deputy Direc­tor for Mar­ket-based Cli­mate Pol­i­cy of the Japan­ese Min­istry of the Envi­ron­ment, a Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of the Glob­al Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre Foun­da­tion, etc. For exam­ple, he has spear­head­ed and man­aged var­i­ous gov­ern­ment ener­gy incen­tive pro­grams for fund­ing ener­gy effi­cient and renew­able ener­gy projects in Japan as well as in South­east Asia and Africa under the Joint Cred­it­ing Mech­a­nism, bilat­er­al coop­er­a­tion scheme between 14 coun­tries and Japan­ese Gov­ern­ment. He has also ini­ti­at­ed and led inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion ini­tia­tives on envi­ron­men­tal pol­i­cy plan­ning, capac­i­ty build­ing, and tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer focused on low-car­bon city devel­op­ment with Japan­ese munic­i­pal­i­ties for Ho Chi Minh City (Viet­nam), Vien­tiane (Lao PDR), and oth­er cities. He has nego­ti­at­ed at COP 18 and 19 of the UNFCCC as an inter­na­tion­al nego­tia­tor of the Japan­ese del­e­ga­tion on tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer. Out­side of envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies, he is a cre­ator and a lead­ing train­er of pol­i­cy analy­sis train­ing cours­es for Japan­ese pol­i­cy professionals.

He holds an MPP with the Smolen­sky Prize (the Best Advanced Pol­i­cy Analy­sis (master’s the­sis)) from UC Berke­ley, for which Dan Kam­men was his APA advi­sor.  Ken­ji has a MEng and a BEng in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Uni­ver­si­ty of Tokyo.

The Eco-Block Project

Man­age­ment team: Har­ri­son Frak­er (Co-PI), Daniel Kam­men (PI), Antho­ny Nahas (Project Consultant)

Research Moti­va­tion

1. How to make mil­lions of old, inef­fi­cient homes part of a clean-air, low-car­bon & low resource-use future?
2. How can block-scale solu­tions enable bet­ter cli­mate-change adap­ta­tion & response strate­gies than indi­vid­ual, home solutions?
3. How do you get block-scale inhab­i­tant buy-in, and sup­port from util­i­ties, stage agen­cies and the clean­tech sector?

Hypoth­e­sis:

• The block-scale is con­sid­er­ably more effi­cient & cost-effec­tive than the indi­vid­ual house-scale in achiev­ing resource effi­cien­cies, and takes advan­tage of emerg­ing ener­gy gen­er­a­tion leg­is­la­tion and infor­ma­tion systems.

Pre­sump­tion:

• The block-scale aggre­gates the flows across mul­ti­ple units, enabling greater effi­cien­cies and economies of scale

EcoBlock Project:

• Test & bench­mark results in real-time, with true case-con­trol capac­i­ty via a sister-block.

Urban Block Re-Purposing

Design Objec­tive: Social & Tech­no­log­i­cal POV 

1. peo­ple + ener­gy + water + waste­water ==>       low­er­ing resource end-use in the built environment

1. design & imple­ment a pilot around neigh­bor­hood engagement
2. demon­strate effi­cient, func­tion­ing block-scale ener­gy, water & waste­water treat­ment-and-reuse plat­form & retro­fit process
3. pro­to­type & blue­print to repli­cate, improve & scale-up.

Design ele­ments for resource-use efficiencies: 

1. Block-scale retro­fit: opti­mized inte­gra­tion & operation
2. com­mu­nal solar & smart grid è elec­tric­i­ty, stor­age & EVs
3. com­mu­nal waste re-use è bio-methane for cook­ing load, irri­ga­tion & com­post for local, sus­tain­able food systems
4. Home-scale retro­fit: whole-house ener­gy + water solutions
5. weath­er­iza­tion, EE appli­ances + light­ing, smart controls
6. grey-water re-use + water-con­serv­ing fixtures
7. Insti­tu­tion­al path­ways: reg­u­la­to­ry maneu­ver­ing & financing

Urban Block Re-Purposing

Elec­tric­i­ty

Water

Fund­ing Needs

• $8M over two/​three years, from mul­ti­ple fund­ing sources (cor­po­rate, phil­an­thropic, etc.):

- Micro­grid + stor­age $1.5 mil­lion /​ Waste-water $.9 mil­lion /​ Water $.3 mil­lion /​ Contingency$.3 million

Moti­va­tions:

• Rad­i­cal­ly improve build­ing per­for­mance (energy+water) as urban adap­tive response to cli­mate change
• Social response & inte­gra­tion of community’s wishes
• Legal & reg­u­la­to­ry path­ways & advocacy
• Finan­cial inno­va­tions based on ‘avoid­ed costs’
• New ways to com­mer­cial­ize green water sys­tems, clean ener­gy tech­nolo­gies, microgrid–storage, DR, sys­tems con­trols, FDD, behav­ior ana­lyt­ics, etc.

Upcom­ing UCTV film to fea­ture the EcoBlock, with com­ments from:

Tim Schae­fer | Deputy Trea­sur­er, Pub­lic Finance | Office of Cal­i­for­nia State Trea­sur­er John Chi­ang |