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.

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.

Actualizing the Encyclical Laudato Si

RAEL has part­nered with both the Pon­tif­i­cal Acad­e­my of Sci­ences and a num­ber of oth­er groups world­wide that are engag­ing the Vat­i­can and inter­est­ed part­ners to uti­lize the dia­log around The Encycli­cal to pro­mote equi­ty, sus­tain­able devel­op­ment and cli­mate protection.

Events in this ini­tia­tive include:

RAEL and Vat­i­can pub­li­ca­tions such as:

Novem­ber 2, 2016 roundtable:

Actu­al­iz­ing the Vision of Lauda­to Si’: On Care for Our Com­mon Home

Kam­men, D. M., Alstone, P. and Ger­shen­son, D. (2014) “Ener­gy for sus­tain­able and equi­table devel­op­ment,” Sus­tain­able Human­i­ty, Sus­tain­able Nature: Our Respon­si­bil­i­ty, Pon­tif­i­cal Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, Extra Series 41, Vat­i­can City 2014 Pon­tif­i­cal Acad­e­my of Social Sci­ences, Acta 20, Vat­i­can City 2014

Videos:

Cli­mate Change, Con­sumerism, and the Pope

Innovation in Energy Storage

Ener­gy stor­age deploy­ment and inno­va­tion for the clean ener­gy transition

Noah Kit­tner^a,b, Felix Lill^b,c and Daniel M. Kam­men*^a,b,d

^a Ener­gy and Resources Group, UC Berke­ley, Berke­ley, CA, USA

^b Renew­able and Appro­pri­ate Ener­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry, UC Berke­ley, Berke­ley, CA, USA

^c Cen­ter for Dig­i­tal Tech­nol­o­gy and Man­age­ment, TU Munich, Munich, Germany

^d Gold­man School of Pub­lic Pol­i­cy, UC Berke­ley, Berke­ley, CA, USA

The Platform for Energy Access Knowledge

The Plat­form for Ener­gy Access Knowl­edge (PEAK) is a project part­ner­ship between RAEL and Pow­er for All,  a glob­al cam­paign to accel­er­ate the mar­ket-​​based growth of decen­tral­ized renew­ables as the key to achiev­ing uni­ver­sal ener­gy access. The cam­paign, estab­lished in 2014, serves as a col­lec­tive voice for busi­nesses and civ­il soci­ety focused on off-​​grid renew­able solu­tions. The research prod­ucts of this part­ner­ship will pro­vide crit­i­cal evi­dence need­ed to sup­port wide­spread adop­tion of dis­trib­uted technologies.

PEAK is an inter­ac­tive infor­ma­tion exchange plat­form designed to help aggre­gate and repack­age the best research and infor­ma­tion on ener­gy access into com­pelling data-​driv­en sto­ries for a range of tar­get audi­ences to ensure max­i­mum vis­i­bil­i­ty, usabil­i­ty and dis­cov­er­abil­i­ty of that infor­ma­tion by indi­vid­u­als, orga­ni­za­tions and com­mu­ni­ties work­ing to make ener­gy ser­vices acces­si­ble to all.

The Pow­er for All Cam­paign is direct­ed by Kristi­na Skier­ka. PEAK research is direct­ed by Dr. Rebekah Shirley, cur­rent Post­doc­tor­al Researcher at RAEL.

See PEAK’s Launch Press Release, March 2016

See PEAK prod­ucts here and look out for our web por­tal soon to come.

Recent­ly, PEAK con­duct­ed a quan­ti­ta­tive analy­sis that exam­ines the poli­cies of five high-growth mar­kets striv­ing to achieve uni­ver­sal ener­gy access — India and Bangladesh in Asia, and Kenya, Tan­za­nia and Ethiopia in Africa — and high­lights areas for pol­i­cy pri­or­i­ti­za­tion in Low Ener­gy Access coun­tries. Our research is cur­rent­ly under peer-review. See an unpub­lished, draft/​working ver­sion of our man­u­script and look out for more infor­ma­tion soon.

Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) Financing

Our lat­est Prop­er­ty Assessed Clean Ener­gy project fea­tures in Sci­ence:

http://​sci​ence​.sci​encemag​.org/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​3​5​5​/​6​3​2​8​/​9​2​1.3

Osher Lifelong Learning (OLLI): The Optimists Guide to Energy

Fac­ul­ty Profile

Low Carbon Solutions for Sustainable Islands

The Sus­tain­able Islands group at RAEL is involved in under­stand­ing the scope for renew­able ener­gy and ener­gy effi­cien­cy in the Small Island Devel­op­ing State (SIDS) con­text. We are involved in a num­ber of projects that involve fea­si­bil­i­ty analy­sis, resource opti­miza­tion and ener­gy sys­tem mod­el­ling. We con­duct assess­ments and build deci­sion sup­port tools for pol­i­cy mak­ers and indi­vid­u­als — to sup­port the build out of sus­tain­able, low car­bon island economies. Some of our past projects are list­ed here:

Ener­gy Sec­tor Trends in the Caribbean

Pro­fes­sor Kam­men and grad­u­ate stu­dent Rebekah Shirley recent­ly pub­lished an arti­cle on the his­to­ry of ener­gy sec­tor devel­op­ment in the Caribbean. The paper also looks at a num­ber of cur­rent renew­able ener­gy projects in the region, per­forms cost ben­e­fit analy­sis and dis­cuss­es oppor­tu­ni­ties for future renew­able pen­e­tra­tion in the region. Our work is high­light­ed in Nature Cli­mate Change.

Shirley, R. and Kam­men, D. (2012). Renew­able ener­gy sec­tor devel­op­ment in the Caribbean: Cur­rent trends and lessons from his­to­ry. Ener­gy Pol­i­cy. Vol­ume 57, June 2013, Pages 244–252

Ener­gy Effi­cient Low Income Hous­ing, French Polynesia

The RAEL Sus­tain­able Islands group was invit­ed to col­lab­o­rate with researchers from the UC Berke­ley Gump Sta­tion in Moorea and the Poly­ne­sian Hous­ing Office to con­duct a inte­grat­ed study on the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of low income hous­ing pro­to­types based on mate­ri­als and ther­mal per­for­mance. Our team con­tributed the car­bon foot­print assess­ment to this study. Check out the final report above.

Car­bon Foot­prints and Green-Job Poten­tial in the USVI

Pro­fes­sor Kam­men and grad­u­ate stu­dent Rebekah Shirley were invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the NREL Ener­gy Devel­op­ment in Island Nations Ini­tia­tive, launched in St. Thomas, USVI in 2010. Since then they have col­lab­o­rat­ed with NREL and var­i­ous agen­cies in the ter­ri­to­ry to devel­op a house­hold car­bon cal­cu­la­tor and green jobs esti­ma­tor used as tools in pub­lic edu­ca­tion and deci­sion mak­ing. Kam­men and Shirley also col­lab­o­rat­ed with NREL and the OAS to pre­pare a sur­vey of the sta­tus of Ener­gy Pol­i­cy in var­i­ous Caribbean Islands.

Shirley, R., Jones, C. and Kam­men, D. (2012). A house­hold car­bon foot­print cal­cu­la­tor for islands: Case study of the Unit­ed States Vir­gin Islands. Eco­log­i­cal Eco­nom­ics. Vol­ume 80, August 2012, Pages 8–14

U.S. DOE (2011). Ener­gy Pol­i­cy and Sec­tor Analy­sis in the Caribbean 2010 — 2011.

Shirley, R. and Kam­men, D. (2012). Esti­mat­ing the Poten­tial Impact of Renew­able Ener­gy on the Caribbean Job Sec­tor. RAEL Report 2012.1.

Green Jobs in Grenada

RAEL col­lab­o­rat­ed with the UN Depart­ment of Eco­nom­ic and Social Affairs (DESA) on a road map for sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth in Grena­da. Pro­fes­sor Kam­men and grad­u­ate stu­dent Rebekah Shirley pre­pared a chap­ter on green job poten­tial while ERG alum­ni Dan Prull pre­pared a chap­ter on future ener­gy options. The report was pub­lished for the Rio +20 Sum­mit.

UN DESA (2012). Road Map on Build­ing a Green Econ­o­my for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment in Car­ri­a­cou and Petite Mar­tinique, Grena­da.

Sustainability at the CLEW Nexus in Latin America

Emerg­ing economies will account for more than 90 per­cent of new ener­gy-gen­er­a­tion capac­i­ty by 2035, and Latin Amer­i­ca is no excep­tion to this trend. In the last 40 years, the region’s pri­ma­ry ener­gy demand has more than dou­bled. In a glob­al envi­ron­ment of increas­ing­ly volatile fuel prices, emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies, and cli­mate-change impacts, the con­tin­ued increase in demand presents chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties to Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean. To man­age the next phase of devel­op­ment, the region’s gov­ern­ments will need to devel­op new ener­gy sources and pay more atten­tion to sustainability.

Kam­men and stu­dents (Juan Pablo Car­val­lo, Diego Ponce de Leon Bari­do and Rebekah Shirley) dis­cussed strate­gies to design and eval­u­ate pro­grams for man­ag­ing ener­gy and oth­er resources in the region both as a speak­er pan­el for the Cen­ter for Latin Amer­i­can Stud­ies at UC Berke­ley and in a new pub­li­ca­tion on inte­grat­ed tools for build­ing low-car­bon economies in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

Our researchers also delve into the spe­cif­ic case study of Nicaragua along with Ful­bright Nexus Fel­lows 2012–2013. This group explored three case stud­ies at the nation­al, region­al and com­mu­ni­ty lev­els in Nicaragua: bread­fruit and food inse­cu­ri­ty; rain­wa­ter har­vest­ing on the Pacif­ic coast; and, bio-ener­gy pro­duc­tion from agri­cul­tur­al waste. This research shows the increas­ing need to see the cli­mate, land, ener­gy, and water (CLEW) sec­tors as inter­re­lat­ed, and to proac­tive­ly plan pol­i­cy with these inter­con­nec­tions in mind. Nicaragua’s oppor­tu­ni­ties for sus­tain­able devel­op­ment with­in a CLEW nexus frame­work are suf­fi­cient­ly large that the coun­try could well become an exam­ple of wise nat­ur­al resource use for Latin Amer­i­ca and the world.

Press release on our work with bio­gas digesters in Mexico: 

Fusion, March 24, 2014. These stu­dents have bold ideas on how to make renew­able ener­gy more acces­si­ble. 

Arti­cle, full video and pho­tos from our pan­el dis­cus­sion with CLAS:

Cen­ter for Latin Amer­i­can Stud­ies. Feb­ru­ary 10, 2014. Sus­tain­able Ener­gy Sys­tems in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean. 

Read more about our involve­ment in the Ful­bright Region­al Net­work for Applied Research (NEXUS) Pro­gram 2012–2013.