In the News

In a Brookings blog post, Duke University Energy Access staff write about a three-year study of more than 77,500 papers on energy access and the internationally agreed on Sustainable Development Goals. Marc Jeuland of Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy and Energy Access Project Director Jonathan Phillips will present findings from this work in Lisbon, Portugal, at the fourth Sustainable Energy for All forum May 2-3.

The Hult Prize, the world’s largest social entrepreneurship competition for college students, advertises itself as the “Nobel Prize for social entrepreneurs.” Now a Duke team—mPower—is heading to the Hult finals with an idea to address India’s shortage of agricultural cold storage solutions by offering a novel storage and distribution network that compensates farmers and simplifies the supply chain. To get here, team member Harshvardhan Sanghi, a Duke mechanical engineering major, told Duke Today that “we leveraged our resources at Duke, including the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative as well as the newly launched Energy Access Project. Our network of mentors helped us flesh out minute details within our business model, clarify logistics, and improve the viability of our proposed technology.”

Energy has been called the “golden thread” connecting economic growth, social equity, and environmental sustainability—but what do we know about the drivers and impacts of energy transitions in low- and middle-income countries? To answer this question, the Sustainable Energy Transitions Initiative, the Duke University Energy Access Project and Environment for Development, characterized nearly 80,000 academic articles related to the social dimensions of energy and development to produce a systematic, broad in coverage, and replicable “energy services” framework. This new research highlights how changes in energy access and technology most clearly affect outcomes in 9 of the 17 U.N. Sustainable Development Goals and it defines the critical research knowledge gaps to help policy makers better understand how energy relates to end users’ well-being.

Some of the leading lights from the energy access community convened in Washington, D.C., February 23 for the launch of Duke University’s Energy Access Project. As the new project assembles its agenda, leaders from business, government, and civil society weighed in on the market and policy challenges facing the billions of people lacking access to modern energy. Here’s some of what we heard.

The Energy Access Project invites proposals for student internships or research projects in Summer 2018 related to energy access in less-developed countries, with a focus on either modern technologies and fuels for cooking, or access to reliable, affordable, safe, and sustainable electricity. Undergraduate and graduate students at Duke University who are currently enrolled, and will be enrolled full-time at Duke in Fall 2018, are eligible to apply for up to $5,000. Apply by 5 p.m., Thursday March 8.

Energy Access Project Faculty Director Subhrendu Pattanayak appears on the Policy 360 podcast to discuss the project. It’s estimated that 1.2 billion people around the world live without electricity, while another billion have only limited access to electricity. Billions more lack access to clean fuel and technology for cooking. Now, there’s an exciting new endeavor designed to address the energy needs of the world’s poor. The Energy Access Project aims to bring an interdisciplinary approach to one of the world’s most vexing issues.

Leaders from business, government, civil society and academia came together in Washington, D.C., on February 23 to explore one of the world’s most pressing challenges at Accelerating Global Energy Access, the formal introduction to Duke University’s Energy Access Project. Nearly a third of humanity lacks reliable electricity and three billion people are without clean fuels and technologies for cooking. At the event, Energy Access Project staff and sector leaders examined ways to tackle the energy access challenge in conversation on the use of renewables, so-called last mile electrification, and financing to support viable pathways to sustainable and modern energy solutions for all.

The White House recently announced a new tariff and quota regime that attaches a 30 percent tariff to solar cells and modules that declines over time. The decision, which is expected to increase the price of electricity from new United States solar projects, has spurred a lively debate in the U.S. around whether these trade barriers are good or bad for businesses and workers, and to what extent cost increases will soften solar demand in the U.S. On the other side of the globe, Energy Access Project staff Jonathan Phillips and Hannah Girardeau write in Devex, that there is a similar debate roiling around the treatment of solar panels and related equipment in trade policy. In the U.S., shifting tariff policy will drive changes in the sources of power generation. But for energy consumers across sub-Saharan Africa, the stakes are much higher. The debate over import tariffs there may decide whether millions of people will be able to gain access to electricity at all.

A Bass Connections team that includes the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions T. Robert Fetter took top honors for work using machine learning and visual object identification to assess electricity access at the 2018 Duke Research Computing Symposium on January 25.