In the News

Countries facing electricity access challenges today have more options and potential electrification pathways than ever before, but the initial cost of connecting new rural customers remains an expensive proposition. This brief explores the successful rural electrification experiences of seven case countries—Brazil, Chile, Laos, Peru, South Africa, Thailand, and Tunisia—looking specifically at the cost of connections and how subsidies and public financing were deployed to address the affordability challenge and facilitate energy access.

Technologies like geospatial imagery, machine learning and affordable batteries are generating ever more innovative ways to target customers with off-grid energy solutions. But according to analysts at the Duke University Energy Access Project, public policy is struggling to keep up with these rapid-fire developments, leaving vast amounts of human capacity and productivity untapped. They explore how to address this disconnect between government and the private sector.

The Energy Access Project at Duke in collaboration with the Inter-American Development Bank and Sustainable Energy For All, have developed an Energy Access Dividend for Haiti and Honduras with the aim of quantifying the electrification benefits forgone over a country’s business-as-usual electrification transition.

EAP’s team members Jonathan Phillips, Rob Fetter and Rajah Saparapa presented their research on the True Cost of Solar Tariffs in East Africa to the Community of Champions. The webinar was organized by GOGLA on the Socioeconomic Benefits of Off-Grid Solar: Focus on Productive Uses.
You can access the webinar slides and recordings below

“Nigeria is the poster child on how power access, especially in the business area, is just such a mega-constraint to growth,” EAP’s Jonathan Phillips told NPR in a discussion of the importance of electricity to the tech industry.

The 4th Annual Meeting of the Sustainable Energy Transitions Initiative took place on May 15-17, 2019 in Santiago, Chile.

This brief provides a snapshot of the relevant demand-stimulating lessons learned in the off-grid space as well as those that have been pursued by governments and utilities in the past.

After a joint convening between Duke’s Energy Access Project and Oxfam, researchers and practitioners have compiled the most pressing and understudied questions that address the complex relationship between electricity access, productive end uses of electricity, and local economic development.