Problem: In the developing world, the simple, daily tasks of lighting and cooking produce costly and hazardous health and environmental consequences.
- Hypothesis: To ensure the success of innovative approaches, microfinance institutions and energy companies need a project broker to develop and foster collaboration.
- Energy Links Solution: Test viable options for clean, safe, and affordable sources of energy that not only save lives and reduce emissions, but also offer entrepreneurial opportunities for poor communities.
In the developing world, the overwhelming majority of greenhouse gases originate from two basic, daily tasks: lighting the house and cooking. About 2 billion people around the world light with kerosene (paraffin), amounting to $39 billion per year – greater than the oil production of Libya. In addition to the environmental costs incurred by this kerosene-use, the financial cost for poor households is often more than they can afford. In other words, lower income families can spend as much as 30% of their disposable income on a dangerous, inefficient and poor quality lighting source.
ACCION and the Center for Financial Inclusion are proud to sponsor a project to bring clean energy to developing countries via microfinance. In partnership with ACCION, the Wallace Global Fund, USAID and the AED FIELD Program, Energy Links, coordinated by Mr. Paul Rippey, has a double objective of contributing to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and aiding through microfinance institutions in the development, marketing, distribution and outreach of new viable products that can drastically improve livelihoods.
The Energy Links Project is designed to develop, test, refine, document, and publicize integrated approaches to financing and marketing clean energy products to large numbers of people in developing countries.
We are brokering partnerships among suppliers, sources of finance, and distribution networks. Our intention is to help other partners work together to attain massive outreach through bottom-of-the-pyramid solutions.
Energy Links is motivated by twin concerns: helping the poor in the developing world gain access to superior ways of meeting their cooking, lighting, heating and other energy needs, and mitigating the effects of climate change by helping to reduce emissions in developing countries.
Our Approach
Often, the factors that are needed to bring about massive outreach of clean energy products already exist in a country, but suppliers, financial sources, and distribution networks have dissimilar approaches and objectives that hinder collaboration. ACCION’s Energy Links Project draws on personnel with backgrounds in finance, rural development, and business who can help potential partners get together and speak the same language.
The Energy Links staff brings decades of experience working with rural and urban poor in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Our approach is commercial, while our aims are social.
Energy Links - Alternatives to Lighting: Firefly Lamps
The Firefly lamps are solar powered LED lamps that offer cleaner and cheaper alternative to kerosene lamps. Our initial work in Uganda has helped us learn how to operate in other settings. In Uganda, we carried out the following steps:
Reviewed national and regional research on energy use for lighting and firewood and identified rural households as a huge potential market for solar LED lamps.
Confirmed preliminary findings through interviews with the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, solar suppliers, and networks of village groups.
Conduced focus groups on product preferences in rural village.
Identified key partners: signed an MOU with
Barefoot Power, a leading supplier of lamps, and with Uganda Microfinance Ltd., a progressive financial institution serving the poor.
Commissioned development of illustrated educational materials to facilitate the introduction of lamps, now being translated into eight local languages.
Placed 35 sample solar-powered LED lamps with families in rural village and urban slums to test their acceptance.
Worked with Barefoot Power on marketing and distribution model, identified existing networks reaching hundreds of thousands of households.
We are now exploring projects in new countries, including Mali and India. Each intervention will draw on lessons learned from previous experience.
Energy Links - Alternatives to Cooking: Biomass Briquettes
The latest in Energy Links products is the biomass briquette, a donut-shaped solid mass of organic material used for cooking. In countries where all cooking is done over an open fire, biomass briquettes offer a less-costly, and far cleaner alternative to traditional charcoal and wood.
> Click here to learn more about making biomass briquettes
Together with the
Legacy Foundation—which has been promoting the use of briquettes, training producers, and research technological improvements worldwide for over two decades—Energy Links organized an initial five-day workshop in Uganda to train a number of community organizers on the benefits of and uses for biomass briquettes.
The purpose of this training was ultimately:
To provide individuals with ways to produce low-cost, environmentally-friendly fuel
To allow income-generating activity almost “in a box”
To promote a “planned spontaneous” replication of the know-how and of small-scale local businesses
The Center for Financial Inclusion’s Energy Links Project is made possible through a grant of $200,000 from USAID through the AED FIELD Project, a grant of $80,000 from the Wallace Global Foundation, and funding from ACCION International. Energy Links is an active participant in the World Bank/IFC Lighting Africa initiative.