Operational Handbook

The off-grid solar (OGS) sector has the potential to increase universal access to energy, alleviate poverty, support economic development, and increase gender equality. Nevertheless, although considerable advances have been made in closing gaps in access to energy, women’s presence in the sector as consumers and active participants in OGS value chains remains limited. By adopting inclusive practices, governments, businesses, stakeholders, and market actors can unleash significant economic opportunities and hasten progress toward empowerment and equality and given the concessional investments that have been made in the sector, appropriate projects are an opportunity to pioneer dynamic, innovative ways to approach gender equality. This Gender Equality and Off-Grid Solar Operational Handbook responds to sectoral needs by providing operational guidance based on case studies demonstrating promising approaches to closing gender gaps in the OGS sector. The primary objective of the operational handbook is to increase the focus on off-grid energy and women’s role in it at the consumer and enterprise levels. It seeks to increase productive uses of energy with a focus on women as workers in the sector, as farmers, and as business owners. It provides a practical overview of the OGS sector observed through an inclusive lens and highlights flagship projects, promising practices, and lessons learned from practitioners worldwide

A Case Study of a Success Story

The Global Facility on Mini Grids of the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) hired Castalia to study the regulation of mini grids in six jurisdictions in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia (Kenya, Tanzania, and Nigeria; and Bangladesh, Cambodia, and the state of Uttar Pradesh in India). The study’s objective is to understand what regulatory settings governments may adopt to scale up electrification through private development of mini grids, drawing on the experience of these six jurisdictions; provide technical assistance to four countries that want to further develop their mini grids framework; and disseminate findings and recommendations globally to inform successful mini grids regulation. The study focuses on mini grids defined as small, privately-owned and operated systems with generation of up to 10 megawatts (MW) capacity and a network that distributes power to several customers. The study includes small mini grids of less than 1 kilowatt (kW) capacity, also known as ‘micro’ or ‘pico’ grids. The six case studies are intended to be combined in one report. The report is to provide a cross-country comparison of these topics: it examines side by side how each of the countries studied have responded to a specific regulatory question, and presents a decision-tree approach to developing regulatory frameworks for mini grids. This case study is based on in-depth interviews with a number of key stakeholders in Cambodia, conducted during and after a research trip in August 2017. We supplemented the insights gained from these interviews with extensive background research. Several experts in the Cambodia context and mini grids more broadly reviewed this case study for accuracy and clarity, and we have incorporated their comments while retaining a neutral fact-based position

Sustaining the Momentum

Regulatory Indicators for Sustainable Energy (RISE) 2020 monitors and assesses policy and regulatory support for sustainable energy to promote energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy while expanding access to electricity and clean cooking fuels. Marshalling policy data from well before the onset of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic through December 2019, RISE 2020 reviews what governments have done to create an enabling environment for sustainable energy

A Manual for Experts and City Officials

TRACE 2.0 incorporates almost 100 recommendations for energy interventions. Following requests from municipal officials for more detailed technical and financial assessment, this version provides simple customizable models for each intervention. Through intervention calculators, users can quickly calculate costs and benefits for each recommendation. The manual is a practical guide for city officials and energy experts. TRACE 2.0 software and manual are available at https://esmap.org/TRACE. ESMAP first developed TRACE in 2008 to help city officials quickly identify energy efficiency performance gaps and opportunities in various public sectors including lighting, water/wastewater, buildings, transportation, solid waste, and power/heating. It guides users through data collection and sector prioritization—considering constraints such as technical capacity and finance—to generate recommendations to improve cities’ energy efficiency. TRACE can help build this framework and initiate a process in a municipal government by using standardized data to address various issues. TRACE has supported more than 80 cities to develop long-term energy efficiency strategies and investment pipelines by increasing understanding of cross-sectoral energy challenges, helping direct funds for dedicated energy efficiency investments, and pointing to legislative adjustments, as well as improving local administrators’ ability to identify, plan, and implement energy efficiency solutions across sectors

Assessing and Mapping Renewable Energy Resources, Second Edition

Understanding the location and potential of renewable energy resources is a crucial pre-requisite to their utilization, and to scaling up clean and secure sources of electricity generation such as biomass, small hydropower, solar, and wind. However many countries do not have high quality, publicly available data on renewable energy resource potential and this limits the potential for informed policy development, including zoning guidance, transmission network planning, and price regulation or incentives. It also narrows the field of potential commercial developers, and raises the cost of undertaking preliminary site identification and financial analyses. This report draws on many years of experience within the World Bank Group and among other development partners in carrying out renewable energy resource assessment and mapping at the country level, in particular from 12 projects funded by the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) under a major global initiative launched in 2012. The report’s purpose is to explain, for a wide range of audiences, the importance of resource assessment and mapping, key steps and good practices, methodological issues, and potential sources for further advice and support

Regulatory Indicators for Sustainable Energy

Sustainable energy is at the heart of the global development and climate change agenda. Reaching the targets set by the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) will require a rapid increase in energy access, renewable energy and the efficient use of existing energy resources. Public debate centers on securing adequate finance to meet these global targets, but evidence demonstrates that policy can often be a prerequisite for mobilizing finance. RISE 2018 demonstrates that progress on sustainable energy outcomes has often been preceded by long-term efforts to strengthen policy and regulatory environments. Precisely because policy matters, it is important to track how well countries are doing in creating the regulatory environment needed to accelerate achievement of sustainable energy goals. RISE provides such a global scorecard which summarizes countries’ regulatory environments. It does so by tracking the adoption of good-practice policies with respect to energy access, energy efficiency, and renewable energy at the country level as of December 2017, scoring them on a scale from 1 to 100, and classifying the strength of a country’s policy environment according to a “traffic light” system with green for advanced, yellow for intermediate, and red for early stage. Poor creditworthiness of utilities undermines the sustainable energy agenda. Power utilities are among the central actors in the energy sector in most countries, and their financial health is critical for the viability of investments across the sustainable energy agenda. As of 2016, however, only about half of all power utilities met several basic creditworthiness requirements. Moreover, performance on almost all dimensions of credit-worthiness has deteriorated since 2012. The situation is particularly acute in low-access countries, where the number of utilities meeting basic creditworthiness criteria has dropped, falling from 63 percent in 2012 to 37 percent in 2016. Good institutions and enforcement are also necessary elements to achieve sustainable energy results. Adopting good practice policies will not yield results without strong institutions and consistent enforcement. RISE 2018 has incorporated proxy enforcement indicators to provide some sense of the level of attention that countries are giving to enforcement issues

A Strategy for Coal Bed Methane and Coal Mine Methane Development and Utilization in China

China is short of clean energy, particularly conventional natural gas. The proven per capital natural gas reserve is only 1/12th of the world average. However, China has large coal bed methane (CBM) resources with development potential which can be recovered from surface boreholes independent of mining and in advance of mining, and also captured as a part of underground coal mining operations. However, in order to meet its targets, the government must improve the administrative framework for CBM resource management, introduce more effective CBM or coal mine methane (CMM) development incentives, raise the technical capacity of the mining sector, expand gas pipeline infrastructure and promote gas markets in coal mining areas. In order to significantly reduce methane emission from coal mines and better exploit the gas recoverable from coal seams, the government should introduce measures to: strengthen the CBM/CMM policy, legal and regulatory framework to improve resource management; improve CMM availability and quality so more can be utilized; enhance incentives to promote expansion of CBM/CMM exploitation and destruction of surplus drained CMM; and Promote development of regional development strategies to take advantage of specific local advantages

An Overview of Best Practices

This document offers guidelines for the preparation of feasibility studies for geothermal power projects in accordance with best industry practices. A geothermal feasibility study is a document, prepared by the project developer, that collects and presents information necessary to determine the technical and financial viability of a geothermal energy project and its compliance with environmental and social safeguards. In a broad sense, a feasibility study is a living document that evolves over the course of the project preparation phase. Such studies may also have specific purposes, such as to guide the internal business decisions of a project’s owners or to demonstrate the economic viability of a project and its alignment with the country´s energy strategy to public stakeholders. The guidelines presented here refer, specifically, to feasibility studies prepared for the purpose of securing financing, both debt and equity. A project developer prepares a feasibility study using reliable data so that financiers can assess the risks associated with a project. A feasibility study should identify the main risks and describe how they will be managed. A necessary condition for receiving funding is that financiers can assess project risks and their magnitude and whether these are in a range they are willing to accept. The guidelines offered in this document have two purposes. The first is to help project developers understand the required content and structure of a feasibility study. The second is to suggest how financing entities may assess whether a feasibility study is of adequate quality and scope. The topics addressed in a feasibility study for any power generation project are quite similar irrespective of the energy conversion technology. However, several aspects of geothermal projects set them apart from other power generation projects. For example, geothermal projects need significant investments in drilling relatively early in the project lifetime to reduce resource uncertainty. Even though the focus here is on geothermal projects for electricity production, most of the recommendations presented are equally valid for direct-use geothermal projects

A Practitioner’s Guide

Energy efficiency is among the cheapest, cleanest, and most widely available of energy resources. Improved energy efficiency provides opportunities to sustainably expand energy services and support development and economic growth, contributing to higher living standards, as well as reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In developing countries, where demand for energy is growing rapidly, the potential for energy efficiency improvements is significant, particularly in the residential sector. The purpose of this guide is to raise awareness of behavioral approaches to achieving development outcomes, demonstrate the role that behavioral sciences can play in promoting energy efficiency, and provide guidance on how to integrate behavior change approaches into projects

Coal Plant Repurposing for Ageing Coal Fleets in Developing Countries

Coal plants worldwide are grappling with low-capacity utilization levels and environmental issues; and have not only become unprofitable to utilities, but also uneconomical to customers. Developed countries with significant coal capacities such as Australia, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US), are taking different approaches to wean away from coal. One such approach includes retiring and repurposing coal plants for various productive end uses, including solar plants, wind plants, data centers, and energy storage. Developing countries may gain much from the experience of their developed counterparts. Against this backdrop, the authors briefly examine the power situation in three developing countries, namely, South Africa, Chile, and India, based on their economic prowess within respective regions, predominance of coal in economic activities, and vulnerability to climate change, which make an interesting case for an analysis of repurposing coal plants in developing countries. This study presents the concepts and components of a cost-benefit analysis needed for a coal plant repurposing project