Background

Access to clean and affordable energy is vital for a growing economy like India. It assumes great significance against a background of addressing issues of poverty reduction, environmental concerns, livelihood issues and the overall quality of life.

WII has been appointed to act as the Project Management Unit and provide technical support for the UNDP supported ‘Access to Clean Energy’ project being implemented by MNRE. The aim of the project is to accelerate access to energy services, particularly for increasing livelihoods of the poor and marginalized in seven UNDAF states (Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh).

Objective

The project aims to upscale at least 10-15 successful, cost effective, replicable, financially viable entrepreneurship based business & delivery models for deployment of renewable energy technology (RET) that strengthen livelihoods and enhance economic development.

In essence, the overall objective of the project is a clean energy future and improved quality of life for the disadvantaged people by providing support for the development of a replicable approach for assisting local entrepreneurs to create, manage, and upscale enterprises that harness RET applications. The project’s sub-objectives are to assist in local capacity building, generate local employment, augment incomes and livelihoods through value-added production, support development of MSMEs, and contribute to global and local environmental benefits.

Within the project, MNRE seeks to provide impetus to scaling up of commercially viable RET-based business models that have been successfully piloted in the past. The current project will aim at strengthening technical, institutional, financing, delivery and servicing capability / infrastructure needed to address the key barriers for up scaling of technically proven and financially viable RE applications. The proposed approach aims to stimulate widespread replication of these models and leverage additional resources for RE development. Such wide-scale replication will create a “critical mass of demand” for RE systems, which can further increase production and reduce their costs nationally and lead to a broader market acceptance of RETs.

Activities

The activities that would be carried out under the project would include designing of a framework to address gaps and up-scale clean energy technologies, support to up-scale implementation, mainstreaming clean energy devices for meeting thermal and/or electrical applications in selected areas for end users of both domestic and enterprises, and Development of a strategy paper that will feed into ‘Off grid renewable energy policy’ of MNRE.

The progress so far...

Following the development of the Project Document and the project’s Operational Manual, a project website has also been created, and can be accessed through the link on WII website (http://www.winrockindia.org/HomePage.htm).

A total of 43 proposals have been evaluated so far, under the project. After careful assessment of the projects based on the proposals and presentations by the project proponents, 13 projects have been short-listed for the next stage of Detailed Project Report (DPR) preparation.

A database of NGOs in India, working on Renewable Energy, has also been compiled and is being regularly updated. A compendium of case studies, titled “Access to Clean Energy: A Glimpse of Off-Grid Projects in India” has also been published and is available to the project website (http://www.winrockindia.org/AcecaseStudies.htm).

Executive Summary