Commercializing Renewable Energy in India (CREI), a project jointly implemented by UNDESA, Winrock International India (WI), and Winrock International India (WII), and supported by the UN Foundation offered an innovative approach to overcoming the barriers to developing and mainstreaming a set of clean and renewable energy (RE) projects in rural India. The principal focus of the project was on developing rural enterprises that provide renewable energy services to economically and socially productive applications.


Over the five years, CREI project has created a significant level of awareness in the project area on renewable energy technologies (RETs) and their applications, linked to income generation in rural communities. Orientation workshops were held to link livelihood enhancement options to RETs.

The project helped develop 20 business plans for income generation through RE promotion. These business plans have to be implemented by individual entrepreneurs, self-help groups and other NGOs and are expected to provide enhanced income to over 1500 households. A series of capacity building programs were conducted to develop the user groups as rural micro enterprises and to execute and manage their own income generation activities. Another four business plans for RE Enterprises have been developed to strengthen their financial and marketing linkages. Technical and financial due diligence was conducted for all the business plans, before they were taken up for actual implementation.

In developing the business plans and executing other components of the project, CREI team established linkages with a large number of stakeholders including local entrepreneurs, micro-credit institutions, training/capacity building institutions, government and quasi-government agencies, NGOs, SHGs and cooperative societies. These business plans were strengthened in making them robust and sustainable by conducting a thorough due diligence on technical, economic, financial and business aspects. br>
Broadly, market assessment for renewable energy technologies targeted for productive applications, development of a network of partners and stakeholders who were involved in the project, training programs, orientation workshops and other capacity building exercises have been accomplished.

CREI project had initiated discussions to leverage other sources of funding for capacity building and by working in areas, which are primarily innovative market-driven renewable energy enterprise projects and programs worldwide.