A Policy Roadmap for Clean, Rapid Rural Electricity Access

The Power for All campaign, a partner of ALER, has recently published a new report entitled “Decentralized Renewables: From Promise to Progress” and call for policy action.

One year ago, Power for All released a report that concluded that ending energy poverty by 2030 could only be achieved for the 1 billion rural poor by accelerating investment in decentralized renewable energy (DRE) solutions such as mini-grids and rooftop solar. In a new report, titled “Decentralized Renewables: From Promise to Progress” and released at the SEforALL Forum, we build on those findings, with a focus on the need for policy leadership alongside increased access to finance.

Using original quantitative analysis and on-the-ground insights from campaign partners, Power for All came up with some exciting findings: they identified five policies that national governments can adopt to reach universal energy access before 2030. They also developed three clear recommendations for how governments can work with the private sector and civil society to make implementation of those policies a reality, starting with the full integration of DRE into national energy market design.

To enable the sector to track policy progress, we also developed an index (which they'd love your feedback on to make it even more nuanced) that identifies which of the 48 most energy-poor countries are on track to achieve universal energy access (SDG7) and which have more work to do (currently almost two-thirds of them lack a rural energy access target).

And to test policy insights and turn them into tangible action at the national level, Power for All recently hosted multi-stakeholder meetings in Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, where governments, civil society and the private sector responded to the new Call to Action with clear commitments to accelerate energy access via DRE.