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Driving Energy Access: It’s Time to Shift Gears

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By Carolina Barreto , Energy Access Director, Tetra Tech Ryan Kilpatrick , Communications Director, Tetra Tech Meg Dallett , Communications Principal, Tetra Tech We can see it coming. Like an autonomous vehicle, self-driving toward us at high speed, ready to use technology and programming to make a critical decision: Stop? Swerve? Keep going? What’s coming is the moment we stop talking about “on-grid” versus “off-grid” and start talking about energy access and how our work intersects with climate change, social justice, and future trends. Are we ready to put our own tech and programming to the test?  Image: Baobab+ Shifting Our Approach We’re moving toward a holistic approach to energy access, where on-grid and off-grid meet. Off-grid used to be a tiny sector; now it’s a mature industry that has lessons to share with traditional utilities. Companies supporting off-grid customers in Africa and Asia now offer remote utility monitoring services to fire-risk areas like California. Off-gr
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Embracing PURE technologies as a key solution towards improved livelihoods, economic growth and resilience to climate change for our consumers

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By the Efficiency for Access team Image: SunCulture Global weather patterns continue to be increasingly unpredictable, and the urgency of climate change adaptation and resilience accelerates to safeguard livelihoods and sustainable development. Regionally, The Global Drought Observatory (GDO) estimates that in East Africa, 70 million people are exposed to some level of drought risk. Further, the region also has a sizeable unelectrified population, 2020 World Bank estimates found that only 48% of the region's population has access to electricity. With this backdrop, productive use of renewable energy (PURE) technologies offer essential adaptive and mitigative technologies and provide access to critical energy services. For example, in the case of agriculture – one of the areas of focus for Efficiency for Access interventions – affordable, inclusive, energy-efficient, solar-powered technologies like water pumps, mills, and cold storage solutions can strengthen productivity and effic
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How open-source data can improve finance access for renewable energy projects

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By the GET.invest and A2EI teams In order to provide affordable energy for all while taking urgent action to combat climate change, renewable energy projects will have to ramp up rapidly on a global scale. Access to financing is still the main challenge for off-grid solar distributors and developers, especially in emerging economies. The lack of comprehensive and user-friendly data on project performance poses one of the major obstacles to funding. Private investors and public donors alike will, rightfully, be hesitant to put their funds behind projects that cannot transparently disclose their track record and ongoing performance. While a range of data management platforms exist, these solutions are mostly product-, project- or country-specific, or they are proprietary. To fill this gap, the Access to Energy Institute (A2EI) and the European programme GET.invest, with the support of the European Union, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Austria, have partnered to develop the data pl
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Aligning capital needs to investment types

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By the Energy Catalyst team The Energy Catalyst Accelerator Programme (ECAP) accelerates the innovation needed to end energy poverty and improve lives across Africa and Asia. Since its establishment, ECAP has provided business acceleration support, including advisory support—to over one hundred innovative companies in the energy sector. In supporting these companies, we have observed that successful fundraising depends on aligning a company’s capital needs to the right type of investment and suitable investor. Based on this experience, we are sharing some key insights about the process as well as some general top tips for fundraising. Insight 1: The capital raise process is long and nuanced Fundraising is a complex, nuanced, and time-consuming process. On average, the entire process takes 6-12 months. Adequately planning for this is crucial to ensure you have sufficient cash runway to keep your business afloat. You only get one or two opportunities with each prospective investor, and i
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