The Energy Access Practitioner Network: Towards Achieving Universal Energy Access By 2030

The United Nations Foundation’s Energy Access Practitioner Network, now a global network of over 1600 members, draws together a wide range of businesses, investors, and civil society organizations working to deliver sustainable energy services via mini- and off-grid technologies to communities and households in areas beyond the reach of the conventional grid. The Practitioner Network helps provide access to clean and renewable energy solutions to some of the most energy-impoverished regions of the world, contributing to one of three core objectives of the United Nations Sustainable Energy for All initiative – making modern energy services universally accessible by 2030.

In order to help meet this energy access challenge and bring more attention to the role of decentralized energy solutions, the Practitioner Network has focused since its launch in 2011 on supporting approaches that emphasize quality and sustainability. The Network seeks to amplify the voice of practitioners as stakeholders in global energy access discussions, and to draw attention to the challenges they identify as barriers to scaling energy access in various contexts. Based on in-depth consultations with its members, as well as follow-up surveys, the Practitioner Network has begun working on addressing some of the barriers identified by its members: To date, the Practitioner Network has put together an Import Tariff and Barriers to Entry database to alleviate the common struggle of sustainable energy product importers to navigate initial entry into emerging markets. It has also collaborated with the International Electrotechnical Commission to facilitate access to important technical documents that support a range of technologies for rural electrification (IEC/TS 62257 series) at a discount to qualifying practitioners to enable quality approaches in the sector.

Most recently, the Practitioner Network has focused on helping members attract critical investments required not only to scale their work and maintain existing facilities in good working condition, but also to highlight the need for financing that is tailored more closely to the diverse needs of the decentralized energy space. As a first opportunity to catalog these specific investment needs, the Practitioner Network published its 2013 Directory of Investment and Funding Opportunities, which outlined the financial profile of over 140 members and provided an aggregate analysis as a sample indicator of the broader sector’s potential.

In a recent joint contribution for Nature magazine, Reid Detchon and Richenda Van Leeuwen of the UN Foundation argue that “investment and policies must support cheap, clean energy technologies to cut both poverty and climate change”. According to a 2012 study by the International Energy Agency, micro- and off-grid energy solutions will be the principal means of providing electricity access to at least 60 per cent of the world’s energy deprived . In this context, the UN Foundation recently published a groundbreaking study by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University, Microgrids for Rural Electrification, which critically reviewed global best practices for micro-grids and evaluated their contribution to electrification in developing countries.

The UN Foundation is also co-leading the Energy and Women’s Health high-impact opportunity within Sustainable Energy for All, together with the World Health Organization and UN Women, in collaboration with the Practitioner Network and other private sector and civil society partners. The purpose of this work is to catalyze support for, and undertake concerted action toward, the electrification of health facilities across sub-Saharan Africa, with a specific focus on helping to reduce maternal and newborn mortality through the provision of sustainable energy for health services. With support from the Government of Norway, country-level data gathering and facility-level technical and design assessments are under way in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ghana.

For more information on the Practitioner Network’s activities and current areas of focus, please visit our webpage at www.energyaccess.org.