Rural Energy Services
Creating Economic Opportunities in Rural Areas
Energy is critical to a nation’s ability to meet vital and social and economic objectives, yet approximately 2 billion people reside in the world today without access to adequate modern and reliable services. The bulk of this underserved population (nearly two-thirds of them women and children) live in impoverished rural areas of developing nations with no near term prospect for modern energy services. This condition maintains a cruel cycle of drudgery, low productivity, poor health, low income and a worsening environment.
A healthy rural economy is impossible without modern energy and the services it provides and is critical to a nation’s overall development. A healthy rural economy, in turn, eases rural to urban migration which reduces strains on already overburdened infrastructures and the environmental quality of cities in developing countries.
Economic activity, either in the form of agricultural production or of small scale industry, is the foundation of rural life. It is difficult to imagine effective food cultivation and production systems or robust commercial activity without the energy inputs that make these systems operate. The provision of modern energy services in the form of electricity for water pumping, industrial motors and machinery, and fuels for transportation is the precondition for sustained economic prosperity.
Rural social development depends on modern energy services as well. Education, health and a broad range of infrastructure services, such as sanitation, water, housing, etc. are considered the building blocks of a flourishing society. Each of these keys to development is in turn dependent on access to modern energy services. We have witnessed throughout history a positive correlation between improved quality of life in rural areas and the provision of a wide range of energy services. Furthermore, we have also seen how rural communities have gained better and more equitable governing structures through the process of obtaining and using increased energy services.
Adequate and clean energy in rural areas frequently is not available for many reasons. These include: the high cost of providing fuel; the often prohibitive cost of electrical grid extensions to remote regions with dispersed populations; the difficulty of maintaining networks that supply conventional generation equipment; and the lack of access to, financing for, and training in clean energy technologies. As a result, many of the facets of rural life in the developing world remain largely based on human and animal power, two traditional sources of power with severe limitations. Human muscle requires extensive food and care relative to output. The productivity of animal muscles is also relatively low compared to food and care requirements, and using animals as a source or labor can ultimately lower milk and meat production.
The challenge is further magnified in many developing countries where the energy situation in rural and peri-urban areas is characterized by a reliance on firewood, agricultural residues, and animal power and manure to cover mainly subsistence energy needs, while only small amounts of energy are available for income generating activities. The rural areas of these countries are then placed in a dual position regarding energy. Rural areas consume energy but also provide a large part of the energy used by both rural and urban populations. The rural-urban energy relationship is also expressed in the urban migration trends resulting from poor rural economic opportunities due to the current state of energy poverty. Solving the energy problem in the rural areas therefore will have positive development implications for the urban areas as well.
Conventional energy and fuel technologies will continue to be relied on for decades to come. However, cleaner energy systems - based on widely-distributed local energy sources such as biomass, water, wind, geothermal, and the sun - can provide reliable, sustainable energy for many development needs. These systems can be sized to meet local needs, be designed to offer easy maintenance, use local fuels - which do not require scarce foreign exchange to purchase - and are usually environmentally benign. Distributed energy systems have proven to be the least-cost alternative for supplying energy for productive economic activities worldwide under a broad range of diverse operating conditions in rural areas.
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