Meeting the Energy Needs of the Urban Poor : Lessons from Electrification Practitioners

Rojas, Juan Manuel ; Lallement, Dominique

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ACCESS COSTS;    ACCESS ROADS;    ACCESS TO CREDIT;    ACCESS TO ELECTRICITY;    ACCESS TO ENERGY;   

RP-ID  :  43474

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The present report was prepared on thebasis of the findings of an international workshop held fromSeptember 12-14, 2005, in Salvador da Bahia, and wasattended by delegations of three to five practitioners from12 cities in Latin America, Africa and Asia. It had two mainobjectives: (a) to share experiences on innovative solutionsto provide electricity services in poor peri-urban and urbanareas; and (b) to develop a body of knowledge to bedisseminated and used by a wide array of practitionersinvolved in the provision of energy services in those areas.One of the most important conclusions of the Bahia workshopwas that excluding part of the population from access toenergy on account of their poverty, marginalization and theinformality of the settlements has enormous long-termsocial, economic and financial costs. The root cause of thecontemporary difficulty in providing electricity and otherinfrastructure services through public or private utilitiesis decades of such social exclusion, poverty andmarginalization which have led to total distrust betweenformal structures and consumers, and to the rise of illegaland costly electricity distribution systems, often managedby private illegal entrepreneurs. Do current regulatorysystems support slum electrification? At the institutionallevel, it was confirmed that in the majority of thecountries participating in the workshop, except for Brazil,electrification programs for poor peri-urban and urban areasare being deployed with a lack of appropriate regulatoryframeworks to support these efforts. The regulatoryframeworks which have been developed for the general modelof public-private partnership do not meet the need ofdistribution companies working in predominantly poor areas.In particular, they do not reflect the need for innovativetechnical characteristics and the informal sectorrelationships which characterize poor urban and peri-urbanareas, nor are there regulatory mechanisms for risk-sharingor resolving disputes, for example, when the infrastructureis damaged. It would be important, therefore, to adaptregulatory frameworks for the various business models usedto extend the grids to slums. Currently, utilities are leftto their own devices to find out practical solutions. Thisis an area which was identified as needing more analytical work.