Browsing by Author "Plutshack, Victoria"

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    Assessing Time-of-use Tariff Deployment For Mini-grids in Sierra Leone
    (2021-04-28) McNamara, Marie
    The declining price of solar energy and the development of reliable off-grid solutions presents an opportunity to embrace the use of community-scale mini-grids to improve energy access. However, solar hybrid mini-grid providers electrifying rural communities in Sierra Leone and across developing economies face difficulties securing energy demand and developing a tariff structure that customers can afford to pay and covers costs. Solar hybrid mini-grids only generate power during the day, and there is a cost disparity between supplying power during the day vs. the evening. Time-of-use tariffs can be a more efficient price structure and could be a means to lower the average cost of electricity for customers. A time-of-use tariff in which the daytime price for energy is less than the evening price of electricity could incentivize consumers to shift some of their energy demand from the evening to the day – when the system generates electricity. This study conducts a financial analysis to quantify the effect of time-of-use tariffs on energy demand, incurred costs, and revenue.
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    Can Time-of-Use Tariffs Increase the Financial Viability of Mini-Grids?
    (2022-10-26) McNamara, Marie; Plutshack, Victoria; Phillips, Jonathan; Poindexter, Nicole
    Declining solar and battery costs and increased operational efficiency have helped expand community-scale mini-grids, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where they now meet the power needs of over 47 million people. However, mini-grid system economics must continue to improve to be a reliable power solution for a significant share of the nearly 800 million people still lacking access. For rural, low-income communities with generally small power loads and significant demand variations, it can be challenging to align supply and demand while maintaining affordable rates and recovering investment costs. Time-of-use (ToU) tariffs—a rate structure where the tariff varies by the time of day that electricity is consumed—could represent one piece of the solution. This policy brief develops a model to estimate the effects of a ToU tariff on average costs and revenues using data from Energicity, a solar mini-grid operator in Sierra Leone.
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    Climate Finance for Just Transitions: Building Low-Carbon Development Pathways in an Age of US-China Rivalry
    (2022-09-14) Phillips, Jonathan; Ewing, Jackson; Rao, Abhay; Teji, Liilnna; Plutshack, Victoria; Jeuland, Marc
    This paper investigates challenges throughout the international climate finance landscape and recommends pathways for how investments into low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) can more effectively drive low-carbon development. The paper focuses on three issue areas: (1) aligning national climate strategies and international finance, (2) finding avenues for positive climate finance outcomes in an era of growing rivalry between Chinese and Group of Seven—particularly US—public financiers, and (3) reforming major climate finance practices and institutions to more effectively cater to the needs of LMIC stakeholders. This paper is part of a series of work under the New Frontiers in Climate Finance project, led by the James E. Rogers Energy Access Project, which is scoping the challenges and opportunities inherent to climate finance in LMICs, and seeking to help increase the scale and transformational impact of climate finance to these economies. The project aims to mobilize key stakeholder organizations around a common vision for aligning the tools of development finance with the needs and strategies of LMICs, and to build low-carbon development pathways that support poverty alleviation while reducing the next global wave of greenhouse gas emissions.
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    Lessons for Modernizing Energy Access Finance, Part 1: What the Electrification Experiences of Seven Countries Tell Us about the Future of Connection Costs, Subsidies, and Integrated Planning
    (2020-05-01) Phillips, Jonathan; Plutshack, Victoria; Yeazel, Seth
    Countries facing electricity access challenges today have more options and potential electrification pathways than ever before. Technology developments in distributed renewable electricity systems, monitoring and payment systems, and end-use equipment efficiency have made off-grid electricity systems the lowest-cost and most expedient option for the majority of unconnected rural populations. However, the initial cost of connecting new rural customers remains an expensive proposition, and public financing that addresses the affordability issue will be required for most countries to achieve universal access, just as it always has. This brief explores the successful rural electrification experiences of seven case countries—Brazil, Chile, Laos, Peru, South Africa, Thailand, and Tunisia—looking specifically at the cost of connections and how subsidies and public financing were deployed to address the affordability challenge and facilitate energy access. The analysis finds that connecting rural customers has been costly—more than $1,500 per connection on average—far more than the cost of distributed systems today. The rural electrification programs examined subsidized 70–100 percent of connection costs. Maintaining these public investments and adapting funding mechanisms to address the unique nature of the off-grid sector, will dictate the extent to which distributed systems are able to scale in the coming decade.
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    Lessons for Modernizing Energy Access Finance, Part 2—Balancing Competition and Subsidy: Assessing Mini-Grid Incentive Programs in Sub-Saharan Africa
    (2020-12-15) Phillips, Jonathan; Attia, Benjamin; Plutshack, Victoria
    Rapid technology development and falling hardware costs have made mini-grids a potentially game-changing platform for enabling universal electrification. With the capacity to power commercial and industrial loads and provide 24/7 service, mini-grids can bring reliable grid-level service to places that are unlikely to be serviced with a stable connection in the near future. Of the roughly 800 million people globally without access to electricity, mini-grids could represent the least-cost option for meeting the electricity needs of 490 million by 2030. In response, governments and development partners are putting in place support programs to accelerate the scale-up of mini-grid deployments. These support programs aim to reduce risk and improve returns for private developers and lower connection costs for rural populations. This policy brief summarizes a review of 20 such mini-grid incentive programs in sub-Saharan Africa, 17 of which are still being implemented. The programs analyzed primarily used one of two mechanisms to stimulate investment: auction programs that invite developers to submit bids for the construction and, in most cases, the operation of mini-grids at specific sites, typically awarding an up-front capital subsidy to the selected developers; and results-based financing (RBF) programs that have a set subsidy per connection that is paid to developers after verification that a household or business has been connected.
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    Profits and Productivity: Stimulating Electricity Demand in Low-Income Settings
    (2019-06-03) Plutshack, Victoria; Phillips, Jonathan
    As electricity companies in low- and middle-income countries move deeper into rural regions, the cost of new connections generally increases while the electricity demanded by these new customers remains lower than urban and peri-urban customers. This is a challenging dynamic for utilities looking to sustain their financial health as well as for governments tasked with engineering viable strategies for achieving universal electrification. Off-grid platforms like solar home systems and minigrids have entered this market, developing innovative approaches to serving these populations that promise to scale up to help meet the needs of the one billion people around the world still lacking electricity access. The creative partnerships and complementary services these off-grid providers are pursuing provide important lessons for larger utilities. Yet the primary driver for new electricity connections—the grid—will continue to play an important role in closing the access gap, especially in places where serving commercial, industrial, and other productive loads is a priority. Countries with national utility companies facing massive debt, stagnant revenue, and overcapacity must develop strategies for maintaining fiscal health, ideally in a manner that facilitates rural income growth and development. This brief provides a snapshot of the relevant demand-stimulating lessons learned in the off-grid space as well as those that have been pursued by governments and utilities in the past order to help answer the critical questions: What is preventing rural customers from increasing their electricity demand? How can governments, utilities, NGOs, and companies come together to foster the greater use of energy services?
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    Rural Investment: Building a Natural Climate Solutions Policy Agenda that Works for Rural America and the Climate
    (2020-06-03) Bonnie, Robert; Vujic, Tatjana; Plutshack, Victoria; Arata, Shannon
    Rural America—particularly its farms, ranches, and forests—is vital to solving climate change. Forests absorb the equivalent of 11–15 percent of U.S. greenhouse gases (GHGs) while agriculture accounts for about 9 percent of U.S. GHG emissions. Under any reasonable scenario, meeting aggressive climate goals will require farmers, ranchers, forest owners and public land management agencies to prioritize climate mitigation across hundreds of millions of acres. Success will require new federal policies and, importantly, accelerated and substantial increases in public and private investment in land management practices that sequester carbon and reduce GHGs. That won’t happen without the combined support from rural voters and agricultural and forestry stakeholders. This report outlines a menu of policy ideas capable of both garnering the necessary support from rural America and helping the U.S. reach its climate goals through natural climate solutions. This report arrives at this menu of policies by focus on four questions: (1) Where are the tons? Which agricultural and forestry practices result in the most significant GHG emissions reductions and sequestration, and where are those practices likely to occur? (2) Where are the stakeholders? What are the positions of stakeholders in agriculture, forestry, hunting and fishing, outdoor recreation, and environment/conservation with regards to climate policy on agricultural and forest lands? (3) What can we learn from state experience with natural climate solutions? (4) What suite of federal policies could get the necessary GHG reductions and win rural support?
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    Taxes and Subsidies and the Transition to Clean Cooking: A Review of Relevant Theoretical and Empirical Insights
    (2022-11-22) Das, Ipsita; Jeuland, Marc; Plutshack, Victoria; Zong, Jiahui
    United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7.1 sets a target of ensuring universal access to affordable, reliable, and modern energy services by 2030. Unfortunately, many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are well off course to meet this target, especially with respect to access to clean cooking energy. Though many challenges impede progress, cost barriers are perhaps most significant. This report discusses the role of subsidy and tax policies—levied on both the supply and demand side of this market—in affecting progress toward universal access to clean cooking in LMICs. Moreover, we also combat a common myth among those opposing subsidies for clean cooking: we show that a “fear of spoiling the market” with such incentives finds little empirical support in the literature. This report offers recommendations to policy makers, in addition to a case study on clean cooking transitions in Nepal.
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    The Role of Taxes and Subsidies in the Clean Cooking Transition: A Review of Relevant Theoretical and Empirical Insights
    (2022-07-21) Das, Ipsita; Jeuland, Marc; Plutshack, Victoria
    United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7.1 sets a target of ensuring universal access to affordable, reliable, and modern energy services by 2030. Unfortunately, many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are well off course to meet this target, especially with respect to access to clean cooking energy. Though many challenges impede progress toward use of modern and sustainable energy for cooking purposes, cost barriers are perhaps most significant. Against this backdrop, this brief discusses the role of subsidy and tax policies—levied on both the supply and demand side of this market—in affecting progress toward universal access to clean cooking in LMICs. Moreover, combating a common myth among those opposing subsidies for clean cooking, the brief demonstrates that a “fear of spoiling the market” with such incentives finds little empirical support in the literature. Based on theory and evidence discussed in additional detail, this brief offers recommendations to policy makers.
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    “Women work particularly well in community organizations”: Cultivating Community and Consumerism in the Comanche County REA Women’s Club, 1939-1940
    (2022-01-16) Plutshack, Victoria; Merck, Ashton; Free, Jonathon
    From 1939-1941, the U.S. Rural Electrification Administration conducted a nationwide educational campaign to share the benefits of electricity with rural Americans, known as the “Electric Farm Equipment Show.” A key part of the show was a series of appliance schools, which were run by female home economists and targeted to women. This article examines an appliance school organized for one REA Women’s Club, as described in a 1941 report by Clara O. Nale, the chief home economist of the REA. Using primary documents from REA home demonstration agents, we reveal how officials like Nale navigated the disconnect between the official REA project that assumed a gendered division of labor with the real needs of the farm women they served. Using the 1930 and 1940 census, we also gathered biographical details of club membership, to better understand who was being served by REA programming. Through the Comanche County REA Women’s Club, we explore how the meaning of work, rural identity, and gender was rapidly changing during the late New Deal. Our findings also highlight the critical importance of women’s community organizing in contemporary electrification efforts.