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Financing Village-Level Energy for Development in the Asia-Pacific

Speech by
Ursula Schaefer-Preuss
Vice President, Knowledge Management and Sustainable Development
Asian Development Bank

9 April 2008
ADB Headquarters, Mandaluyong City

I. Introduction

Ladies and Gentlemen:
First of all, I would like to welcome you all to ADB and to this workshop on Increasing Access to Energy. I am pleased to see many of you gathered here to discuss the challenges and opportunities in increasing access to modern forms of energy for the poor.

You could already see first hand today in Malabon and Caloocan City how families are meeting their cooking energy needs and how improved cooking stoves and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) can help save fuel and reduce indoor smoke. I am sure that you get an idea how access to energy can have positive impacts on the daily lives of many people.

II. Access to energy, MDGs and Poverty Reduction

We have now reached the half-way mark in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Significant challenges lie ahead. Although access to energy was not identified as an MDG, it is widely recognized as a key element for poverty reduction and meeting all the MDGs. Yet, almost half of the world's population does not have access to modern forms of energy. Some 2.4 billion of the world's people are still dependent on traditional biomass fuels to meet their cooking and heating needs, with all the health problems related to it. More than 1.5 million people, mostly women and children, die every year because of the indoor air pollution from the use of biomass fuel. In Asia, almost a billion people have no access to electricity, and four out of five of these people live in rural areas.

III. ADB's Response

Expanding access to modern energy services has been a key part of ADB's efforts to reduce poverty in Asia and the Pacific region. The importance of access to energy is recognized in ADB's energy strategy, which will be finalized in due course.

We have initiated several innovative approaches for providing access to energy. For example, we have financed the $1.5 million Power Fund for the Poor in Sri Lanka to help poor households meet the initial connection charges to the grid through a sustainable micro-finance scheme. So far more than 10,500 households already have benefited from access to electricity, and the number continues to grow. Similarly, the Efficient Utilization of Agricultural Wastes Project in the People's Republic of China is providing $33 million to finance almost 20,000 small household biogas digesters and 16 biogas digesters in livestock farms.

Building on this experience, we are now formulating a strategic approach to mainstream support for replicating and scaling up successful initiatives to increase access to modern energy services for the poor in our developing member countries under our "Energy for All Initiative". In this context, we welcome your ideas on how we can help our Developing Member Countries increase access to modern, affordable and sustainable energy services and bring them much closer to achieving the MDGs.

We also recognize that energy access is a prerequisite but not a sufficient condition for reducing poverty. Our partnerships should therefore not be limited to just increasing access to energy but also help the poor use energy for income generation and other productive uses. On behalf of ADB, I would like to take this opportunity to express our strong interest to further strengthen our current partnerships with all of you, and build new ones for the future.

IV. Concluding Remarks

Ladies and gentlemen, you will have intensive discussions and the opportunity to exchange ideas and experience over the next two days. We are hopeful that this will lead to some concrete actions.

I want to especially thank The Foundation for Development Cooperation (FDC) and Global Village Energy Partnership (GVEP) International for jointly co-hosting this important workshop. I would also like to thank Shell Philippines, and all others who have helped organizing the field visit for the participants.

I would also like to express our appreciation to the Government of the Netherlands for their generous support to ADB's Energy for All Initiative.

ADB remains a strong partner in the region's development, ready to move forward alongside developing Asia and the Pacific in taking action for the poor and the hungry.

Thank you and best wishes to all of you for a fruitful discussion for the next two days but in the meantime, let's enjoy the reception and use this opportunity to know people and their work.