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Powering the Poor: Lives Transformed by Access to Energy

By
Xianbin Yao
Director General, Regional Sustainable Development Department
Asian Development Bank

At the Asia Clean Energy Forum 2009

18 June 2009
ADB Headquarters, Manila Philippines

I would like to begin by thanking Vice President Schaefer-Preuss for introducing
the Energy for All Partnership and affirming ADB's commitment to increasing access to energy for the poor, especially for the rural poor.

The Partnership was established through ADB's Energy for All Initiative, which
was designed to provide solutions to the problem of energy poverty by using two
approaches. The Partnership is the external approach. Within ADB, the Initiative supports successful access to energy projects by scaling them up, and strengthens the Bank's capacity to develop more and better energy access projects using new approaches and methods.

Part of the process of charting new approaches and evaluating successes is by
making examples of them. "Powering the Poor" is a record of ADB's successes in
financing innovative interventions that generated great benefits. These stories illustrate, at the human scale, how access can provide the region's poor with a chance at bettering their lives.

This publication charts the approaches and methodologies that can be scaled up,
and the interventions of ADB that can be replicated in future projects. This publication is a record of effective, well targeted projects which promoted access to energy, and improved the quality of life in these rural communities where they were implemented.

Guaranteeing energy for all involves placing technology in the correct situations
and supporting it with direct funding or by enabling the environment for greater private sector involvement or public-private partnerships.

1. One of these success stories, from Assam, India, relates how the state electrical board turned to franchisees to make up for their lack of manpower in managing and servicing their networks. This gave rise to franchise agents, people from the communities themselves, trusted by their fellows to perform their duties and respond to needs.
   
   As these agents plugged holes in the system, reducing losses in the transmission and illegal connections, the power supply became reliable, showing the community that there agents were working for them. Bills were paid on time, and collections rose. This public private partnership created a win-win outcome: more revenue for the power producers of the government, better service for the consumers in the villages, and profit for the franchisees.



2. Another common theme in these stories is how well communities respond
   to the better alternative. Vietnamese piggeries dumping animal waste into nearby ponds and streams quickly stopped this practice once that waste could be put to use in a biogas digester. The gas produced powers light and heat, while the waste is decomposed into a slurry safe to use as a fertilizer. ADB recently approved $19 million in support to provide credit to construct 40,000 biogas dispensers across Viet Nam by 2015. This project not only promotes access to energy but also takes on the issues of food and water safety, resulting in an improved quality of life across multiple levels.



3. While it is natural to think of access to energy as having to do with lighting and heating, there are some cases where neither category is met, but benefits are gained.
   
   In Tara, another community in the Philippines, an ADB grant supplied them with "ram pumps." "Ram pumps" are an application of hydraulic properties and water pressure, which can lift water from lower elevations to higher elevations using a low maintenance system with few moving parts. In this case, the pumps were used to source water from a nearby river in order to irrigate fields and supply homes. With a steady supply of water, more crops were grown and harvests increased. With water flowing into the community, farmers also found it easier to keep livestock as they no longer had to travel to collect water.
   
   The success of these "ram pumps" are an example of a highly replicable project. Twenty of them were installed in 2008, and 8 more were installed in the first two months of 2009. The NGO involved with implementation has taken the technology and spread it to other parts of Asia - including Afghanistan - and even as far as South America.

I have only touched on the surface of these stories, this book charts all this in
much greater depth, touching upon the challenges that must be overcome to provide
access and the active roles that private entrepreneurs and the community play in securing access and maintaining it for continued benefit.

ADB will continue to seek out new partnerships and opportunities to extend
access to energy, especially among those who remain "off the grid." As the stories in "Powering the Poor" show, the opportunities and improvements that energy offers can absolutely transform lives. The Bank has pledged to see these benefits repeated in as many communities as possible across Asia and the Pacific. It is our hope that access to energy practitioners can make use of the innovations charted in "Powering the Poor" and that the successes recorded inspire further work to promote access. Thank you.