International development charity Practical Action has launched the Poor people’s energy outlook (PPEO) report 2013, with support and input from partners including GIZ and the World Bank. With launch events taking place from Lilongwe to Dhaka and Kigali to Kathmandu, the PPEO continues to bring stakeholders together around a new energy narrative – one which focuses on the energy services that poor people want, need and have a right to.
This third report in the series focuses on energy for community services and illustrates the difference that improved energy access can make to health, education and public infrastructure, including water and street lighting.
Alongside analysis of commitments made to SE4All in 2012, the report also presents the results of an ongoing collaboration with the World Bank on how to define and measure access to energy. This multi-tier framework informs the SE4All Global Tracking Framework which will monitor global and national progress towards the Goals of the Initiative.
In producing the report, Practical Action engaged with community members, civil society organizations, donors, private sector and government officials to hear their perspectives on how energy enables development. The report has particularly been informed by field research in Bolivia, Bangladesh, and Rwanda which helped to ground and refine the Energy Access Ecosystem Index, a tool for analysing the strength of policy, capacity and finance at the national level.