Achieving universal access to electricity is one of the most important goals set for the energy sector by governments in the developing world. Electricity alone is not sufficient to spur economic growth, but it is certainly necessary. Access to electricity is particularly crucial to human...

This report documents the Lao People's Democratic Republic's success story in rapid national electrification integrated within a broader strategy of national and rural development. In fifteen years (1995-2009), electricity access more than quadrupled, from about 15 percent in 1995 to 69 percent...

The Bangladesh Solar Home Systems (SHS) Program contributed significantly to achieving near-universal access to electricity by installing over 4 million SHSs from 2003 to 2018, serving 16 percent of rural households by 2016. The government mobilized USD 683 million in loans and grants from...

The Sustainable and Participatory Energy Management project - PROGEDE was implemented by the government between 1997 and 2004. From project preparation to supervision the World Bank worked in close collaboration with Dutch Co-operation (DGIS). At the time of project preparation, forest-based...

This paper develops a number of approaches to power sector planning that respond to the uncertainties that Afghanistan faces. It aims to provide an alternative to the "predict then act" approach to planning, which will allow more robust decision making. The paper is divided into two parts: the...

The challenge for the development community is to exploit the links between energy and poverty to combat global poverty. The human scale of this challenge is huge. Today, 1.6 billion people lack access to electricity and 2.4 billion rely on traditional biomass for cooking and heating. Indoor air...

"The author first describes those features of the electricity supply industry that make a prospective market monitoring process essential to a well-functioning wholesale market. Some of these features are shared with the securities industry, although the technology of electricity production and...