Non-electrified people in Africa, still more than 500 million today, have been using kerosene and candles for their lighting purposes for decades. The lighting quality of these sources is low and in particular kerosene usage is associated with harmful soot emissions. Alleviating this grievance...

The use of kerosene for lighting, cooking, and heating in developing countries is often considered a major health threat as it can cause accidents like thermal injuries, poisonings, fires or explosions. A number of hospital surveys emphasize this threat but evidence from household data is...

Providing electricity to the unconnected 1.1 billion people in developing countries is one of the top political priorities of the international community, yet the costs of reaching this objective are very high. The present paper examines whether the objective and the associated costs are...

Providing electricity to the unconnected 1.1 billion people in developing countries is one of the top political priorities of the international community, yet the costs of reaching this objective are very high. The present paper examines whether the objective and the associated costs are...

Recent debates on how to provide electricity to the roughly one billion still unconnected people in developing countries have identified mini-grids as a promising way forward. High upfront costs of transmission lines are avoided, and unlike home-scale solar, mini-grids can provide sufficient...

Electrification is frequently said to foster women's development and contribute to a modernization of gender roles. Using Demographic and Health Survey data from rural areas in 22 Sub-Saharan countries collected between 1999 and 2014, this paper examines the role of electricity access in...

Extending the power grid into hitherto unconnected areas is high on the policy agenda in Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, connection rates and electricity consumption remain low in grid connected areas, at least in the short and medium run. This paper provides a long-term follow-up on an evaluation of a...

Energy efficiency is a key component of climate policy. We study micro and macro rebound effects after the introduction of energy-efficient biomass cookstoves (EEBCs). We develop a model of biomass supply and demand in rural Africa. The impact of EEBCs is empirically explored in Rwanda where we...

Many policy interventions in the environmental sector aim at changing environmental preferences, because these provide the basis for adopting environmental conservation behavior or technologies. To evaluate these changes, standard measurement tools in survey-based impact evaluations have their...

More than 1.3 billion people lack access to electricity. The UN have proclaimed the goal of providing electricity to all by 2030. In recent years, Pico-Photovoltaic kits have become a lower cost alternative to investment intensive grid electrification. Using a randomized controlled trial we...