Energy poverty is widely recognized as a major obstacle to economic and social development and poverty alleviation. A brief analysis of the current macro financial flows in the electricity and gas distribution sectors in developing countries suggests that the âfunding gap' is, at minimum, a...

Meeting the goal of universal access to modern energy services by 2030 will require dramatically increasing, as well as re-orienting, the current flows of energy investments in developing countries. While the mobilization of such capital is consistently presented as a major challenge, other...

This paper examines the process of privatization of electrical utilities for the country members of CILLS (Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Chad and Senegal). These Sahelian countries, the majority of whom rank at the bottom positions of the HDI and...

Faster market integration of new energy technologies can be achieved by use of proper support mechanisms that will create favourable market conditions for such technologies. The best examples of support mechanisms presented in the last two decades have been the various schemes for the promotion...

Portugal is a country with an energy system highly dependent on oil and gas imports. Imports of oil and gas accounted for 85% of the country's requirements in 2005 and 86% in 2006. Meanwhile, the share of renewable energy sources (RES) in the total primary energy consumption was only 14% in...