Energy and development go hand-in-hand: lighting, cooking, mobility, heating, cooling and communications are all essential to development processes. Moreover, the manner in which energy services are realised has both positive and negative consequences for our health, environment, wealth and social relations. At a time when increasing access to modern energy services is seen as a key international development priority – as we attempt to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the context of a changing climate – the STEPS Centre believes a much broader and ambitious approach to energy and development is needed.

This briefing paper, Energy Pathways in Low-Carbon Development: Briefing from STEPS Working Paper 46, summarises how uneven access to modern energy services is not projected to signifiantly improve, making it an urgent policy issue, and how a broader consept of technology must be considered to provide energy pathways for the poor. The paper is part of the CDKN-funded project, Pro-poor, low carbon development: Improving low carbon energy access and development benefits in Least Developed Countries, which aims to enrich understanding on the relative successful adoption of Solar Home Systems in Kenya to inform the design of Climate Innovation Centres and policy initiatives that facilitate the transfer and uptake of low carbon technologies in Kenya and other Least Developed Countries (LDCs). The project aims to identify ways in which low carbon technologies can benefit poor people by improving access to modern energy services.

Further reading:

Project homepage: Pro-poor, low carbon development: Improving low carbon energy access and development benefits in Least Developed Countries
Briefing paper: The political economy of low carbon energy in Kenya
Briefing paper: Low carbon energy and development in low-income countries: Policy lessons from a study of the off-grid photovoltaics sector in Kenya
Report: Sustainable energy for whom? Governing pro-poor, low carbon pathways to development: Lessons from solar PV in Kenya
Report: Energy Pathways in Low Carbon Development: from Technology Transfer to Socio-technical Transformation

For more information, please go to the STEPS Centre website on low carbon development.