OPENACCESS ENERGY

How do we establish universal electricity access through solar energy to create practical opportunities for quality education, new business models, better health outcomes and clean water while mitigating the effects of climate change?

This was the driving question behind WGSI’s OpenAccess Energy Summit. At an Advisory Workshop (October 18-20) and the OpenAccess Energy Summit (April 24-27), contributors explored the wide and varied collaborations that are essential to addressing the solar energy access challenge and developed strategic focus areas to accelerate solutions, from rooftop solar panels, to utility scale solar farms, to grid improvements, and more.

WHY ENERGY ACCESS?

We are living in times of great economic and social opportunity. Emerging technological, social and business innovations in the solar panels mean that it is now possible for more than 1 billion people to, for the first time, gain access to the modern electricity services that will radically transform their well-being.

Establishing universal electricity access creates practical opportunities for quality education, new business models, better health outcomes, clean water and support for agriculture. Clean renewable solar energy technologies that rely on the sun’s power will form the backbone of an energy transition that will mitigate the effects of climate change.

This opportunity has arisen because new and emerging solar technologies are ushering in a revolution in energy access in the developing world. It is now possible to deliver modern electricity services to remote regions via off-grid electricity and micro-grids powered by renewable energy sources. Low cost solar power, high-efficiency appliances that can connect to a simple and cheap modular micro-grid, data collection through mobile communication networks and mobile-based micro-payment channels are examples of innovations that offer a chance for genuine and lasting change.

Since the Summit
Learn about our presence at COP22 as well as projects and collaborations that emerged from the OpenAccess Energy 2030 Summit.

OPENACCESS ENERGY BLUEPRINT

The OpenAccess Energy Blueprint features:

  • insight into proactive governance, creating a fair marketplace, empowering people, and effective entrepreneurship for energy access;
  • Solutions Spotlights featuring innovative technologies, business and finance models;
  • a commitment to establishing and nurturing partnerships on the road to establishing energy access;
  • Plan for Plenty – a feature section on energy access challenges in Canada’s remote Indigenous communities.
  • ERRATA: Page 45 – A previous version of this version had an incorrect source listed for this statement “The estimated cost for site below the 60th parallell is CA$ 458 million.” This reference has been corrected.

Our partners at The Discourse have developed a web version of the OpenAccess Energy Blueprint as part of their Power Struggle project.

OPENACCESS ENERGY BLUEPRINT

Power Struggle is a collaboration of journalists around the world who are investigating how energy poverty affects people in their regions — and what solutions are emerging. To date, reporters from Kiribati, Zimbabwe, Togo, Nigeria, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, Nepal, Bangladesh, Romania, and Mexico have contributed to Power Struggle and their stories have appeared in Inter Press Service, SciDev.Net, The Zimbabwean, The Independent (Bangladesh), Al Jazeera, Thomson Reuters Foundation, Republica (Nepal), The Tyee, the Guardian and the New York Times.