Rural energisation (electrification in particular) is one of the key drivers for ushering in economic development of local communities by providing energy for productive application. Decentralised generation of electricity using clean and renewable technologies can significantly achieve these goals in a county like India and other developing countries where despite aggressive rural electrification plans, access and availability of electricity by rural households is still a challenge. Even though the use of renewable technologies is promoted in India for almost four decades, the uptake of decentralised renewable energy systems is limited when seen in the context of those without access to electricity. Despite the sincere efforts of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) to promote such systems, this sector continues to face many challenges; one of the key ones relate to the effectiveness (viability, reliability, applicability) of offered technology for livelihood related activities. The emphasis of most of the renewable energy dissemination programmes has either been on demonstration of a particular type of technology (biomass gasifier, wind powered pumps etc.) for the purpose of studying its performance reliability, durability etc. or on target oriented programmes such as Remote Village Electrification (RVE), off grid solar programme etc under which standard solar home systems and street lights are installed on individual rural households. There are limited efforts on customising a set of new and existing technologies specifically for livelihood activities with a purpose of improving the reliability and hence uptake of electricity services as well as enhance their cost-effectiveness.
Therefore one of the focuses would be on carrying out innovations on technological, financial, institutional aspects in order to bring clean energy for livelihood generation activities. This encompasses activities ranging from research and development (R&D) to technology customization to demonstration to mass scale deployment. Further, a supportive policy environment is required for innovation, especially for technologies having the potential for high social and environmental benefits but is currently more expensive than alternatives. Besides successful R&D to address technical challenges, considerable effort is also needed to facilitate deployment of these technologies in order to gain operational experience. The learning of this research is expected to address the knowledge gap that currently exists in strategies/ approaches for enhancing the uptake of clean energy technologies and to catalyse action in this direction. The technology would not only be designed and integrated adequately but would also be delivered through an effective service delivery model with an active community involvement. There is also a need of bringing lots of institutional innovations and bringing private participation in these sectors in order to upscale such clean energy based livelihood generation projects.
Therefore the research agenda on the theme of clean energy for livelihood generation has three important dimensions. While the first dimension of the innovation focuses on the use of latest technological and scientific know-how in designing, developing, customising and testing technologies to meet specific end-use applications of rural communities in reliable and cost-effective manner, the second dimension of innovation focuses on how communities associate themselves with the newly introduced technologies and accept/ enhance the uptake of the energy services for their socio-economic benefits and transition to sustainable developmental practices. The third dimension of innovation is to see and test various appropriate business models for up- scaling such projects.
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