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Renewable Energy: Scaling Deployment in the United States Chapter j 5 101

For instance, solar lanterns can help displace the need for kerosene lamps,
which contribute to an indoor pollution that is responsible for more than 4
million deaths per year globally, while solar-powered water filtration and
desalination technologies support the delivery of safe drinking water to
millions without access in remote regions. Minigrids are expanding opportu-
nities for rural enterprise, job creation, and increased agricultural productivity
through services such as irrigation, milling, and drying. Furthermore, DRE can
provide critical energy for health services and medical equipment needed by
the 1 billion people worldwide served by health centers and hospitals that lack
access to electricity, a burden disproportionately borne by women. DRE
solutions can not only empower women through health but also can benefit
women directly by proactively integrating women across the value chain of the
technologies, as designers, educators, trainers, managers, and microenterprise
entrepreneurs.
These decentralized solutionsdrenewable energyebased minigrids, solar
lights and home systems, behind-the-meter storage, and a host of associated
appliancesdare increasingly considered a more affordable option than grid
extension for communities living far from the electricity grid. According to the
World Bank’s Global Tracking Framework, in 2015, 717 MW of off-grid
renewable energy in Africa provided electricity access to 60 million people, or
about 10% of the total off-grid population [1, p. 43]. Indeed, DRE systems
already provide energy services to millions of people, with market penetration
increasing annually.
The Global Off-Grid Lighting Association (GOGLA) estimates that over
20 million quality verified lighting products have been sold in the last ten years
by over 100 companies actively focused on solar lanterns and solar home kits
[25, p. 2]. In fact according to GOGLA’s forecasts, about one in three off-grid
households globally will use small-scale off-grid solar by 2020 [8]. The DRE
sector as a whole thus ranks with some of the largest utilities in the world in
terms of household reach. The magnitude of DRE’s global market penetration
over such a short period of time highlights its role as a cheap and fast solution
to basic energy access.
Well-designed and well-implemented policy is one of the most important
factors in enabling energy access, as is well documented in the literature
(Desjardins et al., 2014; Walters et al., 2015; Franz et al., 2014; Murali et al.,
2015). Yet specific focus on solutions for rural electrification, including
specific inclusion of DRE, is not commonly reflected in national policy. In
fact, 73% of LEA countries do not have DRE targets and more than a third
have no national energy access targets at all (Fig. 5.1)(Bloomberg New Energy
Finance, 2016). So if LEA countries desire to establish frameworks that
quickly catalyze development of the DRE sector in-country, what are the most
critical elements of an early-stage policy portfolio?
Here we will briefly explore the success factors for policy best practice to
catalyze DRE market growth based on policy trends observed in high growth