We stand at the cusp of a transformative moment in rural and last-mile productive-use electrification, where a coordinated approach to grid and off-grid planning and investment has the potential to unlock new public-private partnerships that can dramatically bend the curve on ending energy poverty. The purpose of the Global Commission to End Energy Poverty (GCEEP) is to forge an actionable consensus among leading investors, utilities, and policymakers that lays out a viable pathway for providing electricity services to hundreds of millions of under-served homes and businesses more quickly and more cost-effectively than the current trajectory.
The Commission comprises high-ranking representatives from the energy sectors of several African and Asian countries, along with investors, multilateral development banks, academics, and the leaders of utilities, and off-grid firms. It will operate under the joint chairmanship of The Rockefeller Foundation President Dr. Rajiv J. Shah; former U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest J. Moniz, special advisor to the MIT President and the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems emeritus at MIT; and Africa Development Bank President Akinwumi Adisina. They will oversee the work of a research team led by MIT Energy Initiative Deputy Director Robert Stoner—who will also serve as the secretary of the Commission—and MIT visiting professor Ignacio Perez-Arriaga.
The Center on Global Energy Policy is represented on the commission by Senior Fellow John MacWilliams.
I recently returned from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where I joined roughly 84,000 people for the largest climate conference ever: COP28.
Upon returning from COP28 in Dubai late last week, the need to address the energy needs of the developing world is more pressing now than ever before.
The Energy Opportunity Lab (EOL) at Columbia University SIPA’s Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP) organized the Energy Opportunity Forum in New York on November 17, 2023.
Long before crowdsourcing became a worldwide phenomenon, “Harambee” (“pulling together”) was the Kenyan national motto. In postcolonial Kenya, fundraising became a way to build schools and hospitals and...
Nearly 775 million people around the globe are estimated to have no access to electricity. In 2022, that number rose.