Research

What kind of electricity makes sense in rural Africa to make the most of available budgets? Maximiliane and Jörg address this question in a contribution on The Conversation.

An article by Jörg and two colleagues on the use of improved cookstoves as an instrument of effective climate policy was among the ten most read articles of 2020 on VoxDev, a platform for economists, policymakers, practitioners, donors, the private sector and others interested in development to discuss key policy issues.

In this article in the Economist, study results by our team and University of Passau are discusssed in the context of debates about grid extension to rural areas in developing countries as compared to off-grid alternatives.

This week, we brought together an exciting group of environmental & development researchers to exchange at the RWI Research Network Workshop on Deforestation and Energy. Looking forward to continue the discussions on this nexus!

Under the headline “How the other half cooks“, The Economist features in its print edition from early April a report on the efforts to coax people towards cleaner cooking fuels. The article describes the situation on the ground in rural Senegal, more specifically a study region of one of our ongoing research projects, and discusses findings from our studies on the uptake of improved cookstoves.

In a short article in the peer-reviewed practitioner journal Boiling Point, Gunther and Jörg discuss insights derived from a recent study in Senegal into potential intervention design and communication approaches for entry-level improved stoves.

This blog article discusses findings from a field experiment conducted in rural Rwanda where we evaluated the revealed willingness to pay for different off-grid solar technologies. The discussion feeds into our work as part of the Sustainable Energy Transitions Initiative (SETI) network.

An intense debate continues on how best to provide electricity to the 1.1 billion people currently without access to it – Jörg discusses this topic in a World Bank blogpost together with Michael Toman from the Development Research Group and Energy and Environment Team at World Bank.

Jörg reviewed the book “Infrastructure and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa” by Antonio Estache and Quentin Wodon. The review is available here and is forthcoming in the Journal of Development Studies.

We have now published a discussion paper on offgrid lighting in Africa, where we outline the largely unnoticed transition from kerosene to LED lamps powered by dry-cell battery lamps.

In further recent discussion papers, we discuss the evidence of impacts of electrification with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa (where we also rely on a recent study conducted in Rwanda) and assess the link between rural electrification and domestic violence.

We will present some of our latest research at the IAEE International Energy Conference in New York City, June 15 – 18, and at the World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists in Instanbul, June 28 – July 2, 2014.