Clean Energy Market Emerges for India’s Rural Poor
Yale Environment 360, 29 Sep 10
The market for clean energy products is growing among India’s rural poor, a massive segment that consists of 114 million households and more than 60 percent of the nation’s population of 1.15 billion, according to a new report. Nearly half of India’s rural poor do not have reliable access to electricity and more than 85 percent largely rely on firewood or dung for cooking and heating. As a result, Indian companies are increasingly seeing a market opportunity in providing alternative cooking and electricity products — including solar lanterns, energy-efficient stoves, biomass gasification, and small-scale hydropower — to the nation’s rural market, says the report published by the Centre for Development Finance and the World Resources Institute. Since 2004, the market for green energy products in rural India has grown at an average rate of 36 percent a year and this market could eventually grow to more than $2.1 billion annually, the report said. In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the continued emergence of this market could have profound effects on human health in rural India, as firewood and dung fires produce sooty emissions linked to health problems and premature death.
This post originally appeared on Yale Environment 360.
As markets grow, rural or otherwise, it's going to be important to promote greener solutions. It's good to see those particular connections between energy efficiency on a large scale, and the more particular problems of poor air quality from combustion, come together. I wonder what the comparative speed of implementation between rural and urban areas is? Is there an opportunity for rural areas to take a lead on these issues?
Posted by: Daniela on 30 Sep 10
Please note that comments will remain open for only 14 days after the article is posted. While previous comments will remain visible, attempts to post new comments after this period will fail. This helps stop comment spam, so your forebearance is appreciated.
The Worldchanging comments are meant to be used for further exploration and evaluation of the ideas covered in our posts. Please note that, while constructive disagreement is fine, insults and abuse are not, and will result in the comment being deleted and a likely ban from commenting. We will also delete at will and without warning comments we believe are designed to disrupt a conversation rather than contribute to it. In short, we'll kill troll posts.
Finally, please note that comments which simply repost copyrighted works or commercial messages will be summarily deleted.
