Community solar energy initiatives in India: A pathway for addressing energy poverty and sustainability?

Abstract

Sustainable technologies for social mobilization and community empowerment are contemporary phenomena of grassroots innovation movements. The origins of the grassroots innovations appear in the appropriate technology movement of the 1970s, the People's Science Movement of the 1980s, and more recently, the Social Movement Organization as seen in the cases of the Honey Bee Network in India and the Social Technology Network in Brazil. This paper articulates the community energy movement in India in the framework of ‘grassroots innovations for sustainability’. The paper presents three fine case studies of off-grid community energy initiatives namely, the Dungarpur Renewable Energy Technologies Private Limited, (DURGA), the Barefoot College and the Rampura Community Solar Power Plant (CSPP). The case studies represent three different kind of business models of community energy projects – a private limited company, a market-based model and a village energy committee (VEC) model. Therefore, they are representative of different grassroots innovations in off-grid energy projects. The case studies exemplify how off-grid community energy projects may manifest an embedded character of the grassroots innovations and address energy poverty and social justice concerns, such as community participation, equitable distribution of benefits, representation of marginalized communities. The case studies also demonstrate that the grassroots innovations in off-grid energy projects may enhance social mobilization, community empowerment and sustainability. To conclude, the findings of this research show that grassroots innovations in technology and sustainable development are consistent with each other.