Abstract
Rapidly falling renewable technology costs and new business models mean that decentralized energy solutions hold great promise to accelerate universal sustainable energy access. Across developing countries, women are typically the primary household energy managers. Close to their customers, women entrepreneurs have the potential to lower customer acquisition and servicing costs and drive these new decentralized solutions. However, they remain under-represented in the industry. This paper attempts to understand the root causes of this gender gap. It formulates the research hypothesis that market transformation policies intended to reduce investment risks to accelerate energy access may not benefit men and women entrepreneurs equally because of the existing structural barriers that women face. To test this hypothesis, the paper conducts a gender sensitive investment barrier and risk analysis, overlaid onto an existing gender neutral taxonomy of investment barriers and risks for decentralized sustainable energy solutions. A key finding is that for women entrepreneurs, existing structural impediments to gender equality translate into additional investment barriers as well as increased likelihood of occurrence and severity of the financial impact of generic investment risks. The paper offers an illustrative theory of change to facilitate a dialogue on the specific interventions needed to address these gender differentiated risks locally. It concludes that market transformation efforts for universal sustainable energy access must include targeted policy measures to ensure equal benefits to men and women entrepreneurs, and optimize the use of public resources to catalyze private investment and reduce poverty.
Highlights
Decentralized sustainable energy technologies—both at the individual systems level, such as solar home systems, and at the mini-grid level servicing 50 to100 households—are the cheapest solutions for energy access in an increasing number of locations [1,2,3]
In line with step 3 of the market transformation framework, we have identified a number of possible public interventions and instruments to address each of the gender specific risks and barriers analyzed in part II
An increase to a women’s income of $10 achieves the same improvements children’s nutrition and health as an increase of $110 to a man’s income [78]. Despite this critical role that women can play in the transition to universal sustainable energy access through decentralized solutions, they remain under-represented in the DESCO sector
Summary
Decentralized sustainable energy technologies—both at the individual systems level, such as solar home systems, and at the mini-grid level servicing 50 to100 households—are the cheapest solutions for energy access in an increasing number of locations [1,2,3]. Women entrepreneurs should have enormous potential to create distribution and servicing networks in rural areas and drive these new business models, they are under-represented in the industry. Its presents a gender neutral market transformation framework to remove investment barriers and accelerate universal sustainable energy access for the poor. It tests the hypothesis that gender neutral market transformation policies to accelerate energy access may not benefit men and women entrepreneurs because of the existing structural barriers that women face. It proposes a generic theory of change to ensure that market transformation efforts benefit women and men entrepreneurs, increasing their costeffectiveness and development impact. The conclusion proposes some additional research avenues to deepen our understanding of the gender investment gap in the industry
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