Abstract
The common agreement of the United Nation members pushes the 2030 Agenda ahead to alleviate poverty and ensure wellbeing for all, recognizing energy as a crucial pathway to achieving this goal under three core dimensions: human development, sustainable economic growth, and environmental sustainability. Affordable and clean energy is represented by the Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7). This great scope represents a multifaceted challenge for all countries, especially for the most disadvantaged environments such as small islands and rural areas from developing countries. Both small islands and rural areas experience a scarcity of goods and services such as energy and are isolated from markets, have lack of human resources, difficulties in deploying economies of scale, and other issues that affect their development. Along the same line, their energy security is limited by their dependence on imported fuels, increasing electricity prices or making it infeasible to access electricity. This research builds the state of the art of off-grid energy systems for both contexts based on an extensive review of literature. The evidence shows that moving sustainable energy systems forward requires getting more people involved, the application of several business models, prevalent technological innovations, and the application of technical quality procedures. This perspective would really help to address the vulnerabilities of fragile locations. Here, auctions, the Energy Service Company, community, and Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) models and renewable energy projects based on mature technology present a great opportunity for a sustainable future, powering a nexus among energy, environment, and society.
Highlights
This research stresses the importance of one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Goal 7: “Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all” [1]
This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 summarizes the progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7); Section 3 presents the largest challenges in the most vulnerable contexts; Section 4 shows the current status of renewable energy and storage technologies; Section 5 shows the categorization of off-grid energy systems; Sections 6 and 7 describe financing and business models applied
On small islands, the configuration of large power hybrid renewable mini-grids vary depending on the renewable resources and financing available
Summary
This research stresses the importance of one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Goal 7: “Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all” [1]. In 2015, during the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which responded to the worries brought about GHG emissions by 2020, the delegates acknowledged the need to foster the universal access to energy in developing countries with the much-needed support of the developed countries in the form of funding, technology, and training [10]. This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 summarizes the progress in achieving the SDG7; Section 3 presents the largest challenges in the most vulnerable contexts; Section 4 shows the current status of renewable energy and storage technologies; Section 5 shows the categorization of off-grid energy systems; Sections 6 and 7 describe financing and business models applied.
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