As billions across the globe face access and reliability challenges for affordable energy, there is an imperative to shift to cleaner energy systems. Since the challenges in this domain have been misunderstood as those relating to technology and supply issues, often times systems are designed such that they are not people- and planet-centric. The discussion focused on reimagining clean energy problems and shifting the gaze toward solutions that are both people-inclusive and environmentally sustainable. SELCO Foundation’s Huda Jaffer led the discussions by talking about failures in the clean energy programmes she had steered. Jaffer underlined the need to design solutions more holistically, while bringing in appropriate partnerships to account for or reduce the possibility and level of failure.

With immense experience taking on projects that affect lives and livelihoods, Gauri Singh of International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) felt that her prior work with communities helped change the way she viewed implementation. She emphasized the importance of clean energy systems that are locally procured and owned. Such programmes need to be demand-driven and not supply-driven. To buttress this point, Singh used the example of a solar energy project implemented in primary health centres and district hospitals in Madhya Pradesh. The experts did not take the stakeholders’ needs into consideration and fixed solar panels by drilling holes on the roofs. They also used consultation rooms to store batteries. During later field visits, Singh realised the roofs had started leaking and the batteries had taken up much-needed space. Moreover, the panels were not being used due to technical faults that required experts to come in from far-off places. “It probably goes down to who procures the system and for what end. If it is a government entity that is doing large procurements and trying to run a supply-driven programme, you are bound to fail.” she emphasised.

Singh underlined the need to demystify clean energy technologies and design programmes that keep the end-users at its center. An underlying assumption that project implementers know better than the target community leads to situations of ‘over-designing’, and underachievement of stated objectives.

“For things that we think are rocket science or complex and difficult, we need to go and talk to communities to get a sense of what their reality is,” Singh said.

As far as distributed renewable energy is concerned, there is a need to democratise procurement of clean energy systems by bringing in more players and ending the monopoly that state entities have. She highlighted the case of solar energy systems, where strong political will led to the establishment of channel partners who acted as aggregators to take it forward.

As India works to achieve its commitment of 100 Gigawatts of solar energy by 2022, Dr Jai Asundi of CSTEP delved into reasons behind the low uptake of rooftop photovoltaic (RTPV) panels in Bengaluru. One of the main challenges he identified related to the end-users’ uncertainty over financial payback. This stemmed from concerns over policy uncertainty, lack of clarity over what RTPV size is required, and other considerations such as shadows cast over roofs from nearby structures. Taking a risk-averse approach, the solutions CSTEP proposed were limited to decreasing the cost of RTPVs by scaling operations, estimating RTPV potential estimation, producing viable techno-economic analysis, and approaching distribution companies to assist in creating clarity over the process and engaging with citizens.

Since urban areas are fast-changing, CSTEP decided that the technical solution had to involve a large-scale aerial survey using high-resolution imaging. For mapping purposes, CSTEP mounted a LIDAR on a helicopter and flew it around Bengaluru to map every roof. The captured images were stitched together to provide insights on solar insolence.

With the availability of this data, CSTEP expected 1 GW of RTPV installations in a city with a potential of 1.4 GW. Against this expectation, installations amounted to only 30 MW in Bengaluru till date. Dr Asundi attributed this failure to CSTEP’s delay in engaging the distribution company. “We realise that the discom is not the entity we go to at the end of all of this; it is someone that we have to engage right from the beginning because of the powers they hold in the distribution sector” he explained. Considering that their best customers (in terms of those paying most for power) would shift to RTPVs, the discom had no incentive to work towards this. Moreover, if every house on a street decided to get RTPVs, they would be connected to the same distribution transformer, which would give rise to technical problems. To resolve both these issues, CSTEP is working with the discom to develop a ‘data room’ where they can identify roofs that can be solar panelised. This will help tackle technical considerations involving distribution transformers, while bringing in cost-effectiveness.

Dr Asundi pointed out that one of CSTEP’s key failures was redefining the problem to fit within the organisation’s existing capabilities, thereby narrowing its scope and impact. In doing so, CSTEP resorted to a risk-averse mindset and failed to consider other challenges to the uptake of RTPVs.

Stephanie Jones from Europe-based Good Energies Foundation talked about failures she experienced as a grant-maker trying to achieve energy access through small-scale renewables for underserved communities. The first issue she highlighted pertains to framing of solutions and how it is imperative to shift the focus from energy-led to energy-enabled systems. Instead of thinking about the future of a clean energy system, we need to look at its end-users’ aspirations. She also noted that the current ecosystem forces NGOs to compete for limited funding. The solution to this lies in changing the processes in a way that organisations are encouraged to collaborate. This can be achieved by taking a multi-year approach and having an agreement with different players about what their common goal is. There should be room for flexibility to figure out how they will contribute to that goal.

Jones alluded to an earlier campaign planned in India to change the narrative around energy access. During early discussions, there were conversations about the dichotomy between on-grid and off-grid electricity and which was better. Debates on the energy access domain centered around if the solutions lie in mini-grids or lanterns or rooftops, etc. Over time, they decided to have an organised communications campaign of five or six organisations, each bringing their own specialty to the table. The campaign never took off due to funding issues. However, in the five years since the campaign was scrapped, India’s energy access narrative has changed and there is greater consensus that different solutions are required in various contexts. By planning the campaign that never happened, participants internalised the discussions and took back the learnings to their places of work.

Jones also touched upon the failure of expectations and the need to manage them while working with entrepreneurs in the energy access field. Every entrepreneur is incredibly optimistic about how much they can achieve and how quickly they can achieve it. She added, “It is not my job to kill that optimism. But it is my responsibility within my programme planning to recognise that this is going to take longer and build for that. Failures and negative results in interventions need to be recorded as case studies so that organisations do not keep repeating each other’s mistakes”. This will help shift the success metric from getting successful research done to effecting adoption and scale from a research perspective.