One third of the world’s population — more than 2 billion people — lacks access to modern energy services to meet their basic energy needs with deleterious impacts on health, gender equity, socioeconomic development, and the environment. Expanding access to cleaner, more efficient energy systems for cooking, productive uses of heat and to electricity is critical to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for reducing global poverty.

Successful project design and implementation requires an integrated approach, that addresses not only technical aspects but also the socio-cultural, financial and institutional barriers and opportunities that projects may face. This course will provide students with a framework needed to better understand and participate in the design, implementation and evaluation of rural energy systems that are socially, financially, physically, and environmentally sustainable. The learning from this course will also be applicable to other sustainable technologies, addressing issues related to natural resource management in general.

Specific questions to be addressed include:

 Why do rural energy projects fail?

 How does one improve adoption and use of the proposed systems?

 How does a program increase financial affordability for low-income customers?

 What are institutional barriers to energy projects and how does one address them?