Sustainable Energy & Poverty Reduction: The role of clean energy technologies in promoting income-generating activities in low-income settlements

Access to a reliable and sustainable energy source is vital for wealth creation and poverty reduction in low-income communities in the global South. This has increasingly been recognised by international donors and development agencies over recent years, as evidenced by the increasing amounts of international funding being made available to support initiatives such as the UN's Sustainable Energy For All initiative. Nonetheless, much of this recent activity has focused on the role of clean energy technologies in meeting the needs of off-grid rural communities. The major challenge of addressing the energy needs of the urban poor, many of whom operate small businesses from their home, has been overlooked despite the fact that they are often the first to suffer from the inadequacies of inefficient and frequently over-loaded national energy systems.

In the context of an increasingly severe energy crisis in Ghana, this PhD project will, therefore, explore how poor access to energy is affecting the income-generating activities of residents in urban low-income settlements and the potential role that a variety of different clean energy technologies could play in alleviating the crisis and reducing urban poverty. The research will thus make an important contribution to understanding the opportunities and challenges associated with scaling up clean energy for development in the often overlooked urban context.

The first period of the research will be devoted to detailed scoping of the range of clean energy technologies already employed in urban Ghana, as well as a wider review of the deployment of technologies in other parts of urban Africa and beyond and their appropriateness to the context of urban Ghana. This will be conducted within the context of a detailed review of the nature and dynamics of energy poverty and the state of national energy systems within the country. On the basis of the reviews conducted during this first period, the specific locations to be explored in detail and the major technologies that will be focused upon will be determined and the detailed programme for empirical research (which will involve a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches) determined. An extended period of time will be spent conducting fieldwork in urban Ghana.