A Handbook for Measuring Energy Access in Developing Countries

Impact evaluation has gained recognition over the last decade as an essential component of project development. Impact evaluation details how and to what extent policies and project interventions contribute to socioeconomic welfare gains or losses for society. Such evaluations are also important for identifying key lessons for future policies and investments. In the case of modern energy access, the measurement of costs is fairly straightforward. However, measuring the benefits to society is more difficult and might involve implementing national or regional surveys. Past efforts have often underestimated the complex linkages of benefits produced by programs involved in providing electricity and clean cooking energy to rural and other populations without access to modern energy services. Thus, it has often been difficult to balance the costs of program investments in energy access vis-à-vis their benefits.

This study’s main objective is to develop a practical method by which to measure the benefits of rural energy, including both electricity and clean cooking. The methods reviewed in this report involve both formal and informal techniques of data collection, including quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis. The research pays attention to such concepts as quality of life, effects on education, and other key components of social development; that is, it tackles those benefits of modern energy access that traditionally have been difficult to measure, as well as the easier-to-measure benefits.

This study can be downloaded from the Inter-American Development Bank's website.

The Household Benefits of Lighting with Electricity: Consumer Surplus Explained

Figure 1. Consumer Surplus for Lighting

(Graphic: Doug Barnes)

By Doug Barnes

The concept of consumer surplus in measuring the benefits of rural electrification continues to be misunderstood by many people. In this posting, I try to address some of those misperceptions. The main point is that consumer surplus is really a shortcut way to measure social and economic benefits. People purchase kerosene to use in lamps, and then in turn use the light from those lamps for various activities they want to do. Likewise, households purchase electricity to produce light, and this permits an even wider variety of evening activities in the households. People know that electric lights over the short and long term might result in increased education, improved productivity, better ability to host social gatherings and other benefits.

The slightly modified quote below is from Chapter 9 of Electric Power for Rural Growth, and it discusses the evolution of the way benefits of rural electrification have been measured over the years.

Electric Power for Rural Growth, 2nd Edition.

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I recently published a new book on the impact of rural electrification in developing countries. Actually it is a revision of an old book. This is the second edition of my first book Electric Power for Rural Growth, published in 1988 based on research during my first job at Resources for the Future. At the time, international donors were having serious doubt about the benefits of rural electrification for developing countries.

To see a description of the book on this site, click on this link.

This entirely new production of the original book offers important historical information on the state of rural electrification in the 1980s. I have updated the text and titles, and the tables and charts have been revised for clarity. Some material that is no longer relevant has been omitted. I also have added a new chapter that summarizes the development of benefit evaluation methods, along with findings from recent research on the impact of rural electrification for development.

Overall, the issues identified in the 1980s remain extremely relevant today in the context of the new international emphasis on providing modern energy access for all. This includes its social impact and the productive use of electricity for agriculture and small business development. The main countries covered include India, Indonesia and Colombia. Many of the lessons learned from this study have been lost, especially with today's emphasis of providing electricity to those remaining people without service. Although this is a very important, the complementary conditions for rural electrification also should not be forgotten in the rush to provide "electricity for all."

Since the original writing of this book, the development impact of grid electricity on rural households has been the subject of a significant amount of research. I am glad to report that the findings of this early study have been validated for the most part.

Further research still is necessary on subjects like the impact of solar home systems or small lighting systems on socioeconomic development. It is well-known that certain activities cannot be accomplished by relying on the low power levels available through solar home or smaller photovoltaic systems. The question is whether this matters or should such technologies be considered “pre-electrification”—important in their own right but awaiting further expansion of grid electricity systems. These important new questions can only be answered by new research.

In the meantime, I offer this second edition of my impact study of rural electrification. The purposes of this book are to inform the issues in the public policy debate, advance empirical knowledge about the major issues and reach conclusions on the efficacy of various ways to implement rural electrification for development. In the context of new initiatives to promote the expansion of both grid and offgrid electrification, this study with its emphasis on the importance of complementary conditions is probably more important today even than it was over 20 years ago.

Impact of Rural Electrification in Peru: A "New" Study

By Doug  Barnes

 

A “new” report on rural electrification in Peru demonstrates the usefulness of conducting energy surveys to help with assessing policies for such programs.  The usefulness stems from the ability to not only estimate the benefits of rural electrification, but to analyze if the subsidy policies are both effective and well targeted. There are many ways to structure subsidies for rural electrification in developing countries (see previous blog on energy subsidies).  Some types of subsidies can be progressive and others well could be regressive.   Assessing the appropriativeness type of subsidy generally is difficult to do without energy survey information.  

Rural Energy Expenditures by Income Class in Peru
in Soles per Month (1 US$  = 3 Soles) 
Source: Peru National Survey of Rural Energy Use

In developing countries generally people with higher income spend more cash income on energy than those with lower levels of income.  This same pattern can be found in Peru as indicated by the figure.  It is somewhat expected that electricity and LPG expenditures in rural Peru increase significantly with increases in income as measured by total expenditures.  But interestingly even cash expenditures on fuelwood rise with income which indicates that there is even a willingness to pay for what is probably high quality fuelwood. One reason that it is necessary to have quality surveys is to track both the effectiveness and the targeting of subsidies.

Comparative Cooking Costs in Developing Countries

By Douglas Barnes and Keith Openshaw

Kerosene Lamps and Stoves, Hyderabad, India by D. Barnes

Recently we have just reviewed many of programs for improved stoves in developing countries, and we were quite surprised to find that there were few analyses of comparative cooking costs. In the glory days of country energy assessments comparing the cost of cooking to enlighten energy policy makers was very common. Today we stress energy efficiency, combustion, emissions, and carbon. However, if people are going to adopt these stoves the comparative cooking costs are an obvious important place to start. Keith Openshaw who has extensive experience with improved stoves is a coauthor of this posting. 

To revive this lost art, we will explain the steps for calculating comparative cooking. The first step is to assemble the necessary data. This includes:

• Cost of the stove;
• Lifetime of the stove;
• Efficiency of the stove;
• Price of fuels used burned by the stove including wood or other biomass fuels;
• Fuel collection hours for biomass fuels;
• Quantity of fuel consumed in the household per month; and
• Average wage of agricultural workers.

One caveat is that the comparative costs in this analysis are hypothetical because they assume that families cook exclusively with one fuel. Also, we use world market prices and average fuel consumption levels as defined by many different household energy surveys. Thus, these figures can be considered as typical but they do not relate to any one country due to various policies to tax and subsidize household fuels. They at least give us some perspective on the comparative costs of cooking in developing countries.

For much more continue below....

Rural Electrification and Communication

Vietnam Rural Television Viewing: Photo by WB Hanoi

Today most of us take electronic communications for granted. We are tethered to our emails, televisions, and computers.  Facebook, Twitter, sports and entertainment all are made possible by a combination of electricity and technology. Does this improve our productivity?  The answer is a resounding yes. Does it also make life more complicated? You bet. In fact, sometimes we feel that the world is getting too interconnected. This raises the question about how to value the electronic communication benefits of modern communications, and it is not an easy issue to tackle.

For the 1.6 billion people in this world who do not have access to electricity their electronic communication needs are more basic. People without grid or off the grid electricity often rely on battery powered radios for their communication devices. For people that adopt electricity for the first time, after household lighting the next most commonly purchased electronic device often is a television or a fan. Therefore in this blog, I am going to concentrate on televisions use and their implications for households with and without electricity.

For more on this issue continue below.....

Measuring Household Lighting: Survey Design Issues

Lighting: Credit NRECA

In developed countries we take electric lights for granted. We throw a switch, and presto the room lights up from ceiling to floor. But we all have experienced life without electricity during periodic brownouts and blackouts when we get out the candles for several hours. Unfortunately for the approximately 1.5 billion people without electricity in developing countries, there is no switch to throw.

One of the major benefits of rural electrification in developing countries is household lighting. In fact, people often ask my advice on how to measure such benefits. The issues can range from sampling to questionnaire design to sampling techniques. Thus, this is the first in a series of blogs which I will call Survey Design. For the first in this series, I am going to focus on how to measure household lighting. Stay tuned for more on surveys.

Lighting Efficinecy: Credit D. Barnes

People without electricity in developing countries generally light their homes with candles or kerosene wick lamps. The light given from a kerosene lamp is very dim and not great for reading and there is a good reason for this. For measuring lighting in households it is essential to understand that light is measured in lumens. A lumen is a unit used for measuring brightness. A kerosene lamp or a candle gives off about 11 lumens (see chart). By comparison a 100 watt incandescent light bulb provides 1,600 lumens, which is labeled on most packaging. The figure demonstrates that electric lights are much more efficient in converting energy into light. In a measurement study on lighting output it was found that a 100 watt incandescent light bulb typically found in developing countries actually turned out to provide 12.8 kilolumens of light per kilowatt hour compared to 0.1 kilolumens per kilowatt hour for a kerosene lamp. Fluorescent lights are even more efficient.

The reason for the difference between the lumen levels listed on the label on a light bulb package and the testing results has to do with the measurement environment. Actual lumen levels vary based on factors such as reflectors, lenses and location of the light in a room.

Efficiency of Lamps: Credit D. Barnes

How does that have an impact on household lighting? I will demonstrate this by using the results of a household energy survey from Peru. These results are based on actual use of various lighting sources for a national rural sample of 6000 households. As can be seen, the candle and kerosene lamps provide barely enough light to walk around the house. Car Batteries are used for lighting by households with higher incomes but without grid electricity and they provide more light. Due to the efficiency of converting energy into light, electricity from the grid is the best source for household lighting for households who participated in the survey in rural Peru. One may wonder why these household without electricity do not use household photovoltaic systems, but that will be the subject of another post.

For more resources on this topic click the link below.