Inside Rockefeller Foundation’s $20 Million Plan to Improve Energy Access in India
The Rockefeller Foundation recently announced it will invest $20 million to expand energy access in rural India over the next three years. Off-grid renewable minigrids, as microgrids are known in India, figure prominently in the foundation’s plans.
Smart Power India, a program launched by the foundation in 2015, intends to bring sustainable energy to at least 25 million Indians across six states in five years. That dovetails with India’s goals for renewable energy, universal energy access and climate change action. The foundation sees minigrids as one of the most cost-effective and beneficial means of realizing the goals and plans to make them a centerpiece.
Smart Power India is part of a larger Rockefeller Foundation international clean-energy rural electrification program that has raised $32 million in project debt financing over the last 18 months.
In India, the foundation is focusing on the states of Jharkhand, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where less than 10 percent of rural households have access to electricity.
“There’s a massive need for investments in this area, and there’s a real opportunity to invest in deployment of decentralized solar-storage and other local, environmentally friendly renewable energy systems — 30, 40 or 50-kW minigrid systems — with the capacity to power entire villages and commercial or industrial facilities,” said Ashvin Dayal, who leads the Rockefeller Foundation’s global smart power initiative...