India has made remarkable progress in providing access to electricity and clean cooking while implementing a range of energy interventions and integrating greater renewable energy into the grid. Over the last two decades, over half a billion Indians have gained access to electricity increasing the share of grid-electrified households from 43% to almost 100%.
But even with the progress made, many areas continue to be impacted due to the lack of access to reliable, sustainable and affordable electricity connections. The resulting human and economic costs can be high: health care will remain inadequate, schools will struggle to offer quality education, and agricultural and industrial enterprises will not be competitive. Over 680 million Indian still rely on biomass and are without access to clean cooking facilities.
Manu Maudgal, Director-Clean Power Programme states that “as India’s development story unfolds, expanding electricity access is critical to achieving sustainable and inclusive development for communities. We urgently need to bring clean, affordable, reliable energy to those who lack it.” The solutions on offer have focused on supply-side, technology-centric approaches. We need to advance demand driven clean energy solutions in national and sub-national energy strategies to expand electricity access.
Shakti's Energy Access for Development program promotes clean, affordable and reliable energy access solutions that alleviate poverty and boost development and social protection. We focus on finding solutions to the barriers in achieving the 3A’s - Assurance, Availability and Affordability.
We collaborate with technical experts, policymakers and civil society to champion integrated clean energy priorities in the health-education-livelihoods sectors. We work with state actors and policy networks to catalyze robust policy solutions and innovative technologies to close the electricity access gap focusing on underserved and unserved communities. We promote efficient last mile 24X7 access by advancing technologies, improving community livelihoods through green entrepreneurship and mitigating climate risks through energy access.