Even though solar home systems are becoming cheaper and easier to access, barriers to their adoption persist among remote communities in developing countries, where solar panels can promote health and education, according to a new study of two rural villages in Ethiopia.
Affordable but uncertified and substandard solar panels, coupled with minimal government involvement in the rural energy-transition process, are among the key factors that hinder access to reliable electricity for local communities.
At the same time, when solar panels are added to homes, they offer a healthy and environmentally friendly alternative to kerosene lamps, and they support education by providing children electric light to study past sundown.
"Not a lot is known about how the energy transition to renewable energy is occurring in rural areas in the Global South, so we wanted to understand how households are involved," said Yujin Lee, a doctoral student of Regional Science in the Department of City and Regional Planning in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning. Lee is first author of the study, "Upholding Household Agency in Climate Mitigation and Socio-technical Energy Transition in Ethiopia," published March 23 in the journal, Energy Policy.
"We need to ensure that a global energy transition toward renewable and clean sources should not leave behind those remote or rural populations in the developing world," said Chuan Liao, the paper''s senior author and assistant professor in the Department of Global Development in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Ethiopia has developed a national electrification program with an existing and planned national grid system with the aim of electrifying all households within 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) of the nearest grid by 2030. Households located beyond 25 kilometers are expected to receive long-term off-grid solutions.
For the study, Lee travelled to Ethiopia in the summer of 2023 to interview people in three locations. She interviewed government and institutional workers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia''s capital, at the epicenter of the grid system; and local leaders and residents in the Geta Data Zone beyond the 25 kilometer buffer from the existing grid and in the Kaffa Zone within the 25 kilometer buffer zone.
She found rural people were very open to adopting solar panels. "Having light at night has educational effects, allowing children to do homework and study longer," Lee said. "All 16 households that were interviewed responded that they had no intentions of going back to using kerosene in the future." Traditionally, young girls collect firewood for cooking, but when solar electricity can power stoves, it frees up time for girls to go to school, she added.
But adoption is partly thwarted by a lack of good quality solar panels in rural areas. Cheap, uncertified panels break within a few years, and they are often left as garbage, creating environmental pollution, Liao said.
Ongoing discussions between international organizations and the Ethiopian government seek to standardize solar panels and regulate disposal of batteries, Lee said.
Local rural youth, many of whom are unemployed, also wish the government offered technical education on solar installation and maintenance, which could create livelihoods, yet no program exists for that.
Lee recommends that government officials take the time to visit rural areas, for communities to create platforms to be more involved in managing and being accountable for their own energy needs, and for governments, private companies, international organizations, and end users to develop systems for communicating more effectively.
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.
The potential for electricity generation from solar photovoltaic sources in most countries dwarfs their current electricity demand.Policymakers and investors often wonder whether the PV power potential in a specific country or region is good enough to take advantage of and if so, on what scale.
Until now, a global and harmonized assessment of country-level PV potential has not existed. A new World Bank report – "Solar Photovoltaic Power Potential by Country" – attempts to fill this gap by evaluating the theoretical potential (the general solar resource), the practical potential (accounting for additional factors affecting PV conversion efficiency and basic land use constraints), and the economic potential of PV power generation, considering a simplified evaluation of electricity production costs.
The report is based on data provided by the World Bank through theGlobal Solar Atlas, a free, web-based tool providing the latest data on solar resource potential globally. It is accompanied by country factsheets, downloadable from the Global Solar Atlas, that provide a summary of the resource potential and how it compares to other countries.
High-potential countries tend to have low seasonality in solar photovoltaic output, meaning that the resource is relatively constant between different months of the year total, 86% of the global population lives in 150 countries where the difference between the maximum and the minimum output between different seasons is below a factor of two, and average daily output is above 3.5 kWh/kWp.
This report aims to provide findings for high-level comparisons between countries and regions on their solar energy potential and is intended to raise awareness, stimulate investment interest, and inform public debate.
Many less-developed countries—in terms of the human development index, reliability of electricity supply, and access to electricity—tend to have very high practical solar photovoltaic potential, so far untapped Ethiopia just 0.005% of the country''s land area could generate sufficient power to cover existing needs, and in Mexico that figure is just 0.1%.
The World Bank is committed to supporting such countries in harnessing the opportunity for low-cost, clean solar power in a way that supports economic development and job creation – for example through the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program''sSolar Risk Mitigation Initiative. Our support extends from the expansion of markets for distribution of solar home systems through ourLighting Globalinitiative, to establishment ofGreen Mini-Grids, to investment in utility-scalesolar parks and shared infrastructurein support of private sector development.
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