The World’s Poor Deserve Greener Energy, Too
By Carl Pope - Jun 20, 2012
With oil costing close to $100 a barrel, and most imported Asian coal about $120 a ton, fossil energy costs are crippling emerging economies in Asia and Africa. Although renewable alternatives are far less costly than they were even two years ago, they still can’t match the cheap coal and oil that Asia and Africa had counted on.
Fortunately, if Asia and Africa embrace bottom-up renewable strategies, they can restrain energy costs, while leapfrogging dirty energy into the emerging post-fossil global economy.
What are bottom-up strategies? They vary based on markets and geography. What they share is a realization that not all electrons are equal; some are worth far more than others, depending, in part, on their proximity to markets.
To make a renewable revolution low-cost, countries should roll out solar and wind projects, investing first in those locales where fossil fuels are most expensive (thanks in India that would mean nowhere, because fossil fuels are made equal in price, whether you live in Himalyan mountains or right outside the LNG import terminal!) .
There are 1.4 billion people without electricity, most of whom aren’t expected to have it for decades. These are the world’s poorest. Counterintuitively,
they can best afford the most sophisticated lighting -- LED lights powered by off-grid solar panels.
(WTF is this guy smoking. What they CAN afford is to lobby with their politico and ask the govt to give them 30 or whatever units free for their basic needs of lighting) . It is far more sensible to do that, rather than go out and by off grid panels and LED lights.
Costly Lighting
The poor already pay a lot for light, mostly from burning kerosene and candles (the poor don't WE DO, in India). The bottom 20 percent of the global income pyramid pays from 9 percent to 18 percent of the world’s lighting bill while receiving only 0.1 percent of the benefits. Over a decade, a
poor family may spend $1,500 or more on kerosene; meanwhile, a decent home solar system would cost just $300, providing not only light, but mobile-phone charging, fans, computers, televisions -- all while saving more than $1,000. (err. Again, this guy is confused on WHO does the paying)
Obviously, the economics are compelling . Access to cheap electricity can increase incomes among the poor by 50 percent, while improving health and educational outcomes (ok. fair point) . Increasingly,
cheap electricity will come from renewables : Global coal prices tripled from 2005 to 2011, and the price of copper more than doubled.
Two outmoded ideas stand in the way of lighting the world. One is the grid myth -- the idea that electrification requires extending a costly grid to every home on the planet. Grid power requires big, remote power plants, typically fired by coal, and miles upon miles of copper wire. (there is a logic in centralization.. reliability, back up, economies of scale, efficiency..and note, putting up millions of panels will be more expensive, costly and use more materials, including "miles upon miles" of copper wire!)
The United Nations estimates that at least half of households lacking electricity will need to be served by off- grid, bottom-up solutions.
The government of India says the comparable figure for Indians is two-thirds. (When did they say that and where , infact, most of India , leaving out BIMARU is nearly fully electrified with grid power ?) Most of the proposed emerging-market investment in renewable energy is nonetheless devoted to big central solar or wind farms -- where renewables are least competitive.
(ah.. the cat is out of the bag. finally)
The second myth is that renewable electrons are expensive and that the poor need subsidies to pay for them. The two major ingredients in home solar -- LED lights and solar panels -- have declined in cost even more rapidly than coal and copper have surged.
A huge fraction of the power pumped into the grid never reaches a customer in India or Africa.
As much as 40 percent can be lost in transmission (ah. the basic point of confusion between "loss" and "theft" and subsidies") .
Wiring a remote village in India adds $0.02 a kilowatt-hour for each kilometer, making local solar electrons significantly cheaper than those fired by distant coal plants and transmitted by copper wire .
True if you are talking of supplying power to ONE house. But if you are talking of a village, it works the other way around. The marginal cost of hooking up an additional house/business /factory to the line , once it is built is next to nothing! It is precisely for that reason, distros like ConEd in highly dense areas like NYC are very profitable , just like landlines historically were. The economies of scale start kicking in very soon,even if you are supplying a small dwelling with 20 families. It is better to get those folks on the grid and you can get control on the subsidies and supply
Financing Options
For the poor, affordability has three dimensions: total cost, upfront price and payment flexibility. That’s why they favor kerosene; they can buy a single day’s supply in a bottle. Solar power comes in a panel that will give 10, even 20, years of light and power. But many cannot afford a 10-year investment or qualify for financing, which requires fixed payments regardless of season. (Of course, the global middle class does not pay for its electricity upfront, either.
When I bought my house, I did not get a bill for the power plants and grid that serve it. I pay for power monthly, based on how many kilowatt- hours I use (obviously hasn't heard of a country called India. Here when you buy a plot of land, YOU pay "development" charges for road, power, sewer and everything and wait for 20 years, you MAY get it for your "sanctioned" plot.) . The developer paid for all that when the house you bought in USA was built and that is included in the price of the house you bought
Remote villages are not the only locations suited to low- carbon alternatives. In African and Indian cities, power companies routinely “load shed” -- shutting down power to entire neighborhoods on hot, sunny afternoons when
air conditioners overwhelm the local grid (
(the grid gets overwhelmed due to agricultural pumpset load in summers historically, this guy doesn't have a clue). To protect themselves, businesses and the middle class rely on dirty, expensive diesel generators, storing the power in batteries and wasting as much as 25 percent of the energy in the process.
Rooftop solar panels would generate power reliably -- even when demand peaks (ah.. the sun shines magically when demand peaks.. Moreover, solar power would pay for itself with savings that would otherwise be squandered on diesel fuel and a leaky grid.
Rooftop solar could end the curse of load- shedding throughout Asia and Africa -- and be profitable 
(is this guy even for real!) . The customers are waiting. What’s needed are suppliers and permission from power authorities for consumers to sell their excess electricity back to the local grid.
Or take irrigation pumping. Farmers lucky (or politically connected) enough to have access to the grid get cheap, or even free, power. They just don’t know when. Consequently, they buy big, cheap, inefficient pumps to flood their fields. Most of the electricity they use is wasted, along with much of the water they pump. Water tables are drained.
Reliable, efficient solar pumps, combined with drip irrigation, can improve crop yields and reduce wasted water and electricity at a fraction of the cost of forcing remote megawatts through an inefficient grid. In much of Africa, the lack of reliable electricity has led to hugely wasteful irrigation technologies -- or to no irrigation at all.
Solar Solution
(okay lets put some numbers here. A 2hp / 1.5kw solar panel will set you back you around $5000! Drip irrigation by another $5000!. Just the capital costs are mind boggling, and this is for a piddly 2 HP pump. Multiply that by millions and you see why there is no economic logic in this. it is just a another way to leach subsidies and that too wastefully on a monumental scale. No farmer is going to put up that kind of capital and hope to recover that capital with a decent return if ever)
Diesel imports are a huge burden in Africa and Asia, with rural mobile-phone towers among the biggest gluttons. By 2015, there will be 1.9 million off-grid towers worldwide, all needing electricity.
Replacing diesel with solar, wind or micro-hydro power would save huge amounts on imported fuel and make phone service cheaper and more reliable (another total blurb.. streams will magically start flowing near a tower, wind will always be blowing and so will the sun be shining, and all that will be "cheaper". If it were, Airtel, Vodafone and Reliance would have done exactly this long ago, rather than spend on diesel and generators) . For smaller towers, this is an obvious solution. As Joe Madden, principal analyst at Mobile Experts LLC, wrote, “In the end, a 500 W solar array and a set of deep-cycle batteries to last for several days can be roughly the same cost as a diesel generator, allowing for almost instant return on investment.”
The end of cheap coal and oil does not eliminate affordable energy options for emerging economies. It does require them to revamp their strategies and solve a variety of institutional and financing challenges they had not previously grappled with.
Bottom-up strategies can be cheap. They can transform living standards in entire villages Nope, they can't. But they are rarely simple.
(nope, devilishly complex) 
Actually they are worse they actually make.
