Interview: Experts urge redirection of energy subsidy savings into renewable energy

Developing countries, especially those in Africa, need to redirect savings they are making from the removal of subsidies into renewable energy development, experts have urged.

In an interview with Xinhua, Bernie Jones, Co-Chair for the Smart-Villages project, said here on Wednesday that investments must be done in renewable energies such that it can serve the needs of off-grid communities while expanding for future sustainability.

The Smart Villages initiative, a three-year round non-profit project which aims to look at how energy could be used in off-grid rural communities, held a three-day consultative meeting for West Africa, here.

"The simplest sources of financing, you mentioned subsidies yourself, governments are spending a lot of money on fossil fuel subsidies very often. It is a painful thing for the political process or for the population to wean people from the fuel subsidies," he conceded.

Jones, however, pointed out that if a government could act smartly and use some of the monies they were saving from those fuel subsidies to try to set up something to promote cleaner technology for both energy and cooking, then that's a win-win for everybody."

He added that after renewable energy sources are used for off-grid communities these can be up-scaled into bigger plants for grid uses.

"The other side of the equation is, we have seen how the off-grid technologies, things like solar panels, can be aggregated into very large grid level infrastructure.

"So many countries in Africa now have solar farms of many mega watts and that's the good way of cutting down the cost," he added.

In the search for financing sources, Jones pointed to international climate funds because switching from technologies like kerosene to more cleaner technologies like solar, mini-hydro or cleaner cook-stoves have a big impact on climate change.

He therefore urged governments to design creative programs that would enable them to access international climate funding.

The meeting discussed how best off-grid energies and technologies could best be used in those villages without grid energy sources to generate energy, and how those technologies could be brought to these villages by entrepreneurs.

Olasimbo Sojinrin, who manages the Nigerian operations of Solar Sisters which markets solar energy sources and smart cook wares in rural Nigeria, said renewable energy was the future for off-grid communities.

He said the need to switch was urgent so that children would be able to study at night, while all the indoor smoke inhalation which results in killer diseases would also end. Endit