Bijli - Clean Energy for All: connecting the world to clean and affordable solar power
About 30% of India’s population (77 million households or around 360 million people) lack adequate access to electricity. Most have to rely on expensive and dirty kerosene lamps for lighting. A sustainable and scalable model is essential to allow hundreds of millions of people - in India and elsewhere in the world - to access affordable, low carbon, renewable energy. The closing report of The Climate Group’s project Bijli — Clean Energy for All, which was principally funded by the Dutch Postcode Lottery, shows how this project helped reduce greenhouse gas emissions and simultaneously enhanced the lives of rural villagers in India by connecting them to cheaper, cleaner and more reliable renewable energy sources. The Climate Group delivered this project by working with local energy partners. Bijli — Clean Energy for All has provided access to clean, affordable solar energy to over 65,000 people in two years (2014-2015) in the Indian states of Maharashtra, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh. Through the Bijli project, The Climate Group has identified several sustainable off-grid business models with high potential for scale up. Debt financing has been found to be the primary unmet need in the off-grid sector. The Climate Group is seeking to create a debt fund to enable flexible and catalytic financing for the distributed renewable energy sector in India that will bridge the gap to mainstream financial institutions. The report shows how Bijli — Clean Energy for All has helped us take important steps towards achieving our vision of a prosperous low carbon future for rural India.