Explore the vast range of titles available.

Half of humanity about 3 billion people are still relying on solid fuels for cooking and heating. Of that, about 2.5 billion people depend on traditional biomass fuels (wood, charcoal, agricultural waste, and animal dung), while about 400 million people use coal as their primary cooking and heating fuel (UNDP and WHO 2009). The majority of the population relying on solid fuels lives in Sub-Saharan Africa and in South Asia. In some countries in Central America and in East Asia and the Pacific, the use of solid fuels is also significant. The inefficient and unsustainable production and use of these fuels result in a significant public health hazard, as well as negative environmental impacts that keep people in poverty. Strategies to improve energy access to the poor have focused mainly on electricity access. They have often neglected non electricity household energy access. It is, however, estimated that about 2.8 billion people will still depend on fuel wood for cooking and heating in 2030 in a business-as-usual modus operandi (IEA 2010). The need for urgent interventions at the household level to provide alternative energy services to help improve livelihoods is becoming more and more accepted. This report's main objective is to conduct a review of the World Bank's financed operations and selected interventions by other institutions on household energy access in an attempt to examine success and failure factors to inform the new generation of upcoming interventions. First, the report provides a brief literature review to lay out the multidimensional challenge of an overwhelming reliance on solid fuels for cooking and heating. Second, it highlights how the Bank and selected governments and organizations have been dealing with this challenge. Third, it presents lessons learned to inform upcoming interventions. And finally, it indicates an outlook on the way forward.

India has led the developing world in addressing rural energy problems. By late 2012, the national electricity grid had reached 92 percent of India s rural villages, about 880 million people. In more remote areas and those with geographically difficult terrain, where grid extension is not economically viable, off-grid solutions using renewable-energy sources for electricity generation and distribution have been promoted. The positive results of the country s rural energy policies and institutions have contributed greatly to reducing the number of people globally who remain without electricity access. Yet, owing mainly to its large population, India has by far the world s largest number of households without electricity. More than one-quarter of its population or about 311 million people, the vast majority of whom live in poorer rural areas, still lack an electricity connection; less than half of all households in the poorest income group have electricity. Among households with electricity service, hundreds of millions lack reliable power supply.

Despite the East Asia and Pacific (EAP) region's impressive economic growth, over 1 billion of its people still lack access to electricity and modern cooking solutions. To achieve universal access to modern energy by 2030, this book exhorts EAP countries to advance simultaneously on two paths: (1) accelerate programs for grid and off-grid electricity through appropriate policies and innovative technologies; and (2) scale up access to clean cooking fuels and efficient cooking stoves, particularly for biomass in poor rural areas.

This report demonstrates that a \"climate-smart\" energy strategy is possible for countries in the East Asia region, with support from the international community. In the past three decades, the East Asia region has experienced the fastest economic growth in the world, accompanied by rapid urbanization. As a consequence, energy consumption has more than tripled and is expected to further double over the next two decades. This remarkable growth and rapid urbanization have led to twin energy challenges in the region: improving environmental sustainability and enhancing energy security. The region has many of the world's most polluted cities, resulting from fossil fuel combustion. The region also contains some of the largest greenhouse gas emitters in the world, although their per capita and historical emissions are much below the levels of industrialized countries. Concerns with energy security have grown because of increased risks of price volatility and possible disruptions in supplies for oil and gas. To move the region to a sustainable energy path, the commitment of the respective governments and communities is essential. The governments will need energy-pricing reforms that no longer encourage the use of fossil fuels, and put in place regulations and incentives that improve energy efficiency and support low-carbon technologies. The governments also will need to ramp up research and development for new technologies to leapfrog to the clean energy revolution. The countries cannot move to a sustainable energy path alone. They will need the support of the international community. Substantial concessional financing is essential to motivate energy efficiency and low-carbon technology investments. Transfer of low-carbon technologies and institutional strengthening also will be needed.

The first volume of Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) series (IEG 2009) examined World Bank experience with the promotion of the most important win-win (no regrets) energy policies, policies that combine domestic gains with global greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions. These included energy pricing reform and policies to promote energy efficiency. This second phase covers the entire World Bank Group (WBG), including the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). It assesses of interventions, from technical assistance to financing to regulatory reform. This project-eye view of activities pertains to all the action areas of the Strategic Framework on Development and Climate Change (SFDCC). The third phase will look at the challenge of adaptation to climate change. The WBG's resources, human and financial, are small compared to the task at hand. The International Energy Agency estimates that developing and transition countries need $16 trillion of energy sector investments over 2008-30 under 'business as usual' operations, plus an additional $5 trillion to shift to an ambitiously low-carbon path. Much more is needed for sustainable land and forest management and for urban transport. So a prime focus of this evaluation is how the WBG can get the most leverage, the widest positive impact on both development and climate change mitigation, from its limited resources.

Under the constraint of carbon neutrality targets, the issue of energy poverty has garnered increasing concerns. This study aims to measure energy poverty and assess the impact of renewable energy technology innovation in 30 provinces across China. Furthermore, it calculates city-level energy poverty in 274 cities. By examining the influence of renewable energy technology innovation on energy poverty, this study proposes a new approach to accelerate energy transition and promote sustainable development. The regression results, which have undergone rigorous robustness and endogeneity tests, demonstrate that renewable energy technology innovation significantly alleviates energy poverty. Moreover, the treatment effect of policies is determined through the regression control method. Specifically, the cities of Zhangjiakou, Baotou, and Qiqihar are analyzed to provide targeted suggestions for China’s energy development. The treatment effects of both provincial and city-level policies indicate that implementing renewable energy demonstration zones can effectively alleviate energy poverty. JEL Classification: Q48; O31

This research seeks to enhance energy management systems (EMS) within a microgrid by focusing on the importance of accurate renewable energy prediction and its strong correlation with load curtailment. Analyzing the precision of disturbance predictions, reveals that predicting one hour in advance is more effective than immediate predictions or those made several hours beforehand. Furthermore, the study investigates scheduling load curtailment to manage peak power from renewable energy sources by comparing two distinct strategies: Case 1, which implements curtailments in both morning and afternoon, and Case 2, which focuses solely on midday curtailment. The findings indicate that Case 1 effectively aligns load management with the peak output of photovoltaic (PV) energy, thereby reducing reliance on grid power and enhancing energy efficiency. In contrast, Case 2’s focus on midday curtailment results in increased energy purchases from the grid, missing the chance to leverage abundant solar energy. A key finding of this research shows that applying Case 1 for curtailment along with accurate forecasting, improves battery coordination and alleviates stress on the supercapacitor, leading to energy purchases from the grid being reduced. This interdependent relationship between precise forecasting and effective load management not only enhances the efficiency of the hybrid energy system (battery and supercapacitor), but also relies more on renewable energy sources and storage systems, thereby lowering overall energy costs, leading to a more reliable and effective energy management system.

This paper aims to present an overview of the current state of hydrogen storage methods, and materials, assess the potential benefits and challenges of various storage techniques, and outline future research directions towards achieving effective, economical, safe, and scalable storage solutions. Hydrogen is recognized as a clean, secure, and cost-effective green energy carrier with zero emissions at the point of use, offering significant contributions to reaching carbon neutrality goals by 2050. Hydrogen, as an energy vector, bridges the gap between fossil fuels, which produce greenhouse gas emissions, global climate change and negatively impact health, and renewable energy sources, which are often intermittent and lack sustainability. However, widespread acceptance of hydrogen as a fuel source is hindered by storage challenges. Crucially, the development of compact, lightweight, safe, and cost-effective storage solutions is vital for realizing a hydrogen economy. Various storage methods, including compressed gas, liquefied hydrogen, cryo-compressed storage, underground storage, and solid-state storage (material-based), each present unique advantages and challenges. Literature suggests that compressed hydrogen storage holds promise for mobile applications. However, further optimization is desired to resolve concerns such as low volumetric density, safety worries, and cost. Cryo-compressed hydrogen storage also is seen as optimal for storing hydrogen onboard and offers notable benefits for storage due to its combination of benefits from compressed gas and liquefied hydrogen storage, by tackling issues related to slow refueling, boil-off, and high energy consumption. Material-based storage methods offer advantages in terms of energy densities, safety, and weight reduction, but challenges remain in achieving optimal stability and capacities. Both physical and material-based storage approaches are being researched in parallel to meet diverse hydrogen application needs. Currently, no single storage method is universally efficient, robust, and economical for every sector especially for transportation to use hydrogen as a fuel, with each method having its own advantages and limitations. Moreover, future research should focus on developing novel materials and engineering approaches in order to overcome existing limitations, provide higher energy density than compressed hydrogen and cryo-compressed hydrogen storage at 70 MPa, enhance cost-effectiveness, and accelerate the deployment of hydrogen as a clean energy vector.

An integrated energy system (IES) can alleviate energy crises, promote multi‐energy complementarity, and enhance finer‐grained energy development. Nuclear power is clean and efficient, mainly when using small modular reactors (SMRs), which increase power generation, improve system flexibility, and promote a low‐carbon economy. This paper proposes a bi‐layer scheduling framework for a SMR‐connected integrated energy system (SMR‐IES) to optimize operating cost, carbon emissions, and average demand‐side flexibility during the peak period index. The first layer optimizes the multi‐objective operation of SMR‐IES using a hybrid of the improved augmented ε ‐constraint method and the modified technique for order preference by similarity to the ideal solution approach. This framework incorporates a ladder‐type carbon trading mechanism alongside a multi‐energy demand response program with a comprehensive user satisfaction index to account for carbon emissions throughout the entire process while enhancing demand‐side flexibility for the SMR‐IES. The second layer handles uncertainties using the information gap decision theory approach. The proposed method can determine a scheduling operation with predicted renewable energy sources, load, and energy price errors while keeping optimal objective values within acceptable bounds not higher than 35% of the nominal optimal values ( β = 0.35). Moreover, the proposed method offers a more efficient approach to managing uncertainty than stochastic and robust optimization methods.

Energy poverty affects numerous households across the globe and has several key implications and concerns for public health and social equity. Energy poverty is defined as “the lack of access to modern and affordable energy services”. Individuals or communities in energy poverty face limitations in accessing reliable, affordable, and sustainable energy. This review paper examines a focused subset of recent research on energy poverty highlighted by the “NSF 2026: Priorities and Research Needs for an Equitable Energy Transition” workshop and the United States Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Justice Policy and Analysis to help frame energy poverty’s impacts on policy, poverty alleviation, environmental impact, and social inequity. This review paper uses five themes to organize previous energy poverty work: (1) Energy Poverty and Justice Definitions and Metrics; (2) Behavioral Aspects of Energy Poverty; (3) Efficacy of Energy Assistance Programs; (4) Efficiency of Energy Efficiency Policy; (5) The Energy Transition and Environmental and Energy Justice. We found that the literature examined how comprehensive assessment of energy poverty requires going beyond standard statistics and metrics and must include an understanding of how underserved households interact with energy. We found strong optimism for the clean energy transition’s ability to significantly alleviate energy poverty, but only if policymakers include equity. Finally, we found that while there is plenty of work highlighting deficiencies there is a dearth of work examining successful implementations and how to replicate them which will be needed if the clean energy transition is to match its potential.