Partner Spotlight: Asian Development Bank
The level of access to clean cooking and modern fuels is far too low in Asia and the Pacific region, where 1.8 billion people still rely on burning biomass despite growing economies and broadening electrification. In countries like Bangladesh and Bhutan, more than 90% of the population still burn biomass for fuel to cook. Even in highly electrified countries such as the Philippines and Viet Nam, almost half of their populations have no access to clean cooking.
As Asia is home to the majority of the world’s people without access to modern fuels, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has prioritized its lending in the energy sector to enable access to modern energy. Established in 2008, the Energy for All Initiative strengthens ADB’s support for innovative projects that provide energy access. The Energy for All Partnership brings together governments, entrepreneurs, project developers, financial institutions, communities, and other stakeholders to find regional scale solutions to energy poverty. The ADB partnership focuses on identifying tested, sustainable business models for energy access; replicating them; and scaling them for greater health and environmental benefits. The partnership supports working groups that focus their efforts on specific access to energy topics. The partnership’s working group on improved cookstoves is led by GIZ, while the one on domestic biogas is led by SNV.
With the support of Energy for All, ADB has supported biogas, biomass, improved cookstoves (ICSs), and improved access to and distribution of liquefied petroleum gas among others:
In Vietnam, ADB is replicating and scaling an existing SNV-supported national biogas program that provides rural livestock farmers with biogas digesters to safely dispose of animal waste, which is then turned into modern fuel for household use. ADB stepped in to assist in boosting biogas infrastructure while adding a $19 million credit and subsidy component to increase access of the poor to these digesters. ADB and SNV’s combined efforts and financial assistance will facilitate the installation of 40,000 biogas units by 2015, while expanding the overall reach of the program will enable 16 of Viet Nam’s 63 provinces to benefit from biogas digesters.
In Cambodia, ADB is supporting a project that promotes the Neang Kongrey ICS as an alternative to traditional stoves through $6.11 million in grant funding provided by the Australian Agency for International Development and administered in partnership with GERES. At least 12 traditional cookstove producers will be supported in their ICS production and toward self-sustaining ICS use and production. The project will promote the use of up to 90,000 ICSs that promise higher fuel efficiency (more than 20% higher efficiency compared with that of widely used traditional versions) for rural users.
Through its partnership with the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, Energy for All can tap an important knowledge-hub in this sector, especially critical sector information, surveys and market assessments, exchange lessons learned and best practices among its members, and also learn from experiences of the Alliance’s global network.
For more information on Energy for All and ADB’s work in the sector, please visit:
www.adb.org/sectors/energy/programs/energy-for-all-initiative
www.energyforall.info
Photo credit: Asian Development Bank