Access to Energy for the Base of the - Ashoka

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Additional investment is often required in addition to
the power generation infrastructure. Desipower invests
in local enterprises to provide biomass for the plants, and
provides capacity building support. IBEKA provides
engineers to train local people on operations of the hydro
plant, and sets up a fund to invest in local enterprises
using the revenue from power sold to the grid.
The Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto
Protocol, which enables clean energy enterprises to sell
certified emissions reduction credits (CER) in
international markets, could help make the financials of
rural cooperatives attractive to investors. 16 Credits
sourced from biogas improve the IRR by 25% - 60%.
However, political uncertainty about upcoming
negotiations in 2012 makes it difficult to value future
revenue streams from the CDM.
Scaling up is a challenge
The speed and extent of scaling up rural cooperatives is
hindered by the complexity of their model. The model
requires land for associated industries, local partners to
build the cooperative, microfinance for small enterprises,
and perhaps most difficult, skilled staff who will stay in
the villages. By working with income-generating
communities such as coffee farmers which are already
organized, rural cooperatives may be easier to replicate.
Desipower aims to grow from three villages to 100 in
the state of Bihar. IBEKA could build 10 new hydro plants
a year, with appropriate funding. These goals are
16 See pg. 76 for more information on the Clean Development Mechanism and carbon financing
Figure 17 A biogas digestor plant
challenged by the hazards of working with governments
and utilities, such as pressure to work with preferred
contractors. However, as each rural cooperative is
tailored to the community, less economies of scale are
gained through expansion. IBEKA’s engineers are
experienced at training local staff, but other steps around
organizing a community and arriving at a collective
decision are hard to speed up.
See the following pages for detailed cases:
CASE STUDY PRODUCT PAGE
Desipower Rural cooperatives 73
People Centered Rural cooperatives 75
Economic & Business
Institute