ENERGY FOR A SUSTAINABLE WORLD - World Resources Institute

human needs approach to poverty alleviation
will vary from country to country. Ascertaining
these implications requires detailed data collection
and close analyses of how much energy
various economic activities require, which
energy resources are available, and which alternative
combinations of energy-supply and
energy end-use technologies could be used to
meet demand.
Some specific actions are widely applicable,
however. Chief among them is providing
energy-efficient cooking stoves. Comprehensive
programs are needed, including research and
development on promising new designs, field
testing for actual energy savings and consumer
acceptability, and promoting the diffusion and
use of stoves. (See Figure 8). Particular attention
must be given to introducing stoves in households
outside the market economy.
Bringing electricity to all households should
also be given high priority. In rural areas,
where access to centralized electrical grids is
particularly costly or impractical, decentralized
power sources based on local resources e.g.,
producer-gas generator sets using biomass fuel
should be examined closely. Because technologies
for decentralized power generation are
not nearly so well-established as those for centralized
power, R&D on energy-efficient smallscale
power sources should receive high
priority.
A closely related but more general challenge
is to modernize bioenergy resources by developing
efficient ways to convert raw biomass
into high-quality energy carriers—such as
gases, liquids, processed solids, and electricity—so
that scarce biomass resources can
provide far more useful energy than is feasible
at present. 62 Here too, major R&D efforts are
required.
Finding the resources for the R&D will be
challenging. Support from international aid
agencies may be needed in many instances.
Cooperative R&D programs mounted by
groups of developing countries might sometimes
be desirable. Collaboration with industrialized
countries should also be considered; a
promising division of labor might involve carrying
out basic research (e.g., combustion, heat
transfer, and the fundamentals of gasification)
in industrialized countries and more applied
research (aimed at designing and testing new
technologies) in developing countries. 63
Energy and Employment Generation. In
evaluating the employment implications of all
alternative technologies and strategies for
development, planners should give particular
attention to the problems posed by over-investment
in basic materials-processing industries
that generate few jobs. (See Chapter IV.) To the
extent that such over-investment is the result
of subsidies to producers and consumers, efforts
to bring energy prices into line with longrun
marginal energy costs would be especially
helpful, as would tax and investment policies
that do not favor such industries over others.
Assessing the appropriateness of new industrial
technologies requires particular attention
to the potential for employment generation.
Particularly desirable are modern competitive
technologies that are also employmentintensive—the
Brazilian alcohol and charcoal
steelmaking industries, for example.
Energy for Agriculture. Few energy needs in
developing countries are as crucial as the needs
for expanding agricultural production to feed a
growing population. Although agricultural
energy needs will expand rapidly, the absolute
amounts of energy required would not necessarily
be formidable with an end-use energy
strategy. (See Chapter IV.)
Efforts to improve energy efficiency in other
sectors, especially efforts to save oil in transportation,
would go a long way toward making
oil import requirements for agriculture affordable.
Efforts to save oil in the market-oriented
industrialized countries would also help by
helping to keep the world oil price from rising.
(See Figure 10.)
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