Pharma Futures 3 Emerging Opportunities

Pharma Futures 3
Example 4
Energy
Fabio Rosa’s
Energy for the
Poor
Access to safe, reliable and affordable
energy plays an important role in
economic and social development,
but this basic need is currently not
met for millions of people across the
globe. Throughout the 1980s, Fabio
Rosa, a Brazilian entrepreneur and a
former Secretary for Agriculture for
Palmares do Sul, in the state of
Pernambuco, had been working to
respond to the primary concern of
the rural poor – access to electricity.
When Rosa carried out an extensive
consultation with the rural workers he
represented, he discovered that 70%
of them did not have this access. He
was told, ‘Politicians always said that
building new roads would solve our
problems. But our top priority is
electricity. It allows us to educate our
children, give them comfort, and use
technologies to try to increase our
income.’ 37
Rosa’s initial soundings concluded
that electricity provision from the
existing utility companies – then stateowned
– would cost US$7,000 per
family – an inconceivable expense.
So, in response and following intense
consultation within the communities,
Rosa developed, tested and installed
an affordable, ‘Low-Cost On-Grid
Rural Electrification System’ that
transformed the lives of millions of
rural poor.
32
This technology, initially discovered
by the engineer Professor Amaral and
developed by Rosa, was approved
for scale up by the government and
resulted in Palmares becoming the
first municipality in Brazil with 100%
access to electricity. It brought
massive improvements to the lives of
the poor. Productivity for poor farmers
rose, emissions fell, health improved
as people no longer had to breathe
fumes of kerosene, and incidence of
hazardous waste dumping dropped.
The work spread to other states, most
noticeably Sao Paulo.
In 1995, Rosa’s efforts to extend
this work to the rest of Brazil were
severely hampered as a result of the
government’s privatisation policy that
restricted energy distribution to large
utility companies. Unsurprisingly,
given their incentive structures, the
utility companies were most interested
in servicing locations with existing
grids or which were close to the
national grid. Plans to expand access
to the off-grid rural poor offered
limited financial return and Rosa had
to scrap his original plan.