Access to modern and reliable energy is something that most of the world takes for granted. But many around the world are living a different reality.
Across sub-Saharan Africa and India, children often complete homework by the flicker of candles and kerosene lamps as wisps of smoke trickle up around them from the stoking of the fire beneath their cooking stove.
Smoky homes and candle-lit homework sessions are the norm for billions without access to modern energy.
We are at a critical moment. Innovative business models, financing arrangements, and policy reforms are coming together in a way that has the potential to eliminate global energy poverty
The Duke University Energy Access Project aims to help achieve the United Nation’s (U.N.) seventh Sustainable Development Goal, which is to ensure universal access to affordable, reliable, and modern energy services by 2030. This new research and policy platform at Duke takes an interdisciplinary approach to developing market and policy solutions for the 1 billion who are still without electricity, another billion lacking reliable electricity, and the more than 3 billion people currently without access to clean cooking technologies.
“We are at a critical moment,” said Jonathan Phillips, Energy Access Project director. “Innovative business models, financing arrangements, and policy reforms are coming together in a way that has the potential to eliminate global energy poverty. The next three years are key to shifting the trajectory to give us a shot at achieving Sustainable Development Goal 7. Duke has much to contribute to this fight.”
Establishing the Energy Access Project
The Energy Access Project was established in late 2017 with a $1.5 million gift from Jim Rogers, former CEO and chairman of the board for the electric utility company Duke Energy, and his wife, M.A. Rogers. The Bass Connections Challenge at Duke University added $750,000 in matching funds to support the project’s goal of accelerating deployment of sustainable energy and empowering the world through expanded energy access. Key Duke collaborators in this effort include the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, the Duke University Energy Initiative, the Sanford School of Public Policy, the Nicholas School of the Environment, and Bass Connections.
The idea for the Energy Access Project began long before 2017, with a two-year collaboration between Jim Rogers and Nicholas Institute director Tim Profeta. Rogers, a long-time advocate for universal electricity access and author of the book Lighting the World: Transforming Our Energy Future by Bringing Electricity to Everyone, served as a Rubenstein Fellow at Duke from 2014 to 2016 after retiring from his CEO post.
In 2015–2016, Rogers led a collaboration with Profeta and Tatjana Vujic, currently director of Biogas Strategy at Duke, which focused on off-grid electricity solutions. This Bass Connections project, a platform for giving students interdisciplinary experience addressing real-world problems, germinated the idea for the Energy Access Project. Vujic and the students created the initial version of the project proposal that Rogers and his wife would later fund.
Understanding the Issue of Modern Energy for All
The Energy Access Project launched in Washington, D.C., in February 2018, bringing together leaders from government, business, civil society, and academia to discuss the biggest barriers to energy access and how to overcome them.
One of the seven key themes was that more research is needed to strengthen our understanding of the way in which modern energy access relates to education, health, and food security outcomes. Collaborations between researchers and policy makers could facilitate effective planning for communities’ energy futures and help to mobilize local entrepreneurs.
There’s a big gap between what is being evaluated by scholars and the types of programs, projects, and policies being implemented.
With an international research collaborative, the Sustainable Energy Transitions Initiative (SETI), the Energy Access Project staff and students helped to review nearly 80,000 academic articles to map the existing research connecting energy access, technologies, and interventions to different impacts and development outcomes.
“The review points to a troubling pattern,” said Energy Access Project faculty director Subhrendu Pattanayak, who also leads SETI. “There’s a big gap between what is being evaluated by scholars and the types of programs, projects, and policies being implemented.”
This gap—between what we know and what we do—could keep the world from achieving a critical number of these Sustainable Development Goals, Pattanayak said, noting that we must make scientific evidence more practice based by training the next cadre of scholars an practitioners and encouraging impact evaluations of real-life projects, programs, and policy or risk being left in the dark.
Staff are taking on work to help researchers and decision makers make research more accessible to target audiences. In doing so, the project will drive a global research agenda focused on filling key knowledge gaps, in the process deepening our understanding of how energy access relates to other development outcomes. The Energy Access Project is convening researchers to lead integration of diverse disciplines, such as data analytics, with real world energy access applications using tools like satellite imagery and artificial intelligence.
Overcoming Policy, Market Barriers to Access
“Despite the increased interest in the idea of universal energy access, our policy makers and analysts have not quite caught up with the quick-moving world of the business models and financing piece,” said Profeta. “Because this is all so new, there’s a chance for great creative thought on how to get at this problem. Duke has the expertise and experience to find those unique solutions.”
Beyond its research focus, the Energy Access Project is working directly with policy makers on the design of key institutions and policies to support electrification as well as with companies and social enterprises to understand how innovative business models can help reach last-mile customers.
Despite the increased interest in the idea of universal energy access, our policy makers and analysts have not quite caught up with the quick-moving world of the business models and financing piece.
To help the U.S. Congress navigate emerging market financing reform options, Energy Access Project staff assembled an analysis of how a new, more fully-equipped American development finance institution could help fill the global energy financing gap.
In their policy brief, released in June 2018 as the Better Utilization of Investments Leading to Development Act (BUILD Act) legislation continued to move closer to passage in Congress, Energy Access Project staff found that the United States is not fully harnessing the power of private sector-led development, leaving U.S. foreign policy gains—and U.S. Treasury profits—on the table and businesses without the capital to build modern energy systems and other underpinnings of development.
“If just 7 percent of global power investments were focused on where 14 percent of the population lives, universal electrification could be achieved by 2030,” Phillips said, noting the lack of early-stage concessional capital to get projects adequately developed, de-risked, and ready for debt investment. “More risk-appetite capital is needed to mobilize the larger pools of money available through private equity funds, development finance institutions, and other investors.”
The ultimate goal of this effort is to equip governments, investors, and developers to dramatically accelerate rural electrification in an integrated manner, unlocking new economic opportunities for millions of households.
Entirely new energy delivery platforms have the potential to power remote villages many miles from the existing grid. The Energy Access Project is collaborating with CrossBoundary Energy and the Rockefeller Foundation on a new Mini-Grid Innovation Lab to help refine one of these promising models. The partnership is testing innovative new business models for deploying off-grid mini-grids in order to improve the economics of mini-grids and better understand how rural low-income customers can best be served.
“The ultimate goal of this effort is to equip governments, investors, and developers to dramatically accelerate rural electrification in an integrated manner, unlocking new economic opportunities for millions of households,” Ashvin Dayal, Rockefeller Foundation associate vice president and managing director for Smart Power, said in an interview with Solar Magazine about the lab.
Students as Engines of Innovation
The Energy Access Project is interested in “supporting the bubbling ecosystem of ideas and collaboration that’s happening at Duke and around the world,” said Phillips, and mobilizing students is “central to this work.”
The project supports relevant courses, internships, and campus events that build linkages between the Duke student and faculty community and the energy access practitioner and policymaking community.
Shortly after its launch, the Energy Access Project sponsored and helped to judge the Energy in Emerging Markets Case Competition in partnership with M-KOPA Solar. The competition attracted 45 student teams from around the world to focus their business and problem-solving acumen on a real-world challenge facing one of the leading companies in the solar home system sector in Africa.
“The competition helped M-KOPA’s leadership team think through credible options for addressing a difficult regulatory and business model issue while giving hundreds of students an opportunity to wrestle with questions of technology, policy, and community development in an important and rapidly developing sector,” Phillips said.
The Energy Access Project is also supporting Duke science students’ efforts to create an energy access data platform. Through the Duke Data+ program, a team of undergraduates is working closely with Power for All, a leading energy access research and policy nonprofit, to develop machine learning and natural language processing tools to improve visualization of data and information on energy access in developing countries.
“This project is different than other projects I’ve worked on because we are working with an outside client to come up with a solution to a problem which does not already exist,” said Brooke Erickson, a member of the three-person Duke student team. “I feel as though I am truly creating new knowledge and new algorithms instead of just understanding existing algorithms.”
The effort ties into Power for All’s Platform for Energy Access Knowledge (PEAK), which automatically curates, organizes, and streamlines large, growing bodies of information into sharable, data-driven stories for policy makers and researchers alike. The students consult with Power for All to creatively visualize PEAK’s library—using artificial intelligence—to create more effective science communication.
This experience has taught me that there are ways to use computer science and data analytics in every interdisciplinary field.
For these students, the research is allowing them to apply their skills in ways they never thought possible.
“Since I am not specifically studying energy or the environment, it has been extremely eye-opening to work with Power for All and the Energy Access Project,” said Erickson, who is studying economics and computer science. “I have learned about the dire need to expand energy access globally and feel as though I am able to contribute to solving that problem despite my lack of background knowledge in the area. This experience has taught me that there are ways to use computer science and data analytics in every interdisciplinary field.”
By Erin McKenzie; originally posted on the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Studies website. Work on this project is funded by Jim and M.A. Rogers and the Bass Connections Challenge.
Images: Village in Uganda using solar to power refrigerators by Duke University student Andrew Seelaus; Energy Access Project launch event in Washington, D.C., by Laurence Genon; Hannah Girardeau, Marc Jeuland, and Jonathan Phillips; a commercial area of Dehli, India, by T. Robert Fetter
I learned laboratory skills (e.g., qPCR) necessary to assess the presence of 86 known antibiotic resistance genes in the gut and armpit microbiomes of multiple lemur species. I was also able to spend a portion of the summer collecting lemur microbiome samples both from lemurs at the Duke Lemur Center and, with the help of collaborators, from wild lemurs in Madagascar. With my newly acquired analysis skills, I will be able to characterize antibiotic resistance in these invaluable samples, a novel research project that greatly enhances my dissertation research.
I was able to receive one-on-one training in genetic analysis at the Institute for Research in Tropical Ecology in Gabon. Over 14 days I worked directly with the scientist who developed the Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) panel necessary to identify individual elephants from their dung.
I applied for GSTEG to participate in a large-scale marine mammal survey being conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fishery Service to gain experience in collecting the data that underlies federal conservation and management decisions. I learned more about survey design and methods, marine mammals acoustics, and even seabird identification. It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life and significantly improved my understanding of the data, and how it is collected, that underpins much of the work of my dissertation.
I spent two months using physical oceanographic data collected at sea to model light levels in the deep ocean and test how these correlate to patterns of animal distributions.
[I learned] how to use a ThermoElectron isotope ratio mass spectrometer, how to collect and prepare environmental samples, and how to use isotope-mixing models to interpret the results. Because of this training experience, I’ll have a much better grasp of how to use stable isotopes of Pb to delineate between natural and contaminant sources of lead. The tools and connections will provide solid groundwork for my isotopic research.
I worked with a leading endocrine researcher to learn hormone extraction and tandem mass spectrometry. With her guidance, I developed a novel analysis method, which will allow scientists to conduct more efficient and comprehensive hormone analyses of these tissue samples, aiding efforts to understand the behavior and physiology of these difficult-to-access animals.
For half the summer, I worked with Dr. Adam Carrico at the University of Miami to learn how to use biological markers in research with HIV-positive women. For the other half, I lived in Moshi, Tanzania, and worked with the NGO Femme International. I learned how to conduct research on menstruation with adolescent girls in schools and saw how to implement education interventions with girls.
I undertook a wonderful experiential learning and collaborative research experience in 2017, which enabled me to contribute to the theory and practice of effective regulatory governance.
This company specializes in creating modeling software for hydrologic systems. In addition, DHI operates the only tropical ballast water testing facility in the world. My dissertation focuses on the microbial community of ballast water in large ships, so their expertise in ballast water and modeling proved especially informative to my ongoing work. The unique opportunity afforded by GSTEG allowed me to explore a potential future career path while also expanding comfort zones within my dissertation research.
The impact extends well beyond this single course. I have since worked with colleagues from across the university to consider approaches to visually depict the preliminary findings from my qualitative research. I will present a paper at the Pacific Northwest American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting and have a book review coming out in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies.
What I learned has had a tremendous impact on both my interest as a researcher and as an educator. This program provides practice-oriented training in various machine learning techniques, such as supervised learning, reinforcement learning, and convolutional neural networks. Using these techniques, I have made substantial improvement to the logic education application I have previously developed.
Baleen whales are named for the keratin plates that comprise their feeding apparatus. These plates grow continuously throughout an animal’s life. By repeatedly sampling for stable isotope analysis along the growth axis of an individual plate, a time series can be generated that provides information about foraging and migratory behavior that might have been occurring when that part of the plate was growing. These data provide a window into the past for populations that may no longer exist, but for which baleen plates have been archived in museums or other collections.
I have greatly enjoyed learning the language and culture, and the weekly tutoring sessions have helped greatly to accelerate this progress. The TCDC course was a perfect capstone experience and I was able to start at an intermediate level due to the tutoring.
This course expanded my knowledge about all the components to consider when designing behavior change interventions! I obtained insight into what behaviors to select and target in an intervention and what factors to consider when developing an intervention. I interacted with individuals from a variety of backgrounds who were also interested in developing interventions focused on changing behaviors. Overall, this course better prepared me for the postdoctoral position I recently started in health services research at the Durham Center for Health Services Research in Primary Care at the Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
This experience has forever changed the way I view art. I have always considered the intrinsic value when viewing art, and now I push deeper into my thoughts on the financial value of the work to consider how much others would be willing to pay for it, and the value I place on the emotional response I gather from the work.
This experience was invaluable. The opportunity to work hand in hand with experienced emergency medicine physicians, nurse practitioners, and general physicians in an emergency room setup was amazing. As one of only two physicists in the room, I enjoyed the chance to determine my niche in patient care for radiological events.
I had the opportunity to learn about the capabilities of modern ocean observing platforms and to gain practical experience working with them in the field.
I spent Fall 2017 in the Molecular Modeling Lab in the Eshelman School of Pharmacy at UNC-Chapel Hill three times per week, training on the modeling techniques that we have since begun to implement in our laboratory. We spent Spring 2018 exploring how we could successfully implement public-domain programs; while we can do many things with these programs, we elected to purchase Schrodinger’s Materials Science Suite. This program will allow us to generate all possible 3-dimensional conformers of the 2-dimensional molecular structures we are able to identify in our search for emerging environmental contaminants.
community-based research partnership between the Duke Human Rights Center and the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise to improve wastewater treatment in Lowndes County, Alabama.
Housed at the Duke University Energy Initiative, GLEAN received a 
GLEAN’s Energy Access Speaker Series brings world-renowned energy-access researchers and practitioners to Duke. Critically, the selection of speakers is driven entirely by the students who are part of the GLEAN community, ensuring overlap in mutual interests between visiting speakers and students.
Currently in its final stages of production, GLEAN’s second volume of energy-access case studies will present important research takeaways from up to five GLEAN members, providing distinct experiences on energy access across key regions of the developing world.
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