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Energy

Keywords:Energy access, South Africa,participationBriefing

Policypointers

Using a participatoryapproach to establishcommunities priorities forenergy access couldcontribute significantly tobetter-targeted localgovernment policy.

Different communitieswithin the samemunicipality can have verydifferent priorities,meaning that interventionsneed to be very

specifically targeted tolocal needs, even varyingbetween different areas ofone settlement.

Participatory workshopshave proved an effectivetool for exploring suchpriorities, suiting differenttypes of community fromIndia to South Africa.

Participation inidentifying energy options

also builds communitybuy in for potentialinvestment in thoseoptions, thus reducing therisks to investors.

Exploring energy priorities:a community workshop tool

In order to design effective, participatory and sustainable energy accessinterventions that are in sync with real community priorities, it is necessary tounderstand and capture nuances of community energy needs andpreferences across the target population. In South Africa, the CHOICEScommunity energy project organised energy options workshops to discussand prioritise local energy needs. The workshops highlighted importantvariation within and between types of communities (urban, rural and informal)and geographical locations within the target region. Understanding thisvariation is essential for planning and delivering targeted energy services that

people are willing to pay for. Planning that responds to specific communityneeds is more likely to receive support from local communities, makinginvestments more sustainable in the long term.

Blue Crane Route Municipality

The CHOICES project (see Box 1, overleaf)aimed to empower the local people of Blue CraneRoute Municipality (BCRM) in South AfricasEastern Cape to assess their own energy needsand how these needs might be met.

BCRM includes three main population clusters:

Somerset East (population 19,564), Cookhouse(population 6,108) and Pearston (population4,746). These populations have distinct subtypestermed urban, rural and informal settlements.Informal settlements are those at the edge ofurban areas that are not approved bygovernment and do not have access to amenitiesfound in the urban settlements.

Somerset East is the largest and busiest urbancentre, and is the administrative centre of theBCRM. It is the most economically diverse andwell-off of the three communities and has the

lowest unemployment.Pearston is the smallest and the furthest frommajor transport links, with extremely high levels of

unemployment. However, it has a solar energyproject underway, which may bring employmentand which will strengthen communityunderstanding of renewable energy options.

The Cookhouse cluster, located closest to themain highway, is substantially poorer than theother two areas. Cookhouse average householdincome is 68 per cent of the average household

income in Pearston and Somerset East. Butdespite this discrepancy, job opportunities inCookhouse are greater than in Pearston, partlybecause of nearby transport routes and partlybecause of a local dairy business. Cookhousehas a wind power project underway.

Setting priorities

Preliminary survey data from the CHOICESproject indicated how economic status andenergy access often vary across and within thethree population clusters. It s therefore

reasonable to assume communities will havedifferent priorities. Project partner TERI haspreviously used a technique of elicitinghousehold energy priorities to assess

Issue date

June 2014

Download the pdf athttp://pubs.iied.org/17245IIED

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IIEDBriefing

willingness to pay for energy technologies in theIndian state of Uttar Pradesh (see Box 2). Themethods used there were adapted for SouthAfrica and this briefing presents the findings.

In order to understand energy needs and theirnuances, the CHOICES project convened threecommunity energy options workshops at

Pearston, Somerset Eastand Cookhouse in early2013, based on the TERImethodology. Communityleaders andrepresentatives attended,and in each workshopbreakout groups wasorganised to identify

energy needs in urban, rural and informalsettlements (with the exception of Pearston,where there is no significant informal settlement

so only urban and rural breakout groups wereused). When any particular group was too smallfor a useful discussion, people from differentsettlements who knew that local context wellwere asked to join that group.

Moderators proposed that breakout groupsconsider five broad categories of energyservices: cooking, lighting, space heating/

cooling, water heating, and communication andentertainment. Within each broad category, theysuggested specific product and service needs toconsider and prioritise, such as water heating forbathing, fast cooking times and less smoke inthe kitchen (prioritising often conflicting needs).Community members were encouraged to

discuss other energy needs beyond themoderators suggestions.

Workshop participants were asked to categorisetheir needs as essential/urgent, important andgood to have. The breakout groups werestrongly advised not to put more than half of theirneeds in any one category, and to debate withinthe group before assigning the priority.

Analysis

In practice, the breakout groups often focusedon and prioritised quite different needs. For

example, only the rural group in Cookhousediscussed needing energy to pump water, eventhough rural households in Pearston andSomerset East also lack household watersupplies. Some energy needs, such as power forradios, were scored very differently in differentsettlements. For example, rural communitieswithout access to television depend on radio asone of their main sources of entertainment,unlike urban and informal areas. All this variationdemonstrates the importance of understandingdifferent local needs when prioritising energy

services for different groups.The difference within the communities can beanalysed at two levels: across settlement typesand across locations.

Across settlement types. The rural groupsneeds were found to be the most variable these groups were not unanimous about anypower service being essential/urgent. Bycontrast, the informal settlements had the mostconsistent needs they were unanimous aboutthe need for five essential energy services (lightfor study, for security, affordable refrigeration,

fast cooking, and less smoke in the kitchen). Theurban groups were unanimous in rating just twoservices as essential light for studying andaffordable cooking fuel.

Urban communities with access to basic energyservices consider water heating for bathing andwashing clothes and utensils as importantneeds.

No single settlement type (urban, rural, informal)was consistent in rating any of the services asthe lowest priority, demonstrating that needs and

priorities differed substantially betweencommunities even within the same settlementcategory.

Box 1. The CHOICES project

The CHOICES project (Community and Household Options In ChoosingEnergy Services) explored the energy options available to people in SouthAfrica who are not connected to the national electricity grid, or who do notenjoy reliable and affordable power. The project was implemented between2012 and 2013 in the Blue Crane Route Municipality, Cacadu district inSouth Africas Eastern Cape province. The aim was to help households toimprove their quality of life, and enable businesses to expand and innovate.

CHOICES is a collaboration between OneWorld Sustainable Investments(South Africa), The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI, India) and IIED.Funded by the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership(REEEP), it has worked in close partnership with the Blue CraneDevelopment Agency.

Box 2: Learning from participatory energyprioritisation in India

Before working with the CHOICES project, experts from The Energy andResources Institute (TERI) worked with communities in Uttar Pradesh, India,through participatory workshops aimed at eliciting their needs andpreferences. The aim was to establish local peoples priority needs forenergy services and their willingness to pay for an integrated domesticenergy system incorporating two basic light points, a fan-based cookstoveand a mobile phone charging point. The workshop results showed that

communities existing facilities varied widely even within administrativeblocks, and that this meant willingness to pay for the integrated system andthe priorities people gave to its component parts also varied significantly.

It is important tounderstand different localneeds when prioritisingenergy services

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IIEDBriefing

Across locations. When considered acrosslocations, a slightly different pattern emerged. Allthe settlements in Somerset East classed lightfor security, refrigeration and power for mobilephones as essential, whereas communities inCookhouse only agreed on light for study beingessential, and communities in Pearston

prioritised refrigeration, power for phones, andaffordable or free cooking fuel.

Understanding energy choices

There may be many local explanations forvarying energy priorities. For example, informalsettlements often considered light for security asan urgent need. This could be because thesecurity situation in these settlements may beworse than in other settlements. Light forstudying was judged an essential/urgent needby both urban and informal communities in theseworkshops, but not so by rural communities. Thismay be because fewer children from rural areasstudy in the evenings compared with urban andinformal settlements.

Further, although not unanimously ratedessential, fast cooking is extremely important forrural and informal communities (four out of thefive discussion groups representing thesecommunities scoring it essential/urgent). It islikely that women from rural and informalcommunities work in agriculture and/or havelong hours of work/travel, hence the priority they

put on saving cooking time. By contrast, theurban community in Pearston categorised fastcooking as good to have. The two other urbangroups classified it as important.

The urban group in Pearston did not discussrefrigeration, whereas urban and rural groups inCookhouse rated it as important. All the otherbreakout groups rated it as essential/urgent. Asthe Cookhouse population is relatively poor, thelower ranking they gave refrigeration may bebecause it is seen as unaffordable, or simply thatbasic needs such as lighting for study are valued

more highly. All discussion groups at theSomerset East and Pearston workshops rankedmobile phone charging as essential/urgent,whereas breakout groups in Cookhouse rankedit as important. As with refrigeration, this may beinfluenced by affordability of the actual phonerather than the energy supply.

There are some data anomalies that are harderto explain, but may be due to peoples naturalinclination to prioritise services they still needover services that they already have (but wouldntwant to do without). For example, the urban

community in Cookhouse categorised light forgeneral purposes only as good to have whereasall other groups categorised it either asimportant or essential/urgent. The urban

community in Pearston categorised less smokein kitchens as good to have whereas all otherseven groups categorised it either as importantor essential/urgent. Further, the rural communityin Somerset East categorised free/affordablecooking fuel lowest (as good to have) whereasall other seven breakout groups categorised it asimportant or essential/urgent. Moderatorsencouraged each group to prioritise according toneed irrespective of whether the need had been

met, but some bias is likely to remain.As illustrated above, it is important not only toappreciate the differences in peoples prioritiesand perceptions, but also to have the ability toassess the reasons behind them, which mayrequire further in-depth study.

Relevance to planning

The workshops clearly illustrated how energypriorities vary between settlements within anadministrative block (municipality) responsiblefor planning. This also underscores the need to

decentralise and democratise planning wherethe lowest democratic institution (for example,gram panchayats of rural India and municipalitiesof urban South Africa) are in a position to

Figure 1. Services rated unanimously as essential by

settlement types

Service Informalcommunities

Urbancommunities

Ruralcommunities

Light for studying Essential Essential

Light for security Essential

Affordable refrigeration Essential

Power to charge phones

Affordable/free cooking fuel Essential

Fast cooking Essential

Less kitchen smoke Essential

General purpose lighting

Hot water for baths and washing

Room heating

Hot water for cooking

Power for a radio

Figure 2. Services rated unanimously as essential across

locations

Service Somerset East Cookhouse Pearston

Light for studying Essential

Light for security Essential

Affordable refrigeration Essential Essential

Power to charge phones Essential Essential

Affordable/free cooking fuel Essential

Fast cooking

Less kitchen smoke

General purpose lighting

Hot water for baths and washing

Room heating

Hot water for cooking

Power for a radio

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