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Energy Poverty and the Perception of, and Satisfaction with, Renewable Energy Technologies: The Case of Solar Villages in Pakistan

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Sustainable Access to Energy in the Global South

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Abstract

This paper assesses users’ satisfaction with renewable energy technologies (RET) and compares it with non-users’ perception of RET. Non-users’ perception of RET was investigated in nearly 600 households in 25 rural communities in Punjab province, Pakistan. User’s satisfaction with RET was assessed in two solar villages in northern Punjab that had been equipped with solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in 2004–2005 as an alternative to on-grid electricity. Our results reveal major discrepancies between perceptions of RET in non-RET communities and users’ satisfaction with solar PV systems in RET communities. Rural households in non-RET communities have extremely high expectations of RET, especially of solar PV systems; by contrast, households who had adopted solar PV systems showed high levels of resentment, anger, and disappointment toward this technology. Our findings also show that deployment of solar PV systems has not led to the expected improvements in user households’ energy poverty status. Thus, merely providing appropriate technology to the poor is not enough to ensure success. A sense of ownership and acceptance of the technology among local residents is needed in order for the technology to contribute to development and, eventually, poverty alleviation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The International Centre for the Application of Solar Energy (CASE)—the United Nations Industrial Development Organization’s agency for the promotion of renewable energy technologies in developing countries—has actively engaged in rural electrification projects since the early 1990s. Based on its integrated developmental approach, CASE analyzed how the supply of energy can add vigor to the economic and social life of people in rural communities of developing countries (Thompson and Singh 1996).

  2. 2.

    For more details, see Area and Population of Administrative Units report, available online at http://www.pbs.gov.pk/content/area-population-aadministrative-units.

  3. 3.

    See Mirza and Szirmai (2010) for more information on the computation of EII, ESI, and EPI.

  4. 4.

    According to Pokharel (2006), attaining a Human Development Index (HDI) of 0.8 requires one metric ton of oil equivalent (TOE) per annum per capita in advanced economies. We lowered this value to 0.7 TOE to account for the fact that our survey focused on rural communities in a developing country.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to express his deep gratitude to Prof. Adam Szirmai and Prof. René Kemp from United Nations University-MERIT, Maastricht University, the Netherlands, for their continued guidance and support in designing and executing the survey, as well as for supervising his doctoral study, which provided the basis for this paper. Moreover, the author would also like to thank the reviewers, particularly Dr. Albrecht Ehrensperger and the participants of the 3rd UNESCO Conference on Technologies for Development (Tech4Dev 2014) in Lausanne, Switzerland, for their helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Policy Studies, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan

    Bilal Mirza

  2. United Nations University-MERIT, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands

    Bilal Mirza

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  1. Bilal Mirza
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Correspondence to Bilal Mirza .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Cooperation & Development Center (CODEV), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Silvia Hostettler

  2. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA

    Ashok Gadgil

  3. Cooperation & Development Center (CODEV), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Eileen Hazboun

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Mirza, B. (2015). Energy Poverty and the Perception of, and Satisfaction with, Renewable Energy Technologies: The Case of Solar Villages in Pakistan. In: Hostettler, S., Gadgil, A., Hazboun, E. (eds) Sustainable Access to Energy in the Global South. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20209-9_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20209-9_10

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