Reaching SDG#7: Overcoming knowledge gaps for improved energy access planning and new business opportunities
Access to modern energies, especially electricity, has a huge impact on people’s livelihoods in developing countries. While access to electricity is taken for granted in the industrialized world it is still out of reach for more than a billion people worldwide. At the same time renewable energy technology development allows for cheap electricity generation by the local usage of solar, hydro, wind and biomass resources. I hope that by raising awareness of those facts by using geospatial technologies improvements can happen more easily:
I feel that a lack of knowledge on spatially related aspects is hindering the achievement of SDG#7: Where are the non-electrified people and villages located? How many people are affected? Which local renewable energy potentials are available at a given site? How much do people spend on alternative energy requirements (e.g. kerosene, fuel wood)? Are there governmental plans for providing access to electricity in those locations? Is a location-specific electrification plan being developed for that region? Clear answers will help to improve and track the progress of electrification in the regions needing it the most. This is essential for governmental planning and policy making but also for unveiling business opportunities for innovative energy services from the bottom-up.
After my studies in Environmental Management (B.Sc.) and Geography (M.Sc.) I started to focus on electrification planning for rural regions in developing countries. At the Reiner Lemoine Institute in Berlin I am working in an academic environment with the objective to track electrification efforts in different countries to identify economically and ecologically sustainable electrification strategies by using GIS techniques and data management. I am trying to make an impact by conducting trainings on GIS data collection and processing for understanding the energy supply situation with local stakeholders in Nigeria and Myanmar.
One key finding of those workshops was that the opportunities of modern data processing, GIS, and mapping hold many opportunities to promote and facilitate electrification through clearly planned, location specific strategies followed by structured and monitored implementation. Moreover, such fact-based planning allows a much more transparent communication.
I found that very often, the amount of open data and the opportunities of open-source software for processing those are unknown to the local stakeholders, and they were amazed by discovering those potentials.
My idea is to raise awareness on the potentials of using GIS technologies for showing potentials and implementing solutions of different electrification options. I would like to develop tools to track the process of electrification and show further potentials by mainstreaming knowledge on the opportunities of data analysis, GIS and spatial planning for electrification efforts. Those tools can be used for decision making in high-level working groups but also on a local level. The digital age with GPS, internet and spatial data processing capabilities, the mobile phone sector revolution and new energy technologies shall be utilized to find sustainable energy access solutions now.
At UNLEASH, I hope to meet people with inspiring ideas that can be matched with my visions and ideas and be grown to a larger idea network. From those, concrete ideas for project implementation, either practical in the field or based on methodological development and data analysis, can be derived. I am looking forward to intensive discussion rounds on the specific challenges of clean energy access and possible solutions how to overcome those by knowledge creation and information sharing. I hope to meet people from many different countries to exchange and learn about country-specific situations and also to understand what global consequences and actions are required. Furthermore, I hope that I can raise awareness on the energy access challenges by showcasing spatial contexts that put the challenge in clear numbers and figures and thereby enhance global efforts.
My hope is that the UNLEASH network of people allows for a long-term collaboration and exchange to tackle and eventually end energy poverty.
