ESMAP’s Annual Report 2018 represents a comprehensive summary of the breadth and reach of ESMAP’s portfolio of activities. It provides snapshots of concrete results to illustrate the impact of ESMAP’s work as it helps countries strengthen the performance of their energy sectors. In 2018, ESMAP informed USD 8.6 billion in World Bank development financing and mobilized USD 7 billion in external financing. ESMAP also launched and disseminated key knowledge products to help shape global energy policy, trigger reform, and increase smart investments in the sector. Keywords: mini grid; offshore wind; poverty and social impact analysis; Access to Electricity; Clean Technology...
In the clean energy transition, the value of natural gas infrastructure is very important for operating the energy system. Gas-fired power plants contribute to optimized energy systems when they are designed to operate flexibly, responding to demand patterns and the variable supply of renewable energy. Smart electricity grids, renewable energy, battery storage technology, and gas-fired power plants in combination will generally be the lowest cost, low-carbon solution to the growing energy requirements of emerging markets. Private investors and financiers are responding to these opportunities, but the full potential will only be reached with improvements in policy, regulation, and procurement in...
The Global Energy Progress Report 2019 provides a global dashboard on progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7), which sets 2030 targets for reaching universal access to electricity and clean fuels and technologies for cooking, substantially increasing the share of renewable energy in the global mix, and doubling the rate of improvement of energy efficiency. All the data used in this pamphlet comes from the respective official source: for electrification, the World Bank; for clean fuels and technologies for cooking, the World Health Organization (WHO); for renewable energy, the International Energy Agency (IEA), the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) and...
The power sector is both highly vulnerable to natural hazards and a priority for any country'srecovery and reconstruction. After Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017, most of the power gridwas down. One year and tens of billions of dollars later some customers were yet to be reconnected to the main grid. This type of long and widespread power outage has major consequences on people's health and well-being, for instance through lacking access to refrigeration for food and medicine, and on the ability of firms to produce and provide people with goods, services, jobs, and income. In most countries, the...
The Caribbean Forum on Energy, Transport, and Resilience was held at the Bay Gardens Hotel, Rodney Bay, Saint Lucia, from June 26 to 27, 2019. It was hosted by the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Government of Saint Lucia, with support from the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Commission. With the objective of exploring new technologies and combining them with existing regional experiences in sustainable urban development, the event had an overall goal to design a roadmap for the Caribbean smart cities of the future. The forum sought to further public-private exchanges among governments, energy and transportation...
This technical guide is the second in a series of four technical guides on variable renewable energy (VRE) grid integration produced by the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) of the World Bank and the Global Sustainable Electricity Partnership (GSEP). It focuses on the main functionalities, differences and benefits of various compensation devices that can be employed to increase system transfer capacity, system stability, power quality and flexibility to cope with increasing penetrations of renewables in the system. The applications of FACTS devices are associated with four essential technical enhancements of system capacity, system reliability, power quality and system controllability....
This technical guide is the first in a series of four technical guides on variable renewable energy (VRE) grid integration produced by the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) of the World Bank and the Global Sustainable Electricity Partnership (GSEP). It provides a general overview of the intrinsic characteristics of VRE generation, mainly solar PV and wind, what the main challenges are along with some recommendations for VRE technical specifications, applicable standards, and essential testing. The main focus of the document presents a detailed outline of the essential requirements for VRE integration into the power grid. The requirements differ for...
The report, a joint effort between the World Bank’s Social Development Global Practice and International Finance Corporation (IFC) advisory services, is based on the idea that local engagement, for example, through benefit sharing, is an important way for better risk management and creating a more enabling environment for renewable energy development. It finds that the underlying causes of the conflicts are diverse, complex, and dynamic: influencing factors include historical struggles over poverty and inequality, land ownership, mistrust in public and private institutions, a lack of free, prior and informed consultations (FPIC) before investment flows into the region and oftentimes a...
Achieving global goals for access to energy and mitigation of climate change will require a quadrupling of present levels of solar photovoltaic (PV) generation in the developing world by 2025 to reach around 950 gigawatt (GW)1. This represents an investment of more than US$500 billion in new solar PV generation alone. To reach this objective, large amounts of private funding will have to be unlocked to complement the limited public financing available. Yet most developing countries still lack a pipeline of bankable solar projects for consideration by the private sector. To develop one, countries must take a series of key...