Renewable Energy

Renewable Energy for Poverty Alleviation

Insight is committed to promoting the expansion of renewable energy into rural areas far from mains electricity. In these contexts renewable energy can have a significant impact on poverty alleviation.

Insight’s renewable energy programs focus on long-term poverty alleviation through community strengthening. We have developed an extremely successful renewable energy programme in Turkmenistan by adopting a two-fold approach, which aims to:

• Maximise local ownership of the process.
• Strengthen capacity for long term local action and decision-making.

Passive recipients of high-tech renewable energy equipment will perceive the world outside their village as the provider of solutions. This may serve to reinforce attitudes of dependency or inferiority. A degree of poverty alleviation will always be achieved, but the renewable energy project will have disempowered the community on a fundamental level.

A renewable energy project must be more than just about producing electricity, it should also go beyond the poverty alleviation spin-offs that can result from bringing renewable energy to remote communities. Insight sees renewable energy as an opportunity to help increase local unity and develop capacity for equitable decision making and long-term community action.