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The opening session of the Expert Meeting on Green and Renewable Technologies as Energy Solutions for Rural Development discussed the elements involved in catalysing rural development using green and renewable energy technologies (RETs).

In particular, it was emphasized that energy was a driver of rural development. Therefore, RET deployment must be designed with those intended benefits and uses in mind.

In his opening remarks, the Secretary-General of UNCTAD, Mr. Supachai Panitchpakdi, highlighted the important catalytic role of RET deployment for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. He referred to two challenges:

1. the need for technology transfer and for building indigenous capabilities; and
2. the need for an integrated policy framework for pro-poor rural development strategies.

At the first informal session, the connection was acknowledged between energy poverty and lack of rural development. Discussion began on the role that RETs could play in reducing energy poverty in order to achieve rural development. The link between increased access to modern energy services and realization of the Millennium Development Goals was made explicit.

It was noted that the absence of modern energy services contributed to the perpetuation of poverty and to environmental degradation, and also to a lack of access to quality social services (such as water, health and education) and to productive and job-creation opportunities. In spite of natural energy endowments in some developing countries, access to modern energy services was very limited in the rural areas of many of them.

Experts presented a variety of RETs, such as solar photovoltaic systems, solar water heaters, wind turbines, small hydropower systems, geothermal plants, improved cookstoves, biomass plants and biogas digesters. The advantages of using various RETs to increase access to affordable energy in rural areas were underlined. Decentralized RET systems could match local needs and circumstances – in terms of system size, the renewable energy sources available, and planned end use.

Given the poor record of the grid electrification programmes of many developing countries in penetrating dispersed rural areas, the deployment and scale-up of RETs offered an alternative that was often more economic and more appropriate.

However, it was noted that this was not necessarily an “either/or” situation; a decentralized sector with a focus on rural areas, which ran in parallel with the centralized grid system, could bring faster and more cost-effective economic development in developing countries. In addition, RETs could address local and global environmental concerns.