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Peri-Urban Electricity Consumers--A Forgotten but Important Group : What Can We Do to Electrify Them?

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2001-10
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2014-09-30
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The insufficient, and unsustainable supplies of energy, constitute what may be called an "energy poverty" or "resource poverty", affecting some forty percent of people in the developing world, which impedes development by inhibiting investment in productive activities, wastes human resources, further reducing the productivity of current activities, and, threatens the environment through greenhouse gas emissions, and air pollutants. This paper concentrates only on the peri-urban population, because this group needs to be our priority target if we want to rapidly improve electrification in poor households. This is for several reasons: about forty percent of the world's poor live in peri-urban areas, while households in those areas are easier, and less expensive to electrify than un-served rural households, i.e., urban areas are densely populated, and located on, or close to the grid, thus generation transmission, and distribution costs are much lower than isolated rural areas. Moreover, promoting peri-urban electrification could be a win-win solution for utilities, and poor consumers, by preventing illegal connections through a well-planned electrification scheme, that will create a sound environment for a profitable, and expanding business, since peri-urban households are the potential future consumers of the utilities.
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World Bank. 2001. Peri-Urban Electricity Consumers--A Forgotten but Important Group : What Can We Do to Electrify Them?. Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme (ESMAP);no. ESM 249 / 01. © http://hdl.handle.net/10986/20286 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
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