Demand-side Subsidies for Energy Access Webinar

Targeting: Designing subsidies to prioritize the most vulnerable

The End User Subsidy Lab (EUSL), a joint initiative among partners ESMAP/Lighting Global, GOGLA, Energising Development (EnDev), and the Clean Cook Alliance (CCA), is a platform for pooling knowledge, technical expertise, and funding for demand-side subsidies (DSS). This webinar series organized by the EUSL will guide us through the key elements of designing demand-side subsidies programmes to facilitate the implementation of overarching energy access strategies. Each webinar will be 75 minutes with the main objective to support in-depth dialogue and discussion around lessons learned, challenges, and ‘how to’.

The first webinar focuses on how to identify people facing an affordability gap in order to effectively target subsidies for them. Key questions to be discussed include: How do we minimize the leakage of subsidies to people that can afford commercial prices? What are the best data sources for targeting DSS? What are the limitations of different targeting approaches? When is it okay to have untargeted subsidies? What are the risks of untargeted subsidies and how can they be mitigated?  This webinar, moderated by ESMAP/Lighting Global, will provide an overview of different targeting approaches (economic, geographic, demographic, etc), and will showcase the experience of relevant practitioners. Guest speakers include:

• EnDev, discussing experience in Malawi of leveraging the government’s social cash transfer system
• Government of Nepal, represented by the Alternative Energy Promotion Centre (AECP), discussing their decade of experience targeting energy subsidies, and in particular, targeting vulnerable demographics
• UC Berkeley, presenting research and application of artificial intelligence (AI) to identify most vulnerable populations in Togo under a social assistance program implemented in partnership between the World Bank and the Government of Togo