Asian Development Bank

Working together with the Asian Development Bank

WLPGA kicked off an initiative entitled “The Asia-Pacific Regional Initiative - Access to Energy for the Poor” with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) designed to bring clean modern energy to millions of villagers in the Asia-Pacific region. This programme was launched at the ADB headquarters in Manila in April. The project seeks to address the growing awareness of the potential for cleaner and more modern energy to provide an environmentally sustainable and relatively cheap means of supplying off-grid access to energy for the poor, particularly in developing countries. An estimated 1.6 billion people in developing countries, 1 billion of whom are in the Asia-Pacific region, do not have access to modern energy services for basic cooking, heating and lighting.

Access to Energy for the Poor will focus on a village level, demand-driven approach to improving the standard of living, quality of life, general health and health services of the people in poor communities in both off-grid rural villages and under-served urban settlements. It will also seek to create sustainable grass roots markets in these communities through creative financing schemes such as microfinance initiatives. WLPGA is a founding partner of this initiative and expects to be involved in its work over the next two years.

To learn more about this initiative from the Asia Development Bank, please click

http://www.adb.org/Documents/Papers/Access-Energy-Poor/Access-Energy-Poor.pdf

http://www.fdc.org.au/energy-initiative.html

To read about WLPGA participation in the new Asian Development Bank Energy Partnership that aims to reach 100 million people by 2015, please click

http://www.worldlpgas.com/news-and-events/news/wlpga-participating-in-new-asian-development-bank-energy-partnership