An interview series showcasing insights and research from the Sustainable Energy Transitions Initiative, housed at Duke University

Why Countries Just Can’t Quit Coal? New Research Offers Some Clues

“Coal Lady” Credit: Adlai 88 via flickr creative commons

We know that countries around the world sometimes favor coal because it is cheaper. But new research aims to pinpoint some of the political forces that drive continued investment in coal. 

Jan Steckel, along with his research collaborator Michael Jakob, are coordinating a series of global case studies to understand the non-economic factors associated with investment in coal-fired power. The series includes over a dozen countries with collaborators from all corners of the world using a political-economy framework developed by Jan Steckel and Michael Jakob’s team at the Mercator Institute. 

Their research examines what interests and actors that make investment in coal (or divestment) politically so attractive. And in so doing, they also identify possible entry points for policies that nudge countries away from coal. 

Jan Steckel is head of the working group on climate and development at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change. He joins us from Berlin to discuss this research.

Their framework is published online here, and one of the case studies is published here.

Today’s episode is part of series of episodes that showcase the research and work of the Sustainable Energy Transitions Initiative. SETI is an interdisciplinary global collaborative that aims to foster research on energy access and energy transitions in low and middle-income countries. Currently, SETI is housed at Duke University, where it is led by Professors Subhrendu Pattanayak and Marc Jeuland. To learn more about SETI, follow them on Twitter @SETIenergy.

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How to Increase the Use of Clean Cookstoves and Solar Lighting in Rural Ethiopia and Beyond

Credit: Becky Williams CC License/Flickr

In rural Ethiopia women are more likely than men to collect firewood and cook over stoves that emit harmful smoke. Meanwhile, men are more likely than women to control how household income is spent. Accordingly, men are less likely than women to purchase improved cooking stoves that emit fewer pollutants while cooking.

This is the case in rural Ethiopia and also across rural communities throughout much of the developing world.   

Dr. Sied Hassan, sought to dig deeper into this phenomenon.  He designed an inventive field experiment to uncover the willingness of men versus the willingness of women to pay for an improved cookstove. Dr. Sied Hassan is a research fellow at Ethiopian Policy Studies institute, a think tank in Ethiopia. He discusses his experiment and the very big policy implications of his findings. We also discuss a related experiment in which he tested various methods to increase the willingness of rural households to pay for solar lighting. 

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Today’s episode is part of series of episodes that showcase the research and work of the Sustainable Energy Transitions Initiative. SETI is an interdisciplinary global collaborative that aims to foster research on energy access and energy transitions in low and middle-income countries. Currently, SETI is housed at Duke University, where it is led by Professors Subhrendu Pattanayak and Marc Jeuland. To learn more about SETI, follow them on Twitter @SETIenergy.

China Has A Plan to Reduce Household Air Pollution. But Who Benefits?

Kentaro IEMOTO Beijing Air Pollution… Sanlitun , Beijing, China Via Flickr CC License

China is the world’s largest consumer of coal, though in recent years the government has sought to reduce the country’s reliance on coal for energy. This includes transitioning away from coal for home heating. Dirty burning coal from home heating units is a major pollutant, particularly in northern China that both causes significant harm to individual health and also contributes to climate change.

In 2014, the government launched what is known as the household heating energy transition program. This program sought to replace household coal heating units with electricity, natural gas, or cleaner burning coal. Like many Chinese infrastructure projects it was a massive undertaking. It was also directed by the government, top down, and mandatory for homes that used dirty burning coal. 

My guest today, Lunyu Xie is Associate Professor at the School of Applied Economics , Renmin University of China. She conducted a unique cost-benefit study of this program that analyzed the effectiveness of the household heating energy transition program.  What makes Lunyu Xie’s study so significant is that she uses data from household surveys to see how this major government program may benefit end users–or not. 

Household energy from dirty burning sources is a major pollutant around the world–particularly in developing countries. The Chinese plan was able to enact a massive transition away from dirty coal, but is that model replicable elsewhere? We discuss this question and more in this episode of the podcast, produced in partnership with SETI

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Today’s episode is part of series of episodes that showcase the research and work of the Sustainable Energy Transitions Initiative. SETI is an interdisciplinary global collaborative that aims to foster research on energy access and energy transitions in low and middle-income countries. Currently, SETI is housed at Duke University, where it is led by Professors Subhrendu Pattanayak and Marc Jeuland. To learn more about SETI, follow them on Twitter @SETIenergy.

Why Does Chile Have Such Bad Air Pollution?

Chile has some of the worst air pollution in the Western Hemisphere. It is partly a matter of geography  — many cities are in valleys that trap pollution. But it is also the consequence of how many Chileans heat their homes. Wood burning home heat stoves are very common in much of Chile, and these stoves burn dirty and emit harmful pollution.  

My guest today, Carlos Chavez, is a professor of economics at the School of Business and Economics at Universidad de Talca in Central Chile. His research has focused on the use of wood-burning heating stoves in Chile and government policies that could reduce the prevalence of wood-burning stoves and improve air quality.   In our conversation, we discuss why so many people in Chile heat their homes this way and how he was able to create a research project that suggests some effective policy remedies.   

Chile is a higher income country, yet the way that many households create energy by burning wood is something far more common in poorer countries — it is generally not associated with countries at Chile’s level of wealth.  This makes Chile an interesting case study that I am glad to bring you today.   

Today’s episode is part of a series of episodes that will be published over the next few months that showcase the research and work of the Sustainable Energy Transitions Initiative. SETI is an interdisciplinary global collaborative that aims to foster research on energy access and energy transitions in low and middle-income countries. Currently, SETI is housed at Duke University, where it is led by Professors Subhrendu Pattanayak and Marc Jeuland. To learn more about SETI, follow them on Twitter @SETIenergy

How Female Entrepreneurs Can Light Up Rural Rwanda

Image credit: Sven Torfinn. Rwanda. This image is part of a series of pictures produced to illustrate the research “electricity’s impact on women’s empowerment”, conducted by ENERGIA and Hivos. Used With Permission

Just over 52% of households in Rwanda have access to some form of electricity. This access is not evenly distributed across Rwanda. In rural communities, where most Rwandans live, energy access rates are far lower. Furthermore, the country’s geography severely limits the reach of Rwanda’s electric grids.

This means Rwandans are increasingly turning to off-grid energy solutions, namely solar power.

My guest today, Rebecca Klege, is a Ghanian economist whose research focuses on the intersection of clean energy access and female entrepreneurship. She is a researcher at Environmental Research Policy Unit who is completing her PHD studies at the School of Economics, University of Cape Town in South Africa.

What makes Rebecca Klege’s work so unique is that she flips a common study question on its head. Rather than asking how energy access empowers women, she examines how empowered women can promote energy access — and whether or not they do a better job of it than men?

At the center of her research is a for-profit social enterprise called Nuru Energy. This company provides re-chargeable solar lighting to village level entrepreneurs, who then sell the lighting to others in their community. Using sales data from Nuru Energy, Rebecca Klege was able to compare the effectiveness of female salespeople versus their male counterparts. She finds that female entrepreneurs of this solar energy product are significantly more successful than male entrepreneurs.

There are broad implications of this finding, which touches on questions around sustainable development, clean energy access, and women’s empowerment. These questions and more are being put to the test in an on-going randomized control which Rebecca Klege also discusses in this episode.

And on a very similar note, I want to draw listeners attention to a recently concluded Virtual Workshop on Gender & Energy Access, hosted by Duke University and featuring 200 practitioner-scholars from over 30 countries. You can find a link to that workshop and white paper on globaldispatchespodcast.com.

Today’s episode is the third installment in a series of episodes that will be published over the next few months that showcase the research and work of the Sustainable Energy Transitions Initiative. SETI is an interdisciplinary global collaborative that aims to foster research on energy access and energy transitions in low and middle-income countries. Currently, SETI is housed at Duke University, where it is led by Professors Subhrendu Pattanayak and Marc Jeuland. To learn more about SETI, follow them on Twitter @SETIenergy.

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New Research Finds a Link Between Fires, Children’s Health and Gross Domestic Product

A view of Delhi Jean-Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier Flickr/CC license

Setting fires to clear land for planting crops, or crop burning, is a common practice in many places around India. And as you can imagine, this kind of burning emits terrible air pollution.

My guest today, Prachi Singh, has uncovered a link between that kind of air pollution and the height of children who are born to mothers who were impacted by that air pollution while pregnant. 

Prachi Singh is an associate fellow at the Brookings Institution, India Center and a PhD candidate at Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi. Her research analyzed height and weight ratios of children who were exposed, in utero, to air pollution events like crop burning and forest fires. She finds a significant correlation between low weight and low height ratios and exposure to this pollution. 

But her research goes further than that. She demonstrates how low height and weight ratios stemming from this exposure impacts India’s entire economy, including taking a significant toll on India’s Gross Domestic Product. The peer reviewed research is cutting edge and has broad global implications.

We kick off discussing the impact of what is known as stunting on children’s health before having a conversation about her research methods and the significance of her findings. 

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Today’s episode is the second installment in a series of episodes that will be published over the next few months that showcase the research and work of the Sustainable Energy Transitions Initiative. SETI is an interdisciplinary global collaborative that aims to foster research on energy access and energy transitions in low and middle-income countries. Currently, SETI is housed at Duke University, where it is led by Professors Subhrendu Pattanayak and Marc Jeuland. To learn more about SETI, follow them on Twitter @SETIenergy.

Why Don’t More People Use Clean Cookstoves?

Photo credit: Karan Singh Rathore / www.sanjhi.org via US State Department. CC license/flickr

For years, the global development community has struggled over the problem of dirty burning cookstoves. These are typically rudimentary stoves that burn wood or other biomass — and in the process emit harmful smoke indoors. Nearly three billion people around the world cook their meals this way, leading to environmental damage and illness. Indoor air pollution attributed to dirty burning cookstoves kills millions of people each year.

The solution to the problem of dirty cookstoves should be straightforward — just replace cookstoves that emit harmful pollutants with cleaner burning, improved cookstoves. Indeed, there are a great variety of efficient and clean cookstoves available today. But so far, these improved cookstoves are not being used at anywhere near a scale commensurate with the problem. The solution might exist, but consumers are often not using these better cookstoves. 

My guest today, Subhrendu Pattanayak, sought to learn why people who would benefit the most from improved cookstoves are not using them. He is the Oak Professor of Environmental and Energy Policy at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. In 2019, he published the results of a five year study with co-author Marc Jeuland of communities in rural India that offers some key insights into the barriers of increasing demand for cleaner burning cookstoves.   We discuss these findings at length in our conversation.

Today’s episode is the first installment in a series of episodes that will be published over the next few months that showcase the research and work of the Sustainable Energy Transitions Initiative.SETI is an interdisciplinary global collaborative that aims to foster research on energy access and energy transitions in low- and middle-income countries. Since 2015, the network has expanded to include over 150 researchers, policymakers, and practitioners working in the field of energy from over 35 countries. Currently, SETI is housed at Duke University, where it is led by Professors Subhrendu Pattanayak and Marc Jeuland.  SETI’s research addresses the most pressing energy challenges faced by low- and middle-income countries, from clean cooking in Senegal to micro-hydro power in Nepal to coal divestment in Chile. To learn more about SETI, follow them on Twitter @SETIenergy.

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