Practitioners' workshop on Augumenting Livelihoods through Renewable Energy in Rural Areas

TERI organised a Practitioner's workshop on Augumenting Livelihoods through Renewable Energy in Rural Areas at the Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneshwar (XIMB) on the 2nd of January 2014. This workshop, organised with the joint support of the Royal Norwegian Embassy (NFA Project - Clean Energy Interventions for Livelihood Generation) and the UK Research Council and DfID (OASYS South Asia Project) aimed to bring together practitioners working in the fields of energy and livelihoods to collectively discuss the synergies between renewable energy and livelihood generation in rural areas.

The keynote address was delivered by Prof. Subhes Bhattacharyya from De Montfort University. TERI and its grassroots partner, SAMBANDH, presented their joint efforts towards creating meaningful synergies between energy access and development programs under the NFA project. TERI then presented their ongoing implementation of a solar mini-grid under the OASYS project in Dhenkanal district, focusing on design innovations for enhancing project sustainability.

Invited presentations from the Odisha Tribal Empowerment and Livelihoods Programme (OTELP) and Practical Action, led to an engaging discussion on the synergies between the programmes of the government and civil society organisation at the state-level and also threw lights on technologies such as micro and pico-hydel. The challenges of working in difficult off-grid locations, the measures required to assess market opportunities at the village level, the need for standardisation and challenges of effective decentralisation were some of the main themes of discussion.