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Despite the declining trends in total energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, energy intensity, and emission intensity over the past two decades, Romania still emits more greenhouse gas per unit of output than many other members of the European Union. The country is looking for further greening of its energy supply system to achieve the clean energy and climate change mitigation goals included in the European Unions 2030 target and 2050 Roadmap. Using an energy supply optimization model, TIMES, this study develops energy supply mixes for Romania under a baseline scenario that satisfies the European Unions current energy and climate targets for 2020, a green scenario that satisfies the European Unions 2030 energy and climate targets, and a super green scenario that satisfies the European Unions prospective 2050 energy road map. The study finds that although Romania could achieve the green scenario at a moderate cost, it would be challenging and costly to achieve the super green scenario.

Sustainable development goals (SDGs) placed access to basic services at the center of international development in 2016-2030. Out of 17 goals, five address the access of poor people to basic services: to health in SDG3, to education in SDG4, and SDG5, to water and sanitation in SDG6, to energy in SDG7, and to urban services in SDG11. The mutually reinforcing relationship between electricity access, economic development, and poverty reduction is well established. The SDGs framed access to basic services as a matter of dignity. The SDG synthesis report promotes self-reliance of developing countries rather than just the North-to-South aid, as the challenge of poverty and exclusion extends beyond charity to the hungry and the most deprived. Directly or otherwise, access to electricity results in progress in all dimensions of human welfare and development including education, health care, access to water, essential communications and information as well as simple financial transactional services, income generation, and environmental sustainability. Also, a positive relationship can be seen between electricity access and the human development index (HDI).

In contributing to global climate change mitigation efforts as agreed in Paris in 2015, China has set a target of reducing the carbon dioxide intensity of gross domestic product by 60-65 percent in 2030 compared with 2005 levels. Using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model of China, this study analyzes the economic and greenhouse gas impacts of meeting those targets through carbon pricing. The study finds that the trajectory of carbon prices to achieve the target depends on several factors, including how the carbon price changes over time and how carbon revenue is recycled to the economy. The study finds that carbon pricing that starts at a lower rate and gradually rises until it achieves the intensity target would be more efficient than a carbon price that remains constant over time. Using carbon revenue to cut existing distortionary taxes reduces the impact on the growth of gross domestic product relative to lump-sum redistribution. Recycling carbon revenue through subsidies to renewables and other low-carbon energy sources also can meet the targets, but the impact on the growth of gross domestic product is larger than with the other policies considered.

Based on the World Bank’s own extensive global experience and drawing upon international expertise from leading specialists and practitioners, this report presents a comparative assessment of various approaches that have been applied around the world, with varying degrees of success, to mitigate resource risks and catalyze investments in developing the geothermal sector. It provides a framework that can help decision makers identify suitable approaches that are commensurate with development goals, funding capacity, implementation capabilities, and other circumstances specific to the context in a given country. Geothermal presents an opportunity for many countries to diversify their power generation mix in a sustainable way since it is an environmentally friendly, clean energy source that can reliably produce baseload power on a 24 by 7 basis. Despite over 100 years of development and an estimated global potential of 70 - 80 gigawatts (GW), only about 15 percent of the known geothermal reserves are presently exploited and producing electricity. While there are many reasons, in various countries, for the slow pace of geothermal development, one widely recognized and unique obstacle that is applicable worldwide is the high resource risk during the early stages of the geothermal development process. As a result, it is difficult to mobilize the early-stage investments, especially through the private sector.

The steep decline in the world oil price in the last quarter of 2014 slashed fuel price subsidies. Several governments responded by announcing that they would remove subsidies for one or more fuels and move to market-based pricing with full cost recovery. Other governments took advantage of low world prices to increase taxes and other charges on fuels. However, the decision to move to cost recovery and market prices, ending budgetary support, has not been implemented consistently across countries. Policy announcements have varied in the way they were communicated and the level of detail provided. When petroleum product prices bounced back during the first half of 2015, some reforming governments failed to raise prices correspondingly. Recent experience suggests that regular and frequent price adjustments, however small—as in Jordan and Morocco—help the government and consumers to get accustomed to fluctuations in world fuel prices and exchange rates. By contrast, freezing prices, even for a few months—for socioeconomic considerations or because the needed adjustments are small enough to be absorbed—increases the risk of reversion to ad hoc pricing and price subsidies. The more formally the decision to move to market-based pricing is communicated, the more public new price announcements, and the higher the frequency of price changes, the more likely the implementation of the announced pricing policy reform will be sustained.

Zambia faces its toughest economic challenges in at least a decade. The economy has come under strain in 2015 as external headwinds and domestic pressures have intensified. The main domestic risks are threefold. Firstly, that the power crisis will worsen. Secondly, a deterioration of confidence in the economy, leading to further weakening of the currency and increased levels of inflation. Lastly, a bad harvest that serves to increase food prices and reduce rural and agricultural incomes, with the greatest impact falling on the poorest households. Commodity-exporting countries’ policy makers face increasing challenges across the globe. Zambia is no exception and must grapple with multiple challenges as the economy slows down. Strengthening the fiscal position and restoring fiscal buffers are necessary to increase confidence in the economy, reduce the need for costly borrowing, and build resilience against further exogenous shocks. Economic progress since 2000, driven by mining production and services, has substantially increased the demand for electricity in Zambia. Key to note is that an increase in tariffs to cost-reflective levels is necessary but not sufficient to increase private investment in electricity generation in Zambia. The new generation capacity and emergency measures for 2016 will help in mitigating the impact of the power crisis in the coming year, but global experience shows there is no substitute for effective planning. Particular efforts are needed to improve sector planning and the procurement processes for large power projects.

This Energy Sector Policy Note is intended to support the Government of Mozambique in determining priorities for policy decisions with the aim of delivering efficiently produced, technically and financially sustainable electricity supply to the Mozambican population. To support the development of recommendations, this Note includes simulation analysis based on the current finances of the sector. Electricidade de Macambique’s (EDM) corporate financial model was adapted for this work. Targets for electrification are based on discussions with government officials. EDM’s current generation pipeline and its timing was taken as a given in order to simulate investment needs and evolution of sector finances under various tariff and funding availability assumptions. The various simulations and the broader sector quantitative and qualitative discussion should support policy formulation and prioritization going forward. The power sector in Mozambique faces three key challenges: i) to provide reliable and efficient electricity supply to its customers; ii) to cope with the increase in the electricity demand from its current (and future) customer base by expanding its generation and transmission capacity; and, iii) to provide access to electricity to the vast majority of the population. The importance of the timing of new generation to export power to South Africa also points to the importance of the backbone transmission project to evacuate the power from the center of the country – thereby enabling exports. Increasing access in line with Government targets will require major investments. The Government needs to consider the trade-offs between the ambition of the access targets imposed upon EDM and the sector’s broader financial viability for carrying out operations, maintenance and investment. Relaxation of the access target so that the 50 percent target is achieved by 2030 instead of 2023 gives EDM more liquidity in the first years.

These guidelines are directed to the economic analysis of power sector policy analysis and the appraisal of power sector investment projects. The general guidance is complemented by an Annex Volume that contains relevant technical notes, a glossary, and an extended Bibliography. In this first edition, the focus of the technical notes is on grid-connected renewable energy projects. In FY16 the scope of the technical notes will be extended to cover transmission & distribution, rural electrification, off-grid, energy efficiency, and thermal projects.

This report presents the water and climate adaptation plan (WATCAP) developed for the Sava river basin (SRB) as result of a study undertaken by the World Bank. The WATCAP is intended to help to bridge the gap between the climate change predictions for the SRB and the decision makers in current and planned water management investment projects that will be affected by changing climate trends. The purpose of the report is to: (i) assist stakeholders and decision makers in assessing and planning for the risks generated by climate change impacts on water resources; (ii) provide a basis for future plans and studies of adaptation to climate change impacts in the SRB; and (iii) stimulate cooperation and debate across the basin toward additional and more detailed studies on climate change impacts at the regional and basin scale. The SRB is projected to experience small increases in water use by the public water supply, industry, energy, and agricultural and irrigation sectors. However, it is widely expected that new hydropower plants (HPPs) will be constructed in the near future, making energy (primarily through hydropower) the most important water use in the SRB.

The World Bank Group has committed to achieving universal access to electricity by 2030 under the Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) initiative. This is a daunting challenge: more than 1 billion people do not have access, and another 1 billion have chronically inadequate or unreliable service. Most of those without access are poor, and the largest share is in Sub-Saharan Africa. Achieving universal access within 15 years for the low-access countries (those with under 50 percent coverage) requires a quantum leap from their present pace of 1.6 million connections per year to 14.6 million per year until 2030. The investment needed would be about $37 billion per year, including erasing generation deficits and meeting demand from economic growth. By comparison, in recent years, low-access countries received an average of $3.6 billion per year for their electricity sectors from public and private sources, including $1.5 billion per year from the World Bank Group. Development outcomes of the Bank Group’s assistance were generally favorable compared with other infrastructure sectors. However, performance in improving financial viability of country electricity sectors was below expectations. There were significant gaps in the Bank Group’s coverage of low-access countries, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Median implementation time of World Bank investment projects was nine years, with time overruns attributable to inadequate project design and borrower capacity. Support for off-grid electrification was low and sporadic, with a few notable exceptions. The Bank Group’s growing non-conventional renewable energy portfolio is dealing with technology and regulatory challenges. Tracking welfare and gender impacts in World Bank projects has improved, and International Finance Corporation (IFC) has made a beginning in addressing these issues. The Bank made some significant pilot contributions to addressing the affordability of electricity connections. Collaboration grew among World Bank, IFC, and MIGA through joint projects, which helps break ground for the private sector in some high-risk and fragile countries, and supports a few large and complex projects. The scale of the SE4All challenge requires the Bank Group to reposition itself as a global solutions provider in the sector, going well beyond the confines of its own direct support for access. This evaluation points to the urgency for the Bank Group‘s energy practice to adopt a new and transformative strategy to help country clients orchestrate a national, sustained sector-level engagement for universal access. A major challenge in this effort is to deploy the Bank Group units’ individual and collective strengths beyond Bank Group–led projects and transactions to stimulate private sector investments for closing the financing gap, especially in generation, for low-access countries.

South Asian countries, facing challenges in efficiently meeting growing electricity demand, can benefit from increased cross-border electricity cooperation and trade by harnessing complementarities in electricity demand patterns, diversity in resource endowments for power generation, and gains from larger market access. The region has witnessed slow progress in expanding regional electricity cooperation and trade, and undertaking needed domestic sector reforms. Although bilateral electricity sector cooperation in the region is increasing, broader regional cooperation and trade initiatives have lagged in the face of regional barriers and domestic sector inefficiencies. Deeper electricity market reforms are not a necessity for further development of cross-border electricity trade, but limited progress in overcoming regional and domestic barriers will limit the scope of the regional market and the benefits it can provide.

The South Asia region is lagging behind many regions in the world in regional electricity cooperation and trading, despite the huge anticipated benefits. This study uses an electricity planning model that produces optimal expansion of electricity generation capacities and transmission interconnections in the long-term to quantify the benefits of unrestricted cross-border electricity trade in the South Asia during 2015–40. The study finds that the unrestricted electricity trade provision would save US$226 billion (US$9 billion per year) of electricity supply costs over the period. The ratio of the present value of benefits, in the form of reduction of fuel costs, to the present value of increased costs due to generation and interconnection would be 5.3. The provision would reduce regional power sector carbon dioxide emissions by 8 percent, mainly because of substitution of coal-based generation with hydro-based generation, although regional emissions would be well above current levels absent other policy interventions. To achieve these benefits, the region is estimated to add 95,000 megawatts of new cross-border transmission interconnection capacity.

It has been more than two decades since the widespread initiation of global power sector reforms and restructuring. However, empirical evidence on the intended microeconomic, macroeconomic, and quality-related impacts of reforms across developing countries is lacking. This paper comprehensively reviews the empirical and theoretical literature on the linkages between power sector reforms, economic and technical efficiency, and poverty reduction. The review finds that the extent of power sector reforms has varied across developing countries in terms of changes in market structures, the role of the state, and the regulation of the sector. Overall, the reforms have improved the efficiency and productivity in the sector among many reforming countries. However, the efficiency gains have not always reached the end consumers because of the inability of sector regulators and inadequate regulatory frameworks. Reforms alleviate poverty and promote the welfare of the poor only when the poor have access to electricity. From a policy-making perspective, this implies that the reforms need to be supplemented with additional measures for accelerating electrification to help the poor.

With an installed capacity greater than 137 gigawatts (GWs) worldwide and annual additions of about 40 GWs in recent years, solar photovoltaic (PV) technology has become an increasingly important energy supply option. A substantial decline in the cost of solar PV power plants (80 percent reduction since 2008) has improved solar PV’s competitiveness, reducing the needs for subsidies and enabling solar to compete with other power generation options in some markets. The World Bank Group (including the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Development Association, International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency) helps client countries secure the affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy supply needed to end extreme poverty and promote shared prosperity. The approach mirrors the objectives of the sustainable energy for all initiative - achieving universal access, accelerating improvements in energy efficiency, and doubling the global share of renewable energy by 2030. The World Bank Group recognizes that each country determines its own path for achieving its energy aspirations, and that each country’s transition to a sustainable energy sector involves a unique mix of resource opportunities and challenges, prompting a different emphasis on access, efficiency, and renewable energy. The objective of this guidebook is to enhance the reader’s understanding of how to successfully develop, finance, construct, and operate utility-scale solar PV power plants. The guidebook focuses on aspects of project development that are specific to solar. From this perspective it covers all aspects of the overall project development process including site identification, plant design, energy yield, permits and licenses, contractual arrangements, and financing, giving sparser coverage to general project development basics that are not specific to solar. This guide covers the key building blocks to developing a successful utility-scale solar power project (the threshold for utility-scale depends on the market, but generally at least 5 megawatt (MW).

Large-scale deployment of renewable energy technologies, such as wind power and solar energy, has been taking place in industrialized and developing economics mainly because of various fiscal and regulatory policies. An understanding of the economy-wide impacts of those policies is an important part of an overall analysis of them. Using a perfect foresight computable general equilibrium model, this study analyzes the economy-wide costs of achieving a 10 percent share of wind power in Brazil’s electricity supply mix by 2030. Brazil is in the midst of an active program of wind capacity expansion. The welfare loss would be small, 0.1 percent of total baseline welfare in the absence of the 10 percent wind power expansion. The study also finds that, in the case of Brazil, production subsidies financed through increased value-added tax would have superior impacts on welfare and greenhouse gas mitigation, compared with a consumption mandate where electricity utilities are allowed to pass the increased electricity supply costs directly to consumers. These two policies would impact various production sectors differently to achieve the wind power expansion targets: the burden of the mandate falls mostly on electricity-intensive production and consumption, whereas the burden of the subsidy is distributed toward goods and services with higher value added.

This report identifies the most viable heating options and related investment measures to meet heating demand in urban residential and public buildings in Tajikistan. The report provides an overview of the condition and performance of the urban heating sector and building stock, and assesses, in detail, the situation in Dushanbe and Khujand. The report gives introduction in section one. Section two gives an overview of the physical, institutional, and regulatory characteristics of the urban heating sector in Tajikistan and includes an analysis of the urban building stock. Sections three and four describe the heat supply and demand characteristics of Dushanbe and Khujand and estimate the unmet heating demand in these cities. Section five evaluates the available supply and demand side heating options and investment measures that can be implemented to improve the heating sectors in the target cities. Section six recommends priority investment measures for each building type, identifies related policy actions to facilitate implementation of the recommended investments, highlights key implementation issues, and describes the next steps necessary to implement them.

Worldwide, hydropower is a crucial power supply option for several reasons. First, it is a renewable energy resource that can contribute to sustainable development by generating local, typically inexpensive power. Second, hydropower reduces reliance on imported fuels that carry the risks of price volatility, supply uncertainty and foreign currency requirements. Third, hydro systems can offer multiple co-benefits including water storage for drinking and irrigation, drought-preparedness, flood control protection, aquaculture and recreational opportunities, among others. Finally, hydro can allow more renewables, especially wind and solar, to be added to the system by providing rapid-response power when intermittent sources are off-line, and pumped energy storage when such sources are generating excess power. For more publications on IFC Sustainability please visit www.ifc.org/sustainabilitypublications.

The World Bank (WB) has for many years been financing and conducting work to increase access to modern energy services among energy poor communities, and its efforts vary greatly from project to project, based largely on client-country context, requests, and needs. In mid-2014, CLASP evaluated a selection of recent WB EA projects to identify opportunities to expand and more effectively integrate and operationalize EE, a process and set of principles we refer to as EA+EE.

The objective of the note is to inform the governments policy thinking by identifying the principal challenges that the power sector faces and outlining solutions for overcoming them. The note also discusses some broader energy sector issues related to the gas tariff structure and demand. The note will also be disseminated to increase understanding and awareness among key stakeholders and the general public on the key challenges facing the power sector and the potential solutions for overcoming them. This will help to promote improved dialogue and collaboration between the government and the other key stakeholders. The note is organized in following topics: power sector structure; synopsis of challenges and solutions; principal challenges and solutions; and annexes.

The current report is a milestone for preparing the Romanian climate change (CC) action plan. A CC action plan should be based on the consolidation and coordination of both mitigation and adaptation measures and options. An important step in the elaboration of such a plan is the selection of appropriate actions. This selection requires the involvement of competent authorities in the key sectors, including, in the case of Romania, transport, energy, urban, water, agriculture, and forestry. The screening approaches are used to facilitate a transparent decision-making process in various fields such as environmental impacts, dangerous substances, environmental footprint of products, or CC actions. The report is structured as follows: section one gives introduction. Section two summarizes the usage of screening approaches in the field of CC and environment by different European Union (EU) member states and by the European Commission. Section three discusses the main categories of mitigation and adaption measures that can be included in a CC action plan. Section four presents the screening approach and process and describes several complementary tools (multi-criteria analysis, cost-benefit analysis (CBA), cost effectiveness analysis (CEA), modeling) that should be used when the screening approach is insufficient. Section five provides a conclusion and key recommendations.

This issue of Handshake, focused on public-private partnerships in the power sector, brings diverse expert voices together to discuss how to increase access to energy in developing countries. Features on hydropower and renewables together with examples from Africa and Latin America provide an up-to-the-minute look at one of the most important and rapidly evolving sectors today. This issue includes the following headings: power and mining: digging deep to power up; market mover: intraday electricity trading; timeline to transformation: Nigerias privatization; energy for development: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MITs) new research; and interview: United Nation (UN) sustainable energy for all (SE4ALL) special representative Kandeh Yumkella. Whats it like to be energy-poor? Kandeh Yumkella, Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General for Sustainable Energy for All, answers that question and many more in this issue of Handshake. Yumkella recalls his own experiences in Sierra Leone to illustrate the link between energy poverty and income poverty and explains how PPPs can help.

The report analyzes barriers to and opportunities for private sector participation in district heating (DH) in the Western Balkan countries of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, and Serbia, as well as in Mongolia and Ukraine. Specifically, the report analyzes the legal and regulatory frameworks for public-private partnerships (PPP) and for DH in each of the countries,including an overview of the primary and secondary legislation, PPP preparation and approval processes, institutional setup of the DH sector, heat tariff-setting procedures, etc. In addition, the report describes international best practice for various business models for private sector participation in DH and provides country-specific recommendations to improve the attractiveness of PPP in the DH sector. Finally, the report provides an estimation of the investment needs in the DH sector by country and indicates selected investment projects, which are conservatively assessed at 1.5 billion dollars.

This paper focused on the delivery mechanisms for bilateral, multi-lateral, host government subsidy, and consumer cross-subsidy funding to enhance private sector investment. However, the specific source of funds is not deemed to be especially relevant for the purposes of this working paper. Focus on some of the useful characteristics of Output-Based Aid (OBA) experience to date that may be relevant. Propose an option for how OBA experience could be used to deliver national and programmatic supports to projects in middle- and low-income countries in coordination with other multi-lateral development bank instruments such as concessional loans and credits. This working paper does not: specifically address strengths and weaknesses of the clean development mechanism and only briefly touches on issues with using carbon finance in the current market. Carry out an assessment of experience with feed-in tariffs or advanced market commitments, or indeed other results orientated schemes.

Energy poverty is a global problem: access to energy services is crucial to meet basic household needs, deliver and access public services, and generate income. Less than 10 percent of Sub-Saharan (SSA) rural households have access to electricity, with an overall access rate below 25 percent. One of the main obstacles for SSA electrification practitioners is the difficulty in obtaining practical and timely knowledge on how to overcome economic, technical, institutional, and political barriers to electrification in their day-to-day work. Launched in 2008, the Africa Electrification Initiative (AEI) seeks to create and sustain a living body of practical knowledge and a network of SSA practitioners for the design, development, and implementation of rural, peri-urban, and urban on-grid and off-grid electrification programs. AEI supports the network by organizing workshops and promoting online discussions and knowledge exchanges on topics important for its members. The workshop set out to address a number of relevant electrification topics previously identified through in-depth discussions and ongoing knowledge exchanges among a growing network of SSA practitioners. The workshop's main focus was on ground-level implementation of different institutional approaches to electrification, with particular focus on the experiences of rural energy agencies/rural energy funds (REAs/REFs) across SSA. The workshop lasted two and a half days, comprising 21 sessions, including regular session panels and discussion clinics with a longer duration. It also featured exhibition space for posters submitted by participating institutions, an expo of approved lighting products from the lighting Africa program, and an awards ceremony to recognize the best papers submitted by SSA electrification practitioners in response to the AEI call for papers.

Economic growth in Central America has increased rapidly over the past 20 years. Currently, the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita for the six Central American countries of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama averages approximately US$3,600. However, economic disparity in the Latin American region is the highest in the world. Despite impressive growth, 20 million people or half of the population in Central America are classified as poor. This assessment of the geothermal potential module is the fourth in the series; it provides an analysis of the energy context in the region focusing on the technology and past experiences of geothermal resources. The study aims to identify the challenges associated with development of geothermal generation, including physical, financial, regulatory and institutional barriers, and it outlines some possible strategies to overcome them at the regional and country-specific level with a view to establish a basis for policy dialogue and to provide decision-makers a reference document with a regional outlook. Energy, particularly electricity, is critical for economic development. It is needed to power machinery that supports income-generating opportunities. Countries that have affordable and reliable energy can more easily attract both foreign and domestic capital. Central America's vulnerability to external shocks in the energy sector has increased over the last years. The region depends on foreign supply of fossil fuels (oil, coal). Since the share of thermal generation in power supply has increased significantly in the last decade, exceeding installed capacity for hydropower, the rise and volatility of oil prices has a dramatic effect today on the region's economy. Together with integration, it has become increasingly clear that the region must develop its local energy endowment, which has generated a strong interest in renewable energy sources and technologies, such as hydropower, geothermal, and wind. Given its potential in the region, geothermal energy has attracted the attention of policymakers and private investors as a resource to further develop and supplement hydroelectric generation (and to reduce dependency on thermal generation).

The global financial roller coaster, with the Euro zone as its lead car, has hit economic prospects across the globe. The South African economy, with its close links to the world economy, has suffered, too, resulting in weakened growth prospects, lower fiscal revenues, lower and more volatile valuation of the rand, and dampened external financing. This further compounds the policy challenges facing the authorities, on top of their preoccupation with unyielding unemployment, which requires higher and more inclusive economic growth. Policymaking is also conditioned by a growing recognition that future growth needs to be less carbon-intensive. As elsewhere, opportunities in green economies are viewed with keen interest, as a way of simultaneously targeting a cleaner environment and stimulating innovation, growth, and job creation. While green policies can have large synergies and co-benefits with the growth and employment agenda, they are not a substitute for it. Indeed, such synergies are likely to be mutually enhancing and larger when the growth and environment objectives are being pursued by multiple, well-targeted and coordinated policies.

More than a decade of ambitious sector reform has led to a period of stability in the Armenian energy sector. The sector faces challenges more typical of a developed economy than an emerging one: policymakers' concerns have shifted from avoiding total system collapse to optimizing the energy supply mix to provide affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy services. However, some old challenges remain and new ones have arisen. Armenia is still vulnerable to energy supply disruptions; tariffs lag the full cost of service provision; and a significant investment backlog impedes progress in energy infrastructure. The purpose of this note is to present the analysis of the challenges facing Armenia's energy sector, specifically, its electricity, natural gas, and heating subsectors. The intention of the note is not to prescribe solutions, but to present analysis of options and tradeoffs that the Government can use to inform its decision-making. Armenia's energy sector has undergone a series of reforms over the last fifteen years, which included privatization of the electricity distribution and gas companies, and some generating companies, establishment of an independent regulator, and development of a formal strategic plan for the sector. This energy sector overview highlights important outcomes from reforms and describes key sector characteristics.

This issue includes the following headings: renewable energy: wind and solar; energy efficiency: green building; and green finance: infrastructure finance.

Better access to improved infrastructure services is an important engine for economic growth. The poor state of infrastructure is a key bottleneck to growth in African countries, and Cameroon is no exception. Between 2000 and 2005, improvements in information and communication technologies boosted Cameroon's growth performance by 1.26 percentage points per capita, while deficient power infrastructure held growth back by 0.28 percentage points. If Cameroon could improve its infrastructure to the level of the middle-income countries of Africa, the growth effect could be on the order of 3.3 percentage points. Cameroon has made significant progress in many aspects of infrastructure. Across a broad range of sectors, the country has made serious efforts to implement institutional reforms with a view to attracting private sector investment. Private sector concessions have been awarded for the Port of Douala, the CAMRAIL railway, the national power utility, and the national water utility (CDE). These arrangements have generally led to performance improvements and attracted significant volumes of finance. Power supply remains expensive and unreliable. Cameroon needs to accelerate the development of some of its prime hydropower sites, which would greatly improve the domestic power situation and potentially allow Cameroon to play its natural role as hydropower exporter to the Central African Power Pool. Cameroon's information and communication technology (ICT) reform remains frozen at an early stage. The telecom incumbent, CAMTEL, remains state-owned and receives substantial public subsidy. The mobile sector is relatively uncompetitive, operating as a duopoly. Moreover, while Cameroon enjoys access to a submarine cable, CAMTEL's monopoly control over the international gateway has prevented consumers from benefiting.

Concentrating solar thermal (CST) technologies have a clear potential for scaling up renewable energy at the utility level, thereby diversifying the generation portfolio mix, powering development, and mitigating climate change. A recent surge in demand for solar thermal power generation projects in several World Bank Group (WBG) partner countries shows that CST could indeed become an important renewable energy technology that would be able to provide an alternative to conventional thermal power generation based on the central utility model. At present, different CST technologies have reached varying degrees of commercial availability. This emerging nature of CST means that there are market and technical impediments to accelerating its acceptance, including cost competitiveness, an understanding of technology capability and limitations, intermittency, and benefits of electricity storage. Many developed and some developing countries are currently working to address these barriers in order to scale up CST-based power generation. Given the considerable growth of CST development in several WBG partner countries, there is a need to assess the recent experience of developed countries in designing and implementing regulatory frameworks and draw lesson that could facilitate the deployment of CST technologies in developing countries. Merely replicating developed countries' schemes in the context of a developing country may not generate the desired outcomes.

In recent years Mali's economy has grown steadily at a rate of more than 5 percent per year, driven by developments in gold mining, cereal harvests, and telecommunications. Mali's landlocked condition, together with its very uneven distribution of both population and economic activities between the arid north and the much richer south, challenge the country's ability to sustain this pace of growth. These two aspects define and challenge Mali's development and the infrastructure agendas. The country's strategic focus on the regional agenda has paid off to date, and critical institutional decisions are bringing many positive developments. More than 80 percent of Mali's segments of the West Africa road corridors are maintained in good or fair condition, giving the principal production areas of the south alternative access to the deep-water ports of Dakar, Adidjan, Takoradi, Tema, and Lome. Air transport security has improved, supported by the refurbishment of local airports, including Bamako airport, and the restructuring of Mali's Civil Aviation Authority to increase its autonomy and guarantee harmonization of air transportation rules across West Africa. Mali has also successfully liberalized its mobile telephone markets, with access approaching 40 percent in 2008. Roaming agreements and cross country competition have kept mobile prices low. Access to electricity in Mali more than doubled in the last decade, helped by the introduction of an apparently successful program for rural electrification (AMADER) that widened access to more than 36,000 rural households.

Upgrading infrastructure plays a critical role in the Republic of Congo's quest to diversify its economy and reduce poverty. It is also an important source of growth on its own. A cross-country statistical analysis conducted for this report shows that infrastructure contributed one-half of one percentage point to the Republic of Congo's per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth annually from 2001 to 2006. However, if the country's infrastructure could be improved to the level seen in Mauritius, the leading country in Sub-Saharan Africa, it could contribute more than 3 percentage points to annual per capita growth. The Republic of Congo's power infrastructure is inadequate and inefficiently operated. The country lags well behind peer countries in generation capacity and electrification. The parts of the population not served by the grid face exorbitant costs. The government has responded to these issues with an ambitious investment plan. However, if new assets are to operate effectively, major inefficiencies in the power utility will also need to be addressed. The utility's transmission and distribution losses are 47 percent, more than double best-practice benchmarks, while the cost of overstaffing is 30 percent of utility revenue. Tariffs recover barely half the cost of service provision, even though full cost recovery will be affordable to the population. In the information and communication technology (ICT) sector, the Republic of Congo has made good progress in developing its mobile telephony market in recent years, with high levels of signal coverage. The cost of international connectivity is currently high, but it should fall once the country connects to the international submarine cable and completes its domestic fiber optic network. On the other hand, the physically dilapidated and financially depleted condition of the fixed-line telephone operator is becoming a constraint to raising Internet penetration. The Republic of Congo performs relatively well on service coverage in the water and sanitation sector. The country's access statistics are substantially ahead of those in its peer group, particularly with regard to piped water, stand-posts, and improved latrines. However, access to services is much greater in urban areas than in rural areas. Furthermore, under-pricing of water has hurt the financial soundness of the water utility, even though analysis suggests that cost recovery tariffs would be affordable to consumers.

This book chronicles the development of Vietnam's rural electrification program. It tells the story of how the Vietnamese government conceived, developed, scaled up, and improved its program. It also discusses the role the government, the countries main utility, local authorities, local communities, and the country's international development partners played in the pursuit of the electrification agenda. The book provides an overview of the strategies that fueled the impressive expansion of access to electricity in Vietnam, the development of the institutions that implemented the program and the passage of policies and laws that made growth of such scale possible. It also discusses results from the ground, and particularly the impacts of electrification on people's lives. It concludes with an attempt to draw lessons from Vietnam's experience. The book comprises three main parts: part A, made up of eight sections, provides an overview of Vietnam's rural electrification experience, which can be divided into six distinct periods. Part B summarizes a select set of findings from the multiyear survey and discusses the impact of rural electrification on Vietnamese households. Part C draws lessons from the experience of rural electrification in Vietnam, based on the information presented in parts A and B. It discusses the lessons learned from the perspectives of the government and the World Bank.

The global financial crisis severely affected economies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECA). Currencies depreciated across the region. Government tax revenues declined sharply leading to high budget deficits and rising levels of public debt. Tightening credit supply and deteriorating financial conditions have limited the ability to borrow in the public and private sector. The financial crisis slowed demand enough to delay an imminent energy shortage by a few years. In this sense, the financial crisis bought ECA countries some time. This report analyzes the impacts of the global financial crisis on power sectors in five countries in the ECA region: Armenia, Kyrgyz Republic, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine. It estimates the investment gap and proposes a prioritization of critical investments in each country. The report also proposes actions needed to mobilize financing for the sector, including a continued commitment to legal, regulatory and policy reform in the sector. The global financial crisis has created a window of opportunity to meet investment needs and avert a potential power shortage, but Governments need to recognize and act on this opportunity. This report serves as a starting point to facilitate further World Bank engagement in the region that can help Governments make timely, critical investments and foster sustainable investment in the sector over the long-term.

The Strategic Framework for Development and Climate Change (SFDCC) approved in 2008 guides and supports the operational response of the World Bank Group (WBG) to new development challenges posed by climate change. One activity pursued by the SFDCC is to further develop and test methods to analyze climate risks and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at the project level. The SFDCC emphasizes the need to improve GHG accounting activities at the project level to understand the implications of the World Bank's interventions. The objective of this study is to contribute to the SFDCC goal of improving GHG accounting in the energy sector by reviewing, assessing, and recommending GHG accounting methodologies for electricity Transmission and Distribution (T&D) projects. Existing methodologies are examined to test whether they can provide simple and accurate estimates of net project emissions. In addition, the study identifies and conceptually designs a methodological approach for T&D projects. The study focuses on the T&D sector due to its importance in the World Bank's energy lending portfolio and the lack of comprehensive methodologies to determine the impact of such interventions on GHG emissions. The study builds on existing information and relies on methodologies developed under different climate finance mechanisms such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The study also considers some of the fundamental principles in other accounting procedures, such as corporate GHG accounting. Methodologies that have the objective of emissions accounting for climate finance mechanisms need to have specific characteristics, such as additionality and ex post monitoring. These methodologies must calculate a project's emissions reductions or increases by estimating the project's net emissions impact.

The Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD) has gathered and analyzed extensive data on infrastructure in more than 40 Sub-Saharan countries, including Cape Verde. The results have been presented in reports covering several sectors—ICT, irrigation, power, transport, water and sanitation— and various policy areas, including investment needs, fiscal costs, and sector performance. This report presents the key AICD findings for Cape Verde, allowing the country’s infrastructure situation to be benchmarked against that of its African peers. Given that Cape Verde is a relatively well- off middle-income country, its performance will be benchmarked against that of other middle-income countries in Africa. Detailed comparisons will also be made with immediate regional neighbors in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and where relevant, with other island states that face a similar set of infrastructure challenges.

Infrastructure contributed just over one percentage point to Ghana's improved per capita growth performance during the 2000s, though unreliable power supplies held growth back by 0.5 percentage points. Raising the country's infrastructure endowment to that of the region's middle-income countries could boost annual growth by more than 2.7 percentage points. Today, Ghana has a very advanced infrastructure platform when compared with other low-income countries in Africa. But as the country approaches the middle-income threshold, it will need to focus on upgrading its infrastructure indicators in line with this benchmark. The Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD) has gathered and analyzed extensive data on infrastructure in more than 40 Sub-Saharan countries, including Ghana. The results have been presented in reports covering different areas of infrastructure, including ICT, irrigation, power, transport, water, and sanitation, and different policy areas, including investment needs, fiscal costs, and sector performance. This report presents the key AICD findings for Ghana and allows the country's infrastructure situation to be benchmarked against its African peers. Given that Ghana is a relatively well-off low-income country well on its way to reaching middle-income status, two sets of African benchmarks will be used to evaluate Ghana's situation. Detailed comparisons will also be made with immediate regional neighbors in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). As on the rest of the continent, West Africa's growth performance improved markedly in the 2000s. The overall improvement in per capita growth rates has been estimated at around 2 percent, of which 1.1 percent is attributable to better structural policies and 0.9 percent to improved infrastructure. During the five years from 2003 to 2007, Ghana's economy grew at an average annual rate of 5.6 percent, which accelerated to 7.3 percent in 2009. Ghana's infrastructure improvements added just over one percentage point to the per capita growth rate for the period 2003 to 2007.

This study is a product of the Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD), a project designed to expand the world's knowledge of physical infrastructure in Africa. Infrastructure contributed 1.8 percentage points to Cote d'Ivoire's annual per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in the mid-2000. Raising the country's infrastructure endowment to that of the region's middle-income countries could boost annual growth by a further two percentage points per capita. Cote d'Ivoire made major strides with respect to infrastructure during the 1990s. As a result, the country has broad-reaching national backbones in the road, energy, and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sectors, and relatively high levels of household coverage for utility services. However, much ground was lost to conflict in the mid-2000s. Very little investment has taken place in the last fifteen years, leading to recent power shortages, the deterioration of the road network, and the deceleration of progress on safe water access. Cote d'Ivoire's most pressing challenge will be to regain the financial equilibrium needed to restore a reliable energy supply. Reestablishing the prominence of Abidjan's port will require investments in terminal capacity, as well as road and rail infrastructure upgrades on hinterland linkages. The underfunding of road maintenance must also be addressed. Another challenge lies in sanitation, as it is currently unlikely that the country will meet the associated millennium development goal. This report presents the key AICD findings for Cote d'Ivoire, allowing the country's infrastructure situation to be benchmarked against that of its African peers. A social and economic crisis in Cote d'Ivoire has crippled its growth trajectory, which had been that of a middle-income country. It will therefore be compared to low-income countries (fragile and non-fragile groups) and middle-income countries, as well as immediate regional neighbors in West Africa. The study presented several methodological issues.