The volume presents innovative approaches to improving energy access in underprivileged communities. A core theme is the use of previously underutilized or unrecognized resources that can be found through synergies in supply and value innovation, novel financing methods, and the use of leapfrog technologies. The contributors illustrate how decentralized approaches and small-scale localized solutions can promote climate change mitigation and adaptation and increase the resiliency of vulnerable communities. This book gathers selected articles from the 2014 Micro energy Systems Conference at UC Berkeley that focus on technical, financial, human, institutional, and natural resource capital. The contributions reflect the latest concepts, theories, methods and techniques, offering a valuable resource for researchers, practitioners and governmental institutions engaged in the field of energy access for developing countries.

The volume presents innovative approaches to improving energy access in underprivileged communities. A core theme is the use of previously underutilized or unrecognized resources that can be found through synergies in supply and value innovation, novel financing methods, and the use of leapfrog technologies. The contributors illustrate how decentralized approaches and small-scale localized solutions can promote climate change mitigation and adaptation and increase the resiliency of vulnerable communities. This book gathers selected articles from the 2014 Micro energy Systems Conference at UC Berkeley that focus on technical, financial, human, institutional, and natural resource capital. The contributions reflect the latest concepts, theories, methods and techniques, offering a valuable resource for researchers, practitioners and governmental institutions engaged in the field of energy access for developing countries.

This Open-Access-Book covers different aspects of the low-carbon energy transformation in a unique manner, with a particular focus on two regions, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The first part of the book provides useful insights on changes and reforms in the energy sector of Bangladesh, while the second part illustrates the low-carbon energy transformation in South Asia and the third part covers lessons from Sub-Saharan Africa. In all of these regions, the energy sector is undergoing major changes, driven by the four D's: Decarbonization, decentralization, digitization, and democratization. Major overhauls are taking place at all levels: The country level, where energy mixes are rapidly changing, the corporate level, where large state-owned and private companies are challenged and new actors are emerging, and the local level, where technical and regulatory change has made citizen engagement and community power an option to replace or at least complement centralized supply structures.

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Politics - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,3, University of Gottingen, course: Fragile States: Determinanten, Auswirkungen und mogliche Wege aus der Krise, language: English, abstract: What should we learn from our history of development aid? Development aid faces fundamental problems, especially in fragile states. These problems were addressed regularly by various representatives, academics, politicians and practitioners. The Samaritan Dilemma and a case study on used clothing is presented. It is clear that only having good intentions is not enough to help out the poor. The econometric analysis on aid effectiveness has repeatedly offered hope and repeatedly disappointed. There are several reasons why the aid flow increases anyway. Chauvet and Collier (2004) use a different approach and show potential for efficiency enhancements, but their analysis suffers from several caveats. Nevertheless, potential is shown and the authors indicate how to address the problem. Furthermore, the idea of social businesses is introduced as a market based mechanism which allows for feedback and accountability. Recent initiatives, primarily pushed by private actors, give reason for hope. It is on the governments to provide the basic conditions in the fragile states and to back those initiatives which so far show the best results.

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2009 in the subject Economics - Case Scenarios, grade: 1,3, University of Mannheim (Lehrstuhl fur Volkswirtschaftslehre, insbes. Okonometrie), course: Bachelorarbeit, language: English, abstract: In recent years foreign aid was often conditioned on good institutions. Due to this course the development of financial institutions has been considered vital for the development process. This thesis points in its theoretical part to the positive effects of efficient stock markets on economic growth and examines empirically the efficiency of Africa's sub-Saharan stock markets. Results are then compared with the same tests on four emerging markets in Asia and as a benchmark on S&P 500 and DAX. It discusses further the relationship between market efficiency and financial crisis and comes to the conclusion that a crisis worsens the respective efficiency level. Nevertheless, all African markets are at least able to pass the critical lowest hurdle of market efficiency. However, conclusions from the research propose, that the Asian markets perform better than the African markets, although the study comes to some inconclusive results. Limits to the efficient market hypothesis itself and its empirical analysis are shown throughout the paper. The study suggests that former reforms need to be intensified in order to avoid a further increase in overall income inequalities.