Energy Poverty Action -  a joint initiative of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the World Energy Council and the World Economic Forum.

"Delivering business best practices to reducing energy poverty"

What Is Energy Poverty Action?
EPA is a private sector initiative that delivers business expertise and best practices to reduce energy poverty by developing innovative, scaleable and replicable energy projects. It was initiated at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2005. The three initiating partners, British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority (Canada), Eskom (South Africa) and Vattenfall (Sweden), have signed an EPA Alliance Agreement and have committed to developing two initial projects, in Lesotho and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

During the World Energy Congress 2007 in Rome, Italy, the World Energy Council joined the EPA as a Network Partner, followed by the WBCSD, which also joined as a Network Partner during the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2008. This tripartite alliance is seen as the key to scaling up by facilitating broad engagement with the private sector to promote sustainable energy in Africa and elsewhere.

Why EPA?
Access to energy is fundamental to improving quality of life and is a key imperative for economic development. In the developing world, energy poverty is still rife. Nearly 1.6 billion people still have no access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Through EPA, energy poverty can be reduced.

What does it entail?
The core concept of the EPA model is local autonomy, i.e. building the necessary local capacity to empower users to manage, operate and maintain the projects in a sustainable manner.

Typically, grant/donor/development funding is used for upfront capital infrastructure investment and local users assume responsibility for ongoing operation and maintenance costs.

How it operates?
In 2007, the Development Bank of Southern Africa began hosting the EPA Management Unit (EPAMU) to further promote the objectives of EPA. EPAMU officially took up this task in September 2007. EPAMU’s midterm objective is to build its institutional capacity to act as a matchmaker between leading companies, governments, local entrepreneurs and communities, as well as national and international finance institutions and donors to enable project financing and execution to address the challenges of energy poverty.

Present and future alliance partners will shape and champion their own projects in line with the EPA concept. As a centre of excellence, EPAMU will support the alliances.

The Role of EPAMU



By seconding specialists to EPAMU, alliance partners will enable the provision of skills for the support of existing projects, as well as the replication and scaling up of new projects: matchmaking, development of pre-feasibility and bankable feasibility studies, project management, collation and diffusion of best practices, and development and implementation of financing mechanisms.

The EPA engagement process

EPA’s short-term objective
The short-term EPA objective is the successful completion of the initial project in Lesotho (see box) and the replication of business-driven alliances with commitments to new projects by involving additional business partners.

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 Christoph Frei, Senior Director, Head of Energy Industries & PACI, talks about the partnership with the World Energy Council and how it targets energy poverty.