Protocol - What are the major barriers to increased use of modern energy services among the world’s poorest people and are interventions to overcome these effective?
Protocol for a systematic review
Abstract
A lack of access to modern energy services (such as electricity from solar home systems for lighting, natural gas burned in modern stoves for cooking and petroleum-based engines for motive power to enable agro-processing) among the world's poor is widely recognised to have negative impacts on their health, education and quality of life, further deepening and entrenching their poverty. This systematic review has been commissioned in order to \"neutrally collect, critically appraise and synthesise\" the evidence provided in the literature on barriers to the use of modern energy services among the world's poorest people, and interventions to remove those barriers. The review will focus on sub-Saharan Africa, searches will be conducted in as broad a manner as possible in order to capture lessons learned from lower-middle income countries in other parts of the world. This document sets out the research protocol that will be used to collect, analyse and synthesise the available evidence.
The following sub-research questions immediately fall out of the primary, overarching question.
- What are the different types of modern energy services, and associated technologies for their delivery and/or use, which are used, or could be used, by the world's poorest people?
- What are the major economic, technical, political, cultural and social barriers to the use of modern energy services, and associated technologies, amongst the world's poorest people? What criteria are used to define a 'major' barrier?
- What are the different types of interventions that have been used to promote or increase uptake of modern energy services and technologies? What are their characteristics and outcomes?
- What are the different measures of effectiveness which are used to assess the interventions and how do these vary depending on the intervention, the modern energy service and the relevant barriers in different contexts?
This review will concentrate on modern energy services other than cooking, as another research team has been commissioned by DFID to conduct a systematic review to understand the specific issues related to cooking.
The systemetic review for this protocol has been published
Citation
CEE protocol 11-004, Collaboration for Environmental Evidence, 21 pp.
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