A critical challenge for the developing world is to establish an effective energy infrastructure which can facilitate growth and the transformation of people’s living prospects. Renewable energy sources are only part of the solution. Cost, security, corruption and timescale for development are all major risks and concerns to think about..

What are the ways to establish sustainable environment in this countries?

The best approach is to make energy infrastructure in the developing world through distributed generation. Large scale power plants, extensive construction of high voltage transmission lines are huge centralized investments with extensive requirements for technical support, maintenance materials, etc.

In a model of distributed generation you place small scale diesel generators, or solar panels, or wind mills, or water wheels (all renewable and sustainable energy sources, except diesel) on a very localized basis and generate the power exactly in the place where it is needed.

Much lower tech, much lower capital investment, less reliability on a centralized system.

Any solution has to address the integrity of the distribution network. If power is being bleed off through unauthorized line taps, the effectiveness of management and invested capital is seriously compromised. There is no one magic solution, but components are: local ownership of, including P&L participation, in decentralized power generating assets; making power theft socially unacceptable; sufficient investment in installation and repair service; efficient billing and power consumption monitoring.

So to summarize the ways to create sustainable electric supply in the developing countries we can define the following steps:

1) Education (like what the Chinese are doing above). Since all other efforts will require politically sensitive projects, huge investments and broad consensus, they cannot be achieved until the level of awareness is sufficiently high. This goes both for the public (voters) and for the official decision makers.
2) Energy efficiency. The energy efficiency is dramatically lower in most developing countries compared to most developed countries, although the span is quite wide. The investments in increasing energy efficiency are generally lower than in shifts in energy production. In fact, investments in energy efficiency typically pays off and are profitable in quite a short time.
3) Distributed generation. As have been written earlier, to enable distributed generation, demand side generation, will take less investment and requires a less robust infrastructure than does changes in the centralized production system. For instance, the question of power theft is almost a non issue when it comes to demand side generation.
4) Centralized sustainable energy production. Clearly this is also needed, but the investments are high and the requirements on infrastructure are the highest, just like the requirements on political consensus.

5) Reduce peak load consumption. I know this is easier said than done, especially when there is already comparitively very little consumption in developing countries. But distributing the loads, simply by altering work timings in different regions or for different businesses in the same region will distribute peak load more evenly.
6) Get business driven entrepreneurship in power generation. i.e. let a local business than needs significant power set up its own (smaller) generating station and also supply excess or non-peak power to the surrounding region/ grid. Entrepreneurship of this sort fosters efficient usage and recovery from billing. There are other regulatory challenges but this is a possible way ahead.
7) Develop home grown renewable energy solutions. It is scary even in India that we are largely dependent on someone else’s technology. One of the ways in which some of the money spent on purchasing technology from overseas can be ploughed back, is to ask for a 35% buyback from India (or developing country) i.e. the seller of the technology has to buy at least 35% of their earnings from sales in India as goods or services.

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