Message from the Chair

Message from the Chair of the Global Sustainable Electricity Partnership

James E. Rogers

Providing electricity for 20 percent of the world’s population that lives without it is an enormous challenge; however, it is a challenge that the Global Sustainable Electricity Partnership (GSEP) is uniquely positioned to address. With a membership of the world’s leading electricity companies, GSEP has been a driving force in the effort to promote sustainable electricity development since its founding in 1992. Over the past 21 years, it has demonstrated its commitment through sustainable energy development projects and human capacity building activities across five continents, a global scholarship program, and collaborations with international organizations and the public sector. This year’s theme, “universal Access to Electricity”, builds on that commitment, and the uN Secretary-General’s year of Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All), to identify the ways that GSEP, and the electric utility industry more broadly, can advance the work to meet the critical challenge of advancing universal energy access. This effort began at the Rio+20 conference in June 2012, where GSEP made concrete pledges to support the objectives of SE4All by: • Providing 50,000 solar lanterns to increase access to clean, off-grid electricity • Increasing the number of human capacity building workshops run by GSEP in developing and emerging countries • Expanding electricity access in southern Africa by providing financing for the development of Electrification Roadmaps

Over the past year, a series of discussions and workshops were held with member companies and leading stakeholders in the renewable energy and energy access space to explore how GSEP can leverage its unique attributes to contribute further. From these discussions, two primary recommendations emerged: • Catalytic Global Investment Fund for Electricity Access Projects: A new, catalytic investment fund could increase access to lower-cost capital for electricity access projects by leveraging the unique expertise and technical competencies of member companies with outside capital. In doing so, it would combine the three elements that are critical to project success: capital, technology, and know-how. • Development of Standardized PPAs: PPAs are one of the most effective instruments for reducing market uncertainty and securing project financing. The development of a standardized PPA template that could be easily replicated, adjusted, and applied to a specific set of countries with similar regulatory or market dynamics could reduce transaction costs and be a game changer for electricity access projects. Both instruments offer a way to build on the special features of GSEP and its member companies, as well as the existing work that has been done on the issue of sustainable energy development – including the two recent reports produced by GSEP on effective public/private partnership models for accelerating global technology deployment. Most importantly, the instruments provide an opportunity to make a groundbreaking contribution to the efforts to expand electricity access. The global electric utility industry has an essential role to play in advancing universal energy access. It is our hope that this report represents a starting point for the discussion of what that approach is, and how GSEP and member companies can best contribute to one of most challenging, but important, issues in the world today.

James E. Rogers

Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Duke Energy Chair 2012-2013, Global Sustainable Electricity Partnership