A toolkit for participatory village energy planning

Number of the organizations have been involved in community based energy initiatives in India. The basic characteristic of most of these initiatives is establishment of a community managed revenue model. Trough these initiatives various institutional, financial mechanisms, models have been put in place along with the communities to ensure sustainability of the project in the long run. The understanding and learning generated from these initiatives needs to be captured, documented and converted into training and capacity building modules for local NGOs. This will help not only in wider replication of the successful community based decentralized renewable energy models but also in information dissemination necessary for implementing such projects.

The present toolkit on ‘Participatory Village Energy Planning’ & other similar organizations draws lessons from the practical experiences gained by Development Alternatives on community based renewable energy projects. The toolkit is essentially meant for Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)  with the main objective to provide them with guidelines on different aspects of community based renewable energy initiatives.

The toolkit is applicable to ‘community based renewable energy projects’ that require involvement of local communities and will help in making the implementing agencies (essentially NGOs) more responsive to the felt needs of the local community. The toolkit has been developed in consultation with key stakeholders such as Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs), government officials, farmers, local entrepreneurs and local NGOs.

Applicability of the toolkit.

• The present toolkit is applicable to ‘Decentralized renewable Energy Projects’ in rural ares only.

• Modules given in the toolkit cover key aspects of scoping, planning, implementation and monitoring phases of the project. It has been assumed that scope of the renewable energy project is predefined.

• It provides detailed step by step processes to be followed for carrying out various project activities. However, extreme details on some of the aspects are not within the scope of this toolkit.