The World Bank - Working for a world free of poverty

Views menu

Syndicate content
Making development work for all

About us

About us

East Asia & Pacific is facing some great development challenges today: urbanization, protection of the environment, the need to find renewable energy sources and many others. This site wants to create a conversation around those important issues. More »

Energy

Perlu pencarian terobosan inovasi, kirim ide anda sekarang

Submitted by Jean-Louis Racine on Tue, 2012-03-13 10:47

Available in English

Henry Ford pernah berkata, ketika ia bertanya kepada para konsumen apa yang mereka mau, mereka menjawab kuda yang lebih cepat. Andai saja ia mendengar permintaan konsumennya, mungkin saja Ford Motor Company tidak akan pernah ada, atau ada tetapi dengan nama Ford Faster Horse Company. Pada saat itu mobil menjadi apa yang disebut “pencarian terobosan inovasi”, yang berarti secara radikal menggantikan teknologi yang ada (kuda dan kereta kuda), tidak dengan mendengar permintaan sebagian besar konsumen tapi mencoba mencari tahu kebutuhan mereka yang sebenarnya.

Power to the Poor in Laos brings electricity to (almost) all

Submitted by Alfredo Baño Leal on Mon, 2011-05-23 11:31

Building on the story about rural electrification in Laos, let me talk to you about an innovative concept under the electrification program umbrella that focused on those more disadvantaged and with fewer opportunities. This new concept is the Power to the Poor program (P2P).

The P2P scheme was launched in September 2008, although it was identified a few years earlier, in 2005. At that time, a social impact survey was carried out and among all data analyzed, one indicator was outstanding: the pick-up rate in the villages recently electrified was on average only a 70%. What was happening with the remaining 30% of households that were not being connected? It was not a design problem as those households were just a few meters from the electric post. It was, as with many problems in life, a financial problem: the connection fee charged by the power utility, Electricité du Laos (EdL), was too expensive to be paid upfront by the poorest households.

Electrifying Laos: The Movie

Submitted by Alfredo Baño Leal on Fri, 2010-10-22 10:13

The history of the power sector in Lao PDR is relatively new. 15 years ago, Laos counted with just a couple of large hydropower plants, and a meager 16% of the households throughout the country counted with electricity access, mostly concentrated in Vientiane, the capital city, and few provincial towns such as Luang Prabang and Savannakett.

Infrastructures needed an urgent push to help the economy start up and reduce the extreme poverty rates of the population. During the beginning of the 90’s, several donors including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) began different infrastructure development programs, including roads, water supply and electrification.

How do we come up with $80 billion for clean energy in East Asia?

Submitted by Xiaodong Wang on Wed, 2010-05-12 10:55

The World Bank recently launched an East Asia energy flagship report in Singapore: “Winds of Change: East Asia’s Sustainable Energy Future” (full disclosure: I’m the lead author). This report recommends that six East Asian countries (China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam) shift to a low-carbon sustainable energy path that can stabilize CO2 emissions by 2025, improve local environment, and enhance energy security without compromising economic growth. The report calls for immediate government action on policy and institutional reforms to transform the energy sector towards much higher efficiencies and more widespread use of low-carbon technologies.

There was wide media coverage for the report’s launch in Singapore. Most of the news coverage focused on the price tag of $80 billion for the additional annual financing needs to shift to the sustainable energy path recommended in the report. Some suggested that the price tag is too expensive, while others compared it with the China’s green stimulus of $200 billion.  The good news is that the energy savings from energy efficiency and many renewable energy technologies will pay for this additional investment costs. The challenge is how to mobilize such a large amount of financing in a timely manner.

Deep winter in Mongolia often means extreme cold, smog

Submitted by Dave Lawrence on Tue, 2010-01-12 10:53

This morning, my kids stood waiting for the school bus, crying. The bus was late, and they had been outside for about three minutes. No wonder. The temperature outside was -39 degrees Celsius. I thought we had bundled them up enough; they had so many layers on that they looked like astronauts. But they were still freezing.

This winter is especially cold. It's in the 30 degrees below zero every day, and has dipped below -40°C.  In some parts of Mongolia, it has fallen below -50°C. There is frost on the windows of our office.

Vote for climate change story to be presented during Copenhagen conference

Submitted by James I Davison on Sun, 2009-12-06 22:48

In a few hours, world leaders and representatives from up to 192 countries will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, for the highly anticipated United Nations Climate Change Conference, which starts on Monday and lasts for two weeks. While the deluge news reports, blog posts and online conversations on the meetings continue to crop up, one of the most interesting media initiatives of Copenhagen that I’ve seen is are awards for the best in-depth feature and investigative climate change journalism.

The Earth Journalism Awards, which are sponsored in part by the World Bank, started with more than 450 submissions from 100 countries that have been narrowed down to 15 finalists. Anyone with an Internet connection can vote for their favorites. The winning story will be presented to, as the site puts it, “a mixed audience of negotiators, climate change experts, activists and media representatives in Copenhagen on December 14 on the eve of the endgame negotiations.” That seems like a pretty significant prize to a journalist. (Read more about the competition here.)

You have until Dec. 9 to vote through Facebook, Twitter or the awards site. If nothing else, it’s worth checking out the list of finalists, which is made up of a nice collection of stories that cover a range of climate change topics from around the world – including two entries from the East Asia and Pacific region.

Powering the Solomon Islands with reliable, affordable energy a challenge

Submitted by Hamish Wyatt on Thu, 2009-12-03 11:01
Residents of Honiara eating dinner during a blackout. Energy in the Solomon Islands can be unreliable and expensive.

A few nights ago, when I returned to my house on the ridges above Solomon Islands capital Honiara, my alarm clock was flashing 2 p.m. It was obviously wrong, and I have stopped relying on it for the time. Instead it is simply a very noisy gauge of how long it has been since the last power outage.

Unreliable energy supply is perhaps one of the harder things to get used to when living in Honiara. Long overdue maintenance being carried out on the city’s diesel chugging generators causes power outages for 72 hours per month on average. What is worse is that this actually seems efficient compared to rural areas which, due to a lack of spare parts and diesel, can lose power for up to a week.

Information about NT2 hydropower project in Laos: A Library of Babel? It depends on your point of view

Submitted by Victoria Minoian on Mon, 2009-11-23 00:42

In “The Library of Babel,” Borges talks about the infinite nature of information and knowledge, because of its endless combinations. The information the Nam Theun 2 (NT2), the hydropower project in Laos which aims to generate revenues for poverty reduction following principles of social and environmental sustainability, offers a lot of angles—but thankfully, not infinite—from which to see the same piece of information over time.

So in this post I’d like to remind you of some key sources of information, like these websites:

Growing number of families in China making use of solar energy

Submitted by Joe Qian on Wed, 2009-09-02 12:10
Rows of solar collectors line the roofs of many buildings in China.

Driving through Jiangsu and Anhui provinces adjacent to Shanghai, China, last month, I was struck. Not by the sheer number of people and vehicles, or by the seemingly endless number of new buildings under construction with their distinct bamboo scaffolding, but by what was on top of those roofs: continuous rows of solar collectors.

China’s increasing emphasis on renewable energy on a large-scale level can be seen by wind farms in Inner Mongolia and several other green World Bank projects in the country. However, the most pervasive example for the public and individuals has been the explosion of the use of solar water heaters.

Farewell to Ironwood Forests: The end of an ecosystem in central Sumatra, Indonesia

Submitted by Tony Whitten on Mon, 2009-08-31 17:30

The number of Ironwood trees in Sumatra has greatly reduced because of heavy demand for the timber.

Just over 25 years ago, I was lucky enough to be working at the University of North Sumatra and writing what became the first in the Ecology of Indonesia series. During that time I did quite a bit of travelling around Sumatra, and it was exciting to find what was thought to be the last bit of pure ironwood forest near Rimbo Kulim not far from Muara Tembesi in Jambi province, a region I’ve been driving around again this last few days.

Ironwood forest in Sumatra is of special interest because of its extremely low diversity of tree species, being dominated (unsurprisingly) by the ironwood, which glories in the scientific name Eusideroxylon zwageri.

Ironwood, a laurel, is found not just in southern Sumatra, but also in Borneo and in the southern Philippines. It grows to 50 meters tall and 2.20 meters in diameter, with a lovely warm red-brown bark, large leaves and heavy fruits. Its timber is economically very valuable because of its strength and durability; it can resist rotting for up to 40 years even when in constant contact with wet soil, or for a century in drier conditions.