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Empowering Development!
Energy powers development in all sectors. It fuels transportation and industrial processes, boosts crop production and agricultural processing, and increases revenues for
small- and medium-sized businesses. Energy moves water, enables communication, powers computers to bring schools into the 21st century, and lights, heats, and
refrigerates health clinics around the world. As their economies grow, developing countries will face increased demands for adequate energy services.
Despite the centrality of energy to development, currently more than 2 billion people, or one-third of the world’s population, have no access to electricity or other
modern forms of energy. Instead, they rely primarily on inefficient and ‘dirty’ biomass fuels, typically wood, animal dung or crop waste. Burning these fuels
creates a number of environmental problems and exposes people, in particular women, to health risks from breathing pollutants in smoke. Expensive, unreliable electricity
cripples economies and restricts job opportunities by reducing the productivity and competitiveness of businesses and industries.
Expanding access to modern energy services to power economic and social development is the cornerstone of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) energy
mission. To achieve this mission, USAID develops and implement programs that seek to:
- Support the construction and rehabilitation of select physical infrastructure in order to restore basic services in post conflict and conflict-prone states;
- Improve enabling environments, which include policy, legal, regulatory, and commercial reforms, to boost energy sector performance and increase private sector
participation and investment;
- Enhance operational and commercial performance of public and private sector institutions, including utilities, and promote increased energy trade and regional
power pools;
- Develop new and innovative approaches to delivering and deploying clean energy technologies, through piloting new business models, renewable energy applications,
financing approaches, and public-private partnerships with businesses, entrepreneurs, and NGOs; and
- Reduce the environmental impacts of energy production and use, through technical assistance and training on enforcement, voluntary agreements with industry, and
commercial financing programs.
USAID works through multilateral Partnerships aimed at improving coordination and collaboration of USAID energy activities with those of other donors, multilateral
organizations, foreign governments, private sector partners and other global partnerships. USAID also works in collaboration with other U.S. government agencies and
Presidential Initiatives. By sharing ideas, skills, and resources, USAID and partners are able to increase impact and sustainability of energy programs and activities.
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