Review: HT26: Week 8 – What’s Wrong With Community Centred Energy Access?
by Tamunoimim Kalada-GreenView the associated event for this review
Energy access is often celebrated in numbers: connections delivered, kilowatt-hours generated, systems deployed. But what if these metrics are missing the point entirely?
In this seminar, Dr Bernie Jones posed a disarming challenge: despite decades of progress, many decentralised energy projects fold not because of poor technology, but because they fail to serve the people they are built for.
Dr Jones, Managing Director of Smart Villages and former co-lead of the Smart Villages Initiative (SVI), brings over a decade of experience across over 30 projects in global energy access. Drawing on this work, he reframed energy access not as an engineering problem, but as a systems challenge that demands integrated, community-driven solutions.
The seminar opened with the origins of the SVI at Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute in 2011. At the time, much of the global focus was on large-scale infrastructure or emerging “smart cities” concepts. Yet, a significant proportion of the global population lived in rural communities. This disconnect prompted a shift in thinking toward “smart villages”: decentralised, technology-enabled systems designed to meet local needs in developing nations.
A central insight from this early work was that many energy access initiatives fail due to mismatch with community priorities. Projects were frequently designed externally, with limited engagement from the beneficiary communities, resulting in underutilisation, poor maintenance, and disconnect with local economic realities. Furthermore, a one-dimensional approach was taken to energy access: energy alone, with little to no consideration for relevant energy services.
From this discovery emerged two core principles: energy access must be integrated with broader development outcomes and community-led. The Smart Villages model reflects this by combining electricity provision with services such as water, healthcare, and enterprise development, and grounding systems in long-term community engagement rather than short-term deployment. A key tool in this model is the “service value test” which shifts the focus from identifying productive use needs to prioritising what beneficiaries value the most.
And yet, even with better models and clearer principles, a deeper set of constraints remains. Dr Jones highlighted a series of persistent challenges that continue to undermine community-centred energy access.
A recurring theme was the misalignment between investment incentives and development outcomes. As energy access becomes increasingly commercialised, it is framed less as a public good and more as an investment opportunity. This shift brings capital, but it also reshapes priorities. Profitability, speed, and scalability begin to outweigh long-term impact, leading to standardised system designs, under-specified infrastructure, and a focus on more commercially viable communities.
Closely related is investors’ preference for simplicity over complexity. As Dr Jones noted, “investors love widgets, but not complexity.” One-dimensional solutions are easier to scale and easier to finance, but they rarely reflect the realities of communities. Similarly, there is a bias towards digital solutions, with funders often preferring apps and platforms over physical infrastructure. As a result, resources are directed toward technologies that reflect investors’preferences rather than local needs.
Another critical tension lies between scale and impact. Business models driven by rapid expansion and financial returns often conflict with the slower, more iterative processes required for meaningful community engagement. This is compounded by regulatory barriers, limited grant funding, and a broader reluctance to embrace subsidies, which are essential for making energy access affordable in low-income contexts. As Dr Jones pointed out, the infrastructure underpinning energy systems in developed countries has historically been heavily subsidised, raising questions about the expectations placed on developing regions.
Short-term-ism further exacerbates these challenges. Community engagement requires time, trust, and sustained presence, yet many projects operate within limited funding cycles that prioritise immediate results over long-term outcomes. This is reflected in the use of simplistic impact metrics, which favour easily measurable quantitative indicators over more complex, qualitative assessments of social and economic change.
Even where more integrated approaches exist, they remain difficult to replicate at scale. The Smart Agri-Centres deployed by SVI integrate energy access with agricultural productivity and local enterprise development. These projects incorporate a multi-dimensional, community-driven approach, but also underscore the challenges of scaling such impactful models. They are often complex, resource-intensive, and dependent on partnerships and long-term support.
Looking ahead, Dr Jones outlined a clear set of priorities for the sector. These include strengthening community-centred design of energy access solutions, expanding grant funding and long-term financing mechanisms, improving access to subsidies, and enabling more holistic policy making. Greater alignment between funders, developers, and communities, alongside reforms in data transparency and regulation, will be critical to unlocking more effective models.
Discussions around business models, exit strategies, and impact measurement highlighted the ongoing tension between financial sustainability and social impact. Notably, community ownership emerged as a critical factor in ensuring system longevity. Dr Jones observed that issues of energy theft were minimal, as communities tended to protect systems they perceived as their own. The more persistent challenge was non-payment, often linked to affordability constraints. Qualitative methods, such as interviews, were also identified as essential for capturing the true impact of energy access.
Overall, the seminar provided a compelling critique of current approaches to decentralised energy systems. It re-framed energy access not as a question of technology deployment, but as a challenge of alignment between systems, incentives, and communities. In doing so, it pointed toward a more grounded and effective path forward.