Improving Energy Access: Harmonizing Counting Methodologies to Monitor Progress for Access to Electricity

Improving access to sustainable energy has become a major development goal for achieving the SDGs and realizing the Paris climate agreement. Many political stakeholders have announced pledges and contributions to achieve universal access to energy as adopted under SDG7. SE4All and partners have designed the Global Tracking Framework as universal tool of tracking access. Subsequently, there is a constant need for monitoring of progress on the ground as well as of individual targets. Yet, different organizations apply differing counting methodologies to measure results and report progress. In order to be able to coherently and consistently monitor achievements there is a necessity of harmonizing counting methodologies and monitoring systems to report comparable and validated numbers and data to the public.

This side event deals with the challenge of harmonizing counting methodologies for access to electricity taking different reporting needs and different project types and approaches into consideration. The panelists will present their experience and methodological approaches in monitoring electricity access from off-grid electricity supply, grid-connected electricity supply, demand-side energy efficiency programmes and general TA-programmes with long impact chains.

docum: Dana Rysankova – “Beyond Connections: Improving Ways of Tracking Electricity Access”, Frank van der Vleuten – “DGIS Monitoring of Access to Renewable Energy”, Carsten Hellpap – “Monitoring Access to Off-Grid Electrification in the EnDev Programme”, Johannes Baake and Florian Ziegler – “Access to Modern Electricity from Grid-Based Programmes: Measuring Inferred Access”, Session Summary