This study addresses how energy systems and services can improve women’s economic empowerment. It argues that integrating gender equity considerations into technology design and drawing women into this process is not only an equal employment opportunity issue, but is also crucially about how the world we live in is shaped, and for whom. It focuses on distruptive renewable energy technologies, and how they can transform how energy is produced, distributed, and consumed.
The study includes a renewable energy technology audit that was conducted to:
(i) identify the technology types and systems being deployed
(ii) understand the type of information being collected, and
(iii) inform GESI integrated system design.
The technology audit was limited to Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka based on government data. The data collected can be clustered under the following main categories:
(i) technology and system types;
(ii) installed capacity (targets, achievements, and cumulative capacity over the period of the program or scheme);
(iii) off-grid systems (numbers of units installed); and
(iv) financial assistance for each technology type.
The study uses the World Bank Global Tracking Framework’s five-tier model for transitioning toward advanced energy access as a guide.