Policy directives in several nations are focusing on the development of smart cities, linking innovations in the data sciences with the goal of advancing human well-being and sustainability on a ...highly urbanized planet. To achieve this goal, smart initiatives must move beyond city-level data to a higher-order understanding of cities as transboundary, multisectoral, multiscalar, social-ecological-infrastructural systems with diverse actors, priorities, and solutions. We identify five key dimensions of cities and present eight principles to focus attention on the systems-level decisions that society faces to transition toward a smart, sustainable, and healthy urban future.
The Government of India is increasingly using ranks to incentivise sub-units of government. The largest such exercise, the Swachh Survekshan, has been conducted since 2016 and aims to incentivise ...cities to compete on and improve waste management and sanitation outcomes. Using publicly available Swachh Survekshan data, this article suggests that the current scoring methodology provides weak signals to urban local bodies (ULBs) and citizens on performance metrics. In particular, it shows that the ranks are not consistent and stable across years, there are severe discrepancies in data between components of the awarded score, and that the current methodology favours larger cities. Caution must be exercised, therefore, in interpreting the current methodology as fostering competition. More crucially, a ranking exercise is unlikely to succeed as a policy tool unless it is implemented as one component of a broader effort to improve ULB capacity on managing administrative data.
Mini grids are increasingly filling the supply gap between government supplied electricity and the requirements of households and enterprises. We present a descriptive analysis of enterprise ...development within a large mini grid based rural electrification initiative launched in India in 2015. Using data from two surveys conducted with 229 enterprise operators, we explore the change in aspirations among enterprise owners and the impacts of longer duration of reliable electricity on key business outcomes. We find that improved quality of electricity from mini grids leads to a shift towards using mini grids as the primary source of electricity; transition from lighting to productive uses of electricity; and increased aspirational demand for electricity among enterprise operators. Further, we find a positive relationship between increased hours of reliable electricity supply and extended hours of operation and customer footfall, but not with revenue generation. Our findings suggest that mini grids offer an important opportunity for enhancing local aspirations for business development and should be an integral part of policies focused on rural enterprise development.
•We surveyed 229 enterprises connected to solar mini-grids in September 2016 and June 2018.•Enterprises shift towards using mini grid electricity as their primary source.•Enterprises adopt more productive loads over time and reveal an increase in aspirational demand for electricity.•Longer duration of reliable power is correlated with increased operational hours and customer footfall, but not revenue.•Mini grids can benefit enterprise development by increasing aspirations and allowing experimentation with business.
IntroductionIn our warming world, energy provision is not simply about technology but also politics (Hughes and Lipscy 2013). Energy systems are the result of intensely contested political battles in ...the domains of technology selection, ownership of capital, environmental externalities, access, and siting. The geographical reach, terms of access, and forms of ownership of electricity infrastructures reflect the prevailing distribution of political and economic power (Bridge, Özkaynak and Turhan 2018). Consequently, this gives rise to injustices such as uneven electricity access, displacement, and voicelessness among marginalized communities. Control over energy infrastructure is not just the result but often also the source of political and social power (Amin 2014; Larkin 2013) – that is, energy shapes politics just as much as politics shape energy.India is facing the twin imperatives of tackling historic energy poverty through an expansion of its energy system on the one hand and pursuing climate mitigation on the other. India's electricity sector is dominated by coal-fired thermal power, which in turn drives the country's carbon emissions. The energy sector as a whole contributed around 74 per cent of India's total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2015, of which 38 per cent was from public electricity generation (GPI Secretariat 2016). On the other hand, India's average monthly residential electricity consumption is only 90 kilowatt-hour (kWh), which is one-third of the global average and one-tenth of that of the US (Chunekar and Sreenivas 2019). Despite official estimates of 100 per cent electrification, many households still receive poor quality electricity for only a few hours each day (S. D’Souza 2019). The growing feasibility of renewable energy (RE) indicates a potential opportunity to address both climate mitigation and energy poverty challenges. India announced a target of 450 gigawatt (GW) of RE by 2030 as against a total installed capacity of 370 GW in April 2020 (PMO India 2019). As we progress towards a low-carbon system, what are the implications of this transition, given existing patterns of injustice and the prospects of their reproduction in our twenty-first-century energy infrastructure?India's electricity system can be characterized by its gigantic scale; the primary state ownership of its generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure; cross-subsidization from commercial and industrial consumers to agricultural consumers; and its federal nature.
