Fighting Poverty Can Save Energy, Nicaragua Project Shows
Modernizing electricity services in two rural Nicaraguan villages yielded major energy savings, showing how addressing poverty and climate change can go hand-in-hand, a new study says.
In two small villages on Nicaragua’s Mosquito Coast, a project to improve electricity service had a remarkable side benefit—household energy use actually dropped nearly 30 percent. When efficient compact-fluorescent (CFL) lightbulbs were added to the mix, energy savings surpassed 40 percent.
The effort cut costs and brought longer hours of daily electricity service to the people of Orinoco and Punta Marshall, while demonstrating how improving energy access to poor people around the world can go hand-in-hand with reducing fossil fuel emissions, say the authors of a new study.
“It shows that you can meet development objectives for the poor and climate objectives for all of us at the same time,” said Daniel Kammen, chief technical specialist for renewable energy and
