This book showcases how small-scale renewable energy technologies such as solar panels, cookstoves, biogas digesters, microhydro units, and wind turbines are helping Asia respond to a daunting set of energy governance challenges. Using extensive original research this book offers a compendium of the most interesting renewable energy case studies over the last ten years from one of the most diverse regions in the world. Through an in-depth exploration of case studies in Bangladesh, China, India, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, and Sri Lanka, the authors highlight the applicability of different approaches and technologies and illuminates how household and commercial innovations occur (or fail to occur) within particular energy governance regimes. It also, uniquely, explores successful case studies alongside failures or "worst practice" examples that are often just as revealing as those that met their targets. Based on these successes and failures, the book presents twelve salient lessons for policymakers and practitioners wishing to expand energy access and raise standards of living in some of the world's poorest communities. It also develops an innovative framework consisting of 42 distinct factors that explain why some energy development interventions accomplish all of their goals while others languish to achieve any.

1: Introduction; 2: The Benefits of Renewable Energy Access; 3: Grameen Shakti in Bangladesh; 4: The Renewable Energy Development Project in China; 5: The Rural Electrification Project in Laos; 6: The Rural Electricity Access Project in Mongolia; 7: The Rural Energy Development Project in Nepal; 8: The Energy Services Delivery Project in Sri Lanka; 9: The Village Energy Security Programme in India; 10: The Solar Home Systems Project in Indonesia; 11: The Small Renewable Energy Power Program in Malaysia; 12: The Teachers Solar Lighting Project in Papua New Guinea; 13: Lessons Learned; 14: Conclusion