An Analysis of Energy and Income Trends following Rural Electrification in the State of Bahia, Brazil

摘要

“Before we always had to pump our water by hand,” “we could not refrigerate our milk,” or simply “we lived in the dark” – such anecdotes are often overheard when talking to rural families recently connected to electricity.2 While there is a broad consensus among researchers and stakeholders that electricity access is an essential ingredient for rural development (see ESMAP, 2000; Porcara and Takada, 2005; Pre Dakar Position Paper, 2008), electric energy is not a commodity itself which can help decrease poverty or improve rural livelihood conditions. Instead, the demand for electricity is only derived from the demand for goods or services it provides or makes possible (Foley, 1995; ESMAP, 2008). Therefore, successful rural electrification programs must simultaneously tackle the issues of (1) expanding electricity access and (2) enabling the new consumers to increase their electricity consumption. This observation explicitly takes into account rural equity considerations because all new electricity consumers ought to benefit from new connections, not only rural elites or large-scale users. Recent statistics show that in many developing countries electricity access remains heavily concentrated in upper income classes as well as urban areas (IEA, 2004). A positive exception is Brazil, where throughout the past years considerable progress has been achieved in extending electricity services to the rural poor via public electrification programs, particularly by the current Luz para Todos (LpT, or Light for All) program but also by its predecessors (Goldemberg et al., 2004; MME, 2008).3 However, even in Brazil many households remain yet to be connected, and those without electricity predominantly live in the country's poorest regions (Schaeffer et al., 2003; Obermaier, 2005). One particular example is the state of Bahia in northern Brazil. Bahia displays very precarious living standards and is home to the largest Brazilian rural population, with about 420,000 rural domiciles still lacking access to electricity (Correia et al., 2002; Rodrigues, 2006). Much research exists on the possible benefits of rural electrification and its impacts on income generation especially for the poor (see Ranganathan, 1993; ESMAP, 2000), but generally little empirical work has been carried out that could verify a positive relationship between the two. The necessity to clearly understand how electricity consumption and income develop after a household is connected to the grid or any other decentralized electricity generating source is clear: first, potential benefits such as better job or income generation can only be realized if electricity is being used. Second, long-term economic sustainability of rural electrification can only be maintained if the new consumers are able to pay for the service. This study intends to give some preliminary results regarding these observations by using original field survey data