The rapid industrialization and economic growth in several developing countries has placed a heavy demand on the use of energy. The rapid privatization in some of these countries is getting linked-with generation of more energy in an unsustainable manner, which is resulting in throwing up new problems related to environmental and social aspects. On the other hand there are 2 billion people (1/3rd of the world population) who presently have no access to electricity, majority of them are living in villages as well as remote and inaccessible regions of the world. Yet another very large group of people (specially in rural areas) have only limited quantity and lesser hours of supply of electrical power, to meet their entire energy requirements. Both these groups (unserved and under-served) not only require un-interrupted energy & power supply from environmentally friendly, energy from renewable resources but also quality energy services at an affordable cost and sustainable basis to meet their regular energy needs. At the same time, additional power would also be required to meet the growing demand of those groups who are already being served well at the present level of consumption and energy use. The experience of Indian NGOs involved in rural energy programme for over 2 decades has shown that the centralized generation of power from large power plants (whether hydro, thermal and even renewable energy based electrical power generation, e.g., from the large wind turbine farms in the coastal belts of India connected with large grids) has not been able to meet the needs of rural people, especially the rural poor.
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