Rob Byrne

International policy is fixated with private sector entrepreneurship as the means through which development problems, including climate compatible development, can be addressed. Based on CDKN funded research, this chapter presents an in-depth historical analysis of the development of the oft lauded (but, as we demonstrate, little understood) success of the Kenyan off grid photovoltaic market. The analysis clearly demonstrates that mainstream policy assumptions of this market being an example of a free market success story are fundamentally flawed. In fact, the market developed through a long process of targeted capacity building via donor investment. The chapter challenges mainstream assumptions and reveals fundamental insights for how future policy interventions might proceed.

as international climate and development policy and funding efforts accelerate, this article articulates an urgent new research agenda aimed at redressing the existing failure of policy and research to attend to gender in relation to climate mitigation (as opposed to adaptation). Focusing on the transfer and uptake of low carbon energy technologies, including a review of the literature on women and entrepreneurship and critical discourse analysis of the treatment of climate technology entrepreneurs by infoDev (World Bank) in Kenya, the prevalence of private sector entrepreneurial approaches to climate and development policy and practice in this field is demonstrated to be reinforcing gendered power imbalances.

The relationships between energy and development are complex, compounded by increasingly differentiated situations amongst developing countries and within them. Moreover, the manner in which energy services are realised has consequences for our health, environment, wealth, and social relations. Two important issues currently preoccupying the realm of international development are enhancing energy access whilst simultaneously addressing climate change. International climate change negotiations ...