An interactive Web-based scenario analysis tool which allows the assessment of multiple energy access policies.

Click here to access the Energy Access Interactive Tool
- © IIASA

The Energy Access Interactive Tool (ENACT) is designed to assist national and regional policymakers and analysts in their strategic policy planning processes to improve energy access for the rural poor in developing countries. It allows the assessment of different policies for achieving universal access to modern energy by 2030.

The tool is used to visualize costs and benefits that each policy or combination of policies could bring. It thus enables analysts and decision makers to compare a large number of alternate energy access futures within a common framework. This allows them to gain a quick understanding of how alternate policies can shape the future of energy access in dramatically different ways.

Among the information generated by the tool for each policy investigated are: funding requirements, potential policy effectiveness, the implications of the policy for energy demand, the policy's effect on greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, as well as the impacts on health.

About the Energy Access Interactive Tool

The Energy Access Tool was developed at IIASA, building on work carried out within the framework of the Global Energy Assessment (GEA). A manual describing the tool and its functioning has also been prepared.

There are three energy access policies that users can choose from:

  • Fuel price support
  • Access to credit at a reduced interest rate
  • Rural electrification target 

Decision makers can use the tool to compare the various synergies and trade-offs involved when one of three energy access policies is preferred over the rest. The possibility to choose different combinations of targets in the tool is particularly useful, as the policies typically compete for scarce funding.

The tool allows users to see how alternative worldviews, in other words, different preferences, can lead to qualitatively different futures in terms of energy access. It also permits users to visualize the not always obvious cost and benefits of the different policy choices they are considering making.

How the Energy Access Interactive Tool Works

The tool is populated with a rich ensemble of energy scenarios (60). The scenarios in the tool have been developed using IIASA's MESSAGE-Access model, a global household energy access model. 

The scenarios explore policies and their impacts for achieving universal modern energy access by 2030. For instance, some scenarios include energy access policies such as fuel price support (subsidies) for cooking energy but do not consider any rural electrification policies or targets, while other scenarios have credit access and rural electrification only.

ENACT © IIASA

The Energy Access tool allows users to select their policies for universal modern energy access by moving the interactive slider bars shown on the tool interface (upper left).

Once users have selected the policies for energy access, they can visualize the impacts of these policies by selecting on one of the various indicator tabs on the tool interface (lower left). Among the indicators included are the following:

Key indicators  Scenario results
Access Indicators and costs Number of people with access to modern fuels and the total cost of access policies for cooking and electrification
GHG Emissions Residential GHG emissions and upstream GHG emissions from electricity use
Electricity demand and generation capacity  Total electricity demand by the residential sector and generation capacity of the regions 
Health impacts Deaths due to solid fuel use in the residential sector
Household final energy demand Total final energy demand in detail
Useful energy shares by income groups for cooking Percentage of useful energy supplied by different fuels for each household income group