Photovoltaic component
Wind component
Technology improvement component
Project management
REDP PMO, under State Economic and Trade Commission (later NDRC)
Shanghai Municipal Electric Power Company
REDP PMO, under State Economic and Trade Commission (later NDRC)
Key objectives
• 10MW of installed SHS capacity, reaching 350,000 households
• 190MW of wind capacity, downgraded to 21MW during 2001 project restructuring
• To improve quality and reduce manufacturing costs of PV equipment
• Avoided emissions • Reduction in capital costs, measured by $/Wp
• Avoided emissions • Reduction in capital costs, measured by $/kW
Project costs
$96.6 million
$27.08 million
$191.95 million
Key stakeholders
World Bank, NDRC, PMO, PV companies, retailers, endusers
World Bank, NDRC, Shanghai Municipal Electric
World Bank, NDRC, PMO, component manufacturers
Table 2: Overview of Renewable Energy Development Project (REDP)
The PMO was an independent body, but still required authorisation from NDRC and the World Bank for major decisions22 with whom they had regular contact. Table 2 summarises REDP’s programmatic structure. Project developers from the Bank’s side were experienced in designing renewable energy programmes in the region including India’s Renewable Resources Development Project and Indonesia’s Solar Home Systems Project. As a result, safeguards were instituted in REDP to avoid similar threats to project effectiveness as experienced in earlier programmes, including poor SHS performance, premature equipment lifetimes (with systems often lacking load controllers), and inadequate credit access. The REDP was structured into three components — Solar Photovoltaic (PV), Commercial Wind Energy, and Technology Improvement (TI) — with PMO staff tasked to oversee both the PV and TI portions.* The initial target areas for the PV component included Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Qinghai, Western Sichuan, Tibet, and Xinjiang, but was later extended to Shanxi, Ningxia, and Yunnan provinces. As of 1995, more than nine million people were without electricity across these ten provinces and autonomous regions which range in population density from 0.2–2.3 households per km2. Data from Table 3 indicates that western provinces have trailed behind national averages in rural electricity *Due to this report’s focus on energy poverty, we analyse only the PV and TI components of the REDP, and not its commercial wind component.”
access rates by several percentage points over the described period. According to the World Bank’s Project Appraisal Document, per capita incomes in the six provinces of initial implementation were 15–43% lower than the national average in 1997.23 REDP did not have an explicit poverty alleviation objective aside from satisfying the energy needs of populations “that would otherwise not receive services,” though government-led anti-poverty programmes operated in the area.24 Photovoltaic (PV) Component The PV component’s central priorities were to improve product quality, lower production costs, and install a total of 10MWp of SHS capacity over the course of 2002 to 2007. In actuality, the 28 participating companies surpassed the target and sold 11.1MWp of SHS units. While companies claimed some 500,000 SHS were sold during REDP’s implementation, the PMO verified a sales volume of at least 400,000.25 SHS units 10Wp and larger were eligible for sub-grant support and the average size of sold units gradually climbed from 18Wp in 2002 to 45Wp in 2007.26,27 Annual sales data by unit volume and capacity (kWp) are plotted in Figure 7. Initially, participating companies received a $1.50/Wp rebate for each SHS sold that passed certification standards, revised to $2/Wp to compensate for compliance costs in satisfying stricter quality standards in 2005.28 By the completion of the program, an average sub-grant of $1.22/Wp was distributed for the $10 million in verified
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