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First-of-Its-Kind Energy Access Research Project Launched

We are excited to announce a new partnership between Power for All and the the University of California, Berkeley’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL)—an energy research and international deployment center— to build a Platform for Energy Access Knowledge (PEAK).

PEAK, an interactive information database will help to aggregate the best research on energy access—from organizations such as Power Africa, REN21, IRENA, the World Bank, academic institutions, non-governmental agencies and community groups—into compelling data-driven stories for a range of target audiences including policymakers and investors.

PEAK’s first phase will enable the campaign and its partners to create and share compelling data visualizations. The second and third phases will support the broader community through an open-source tool to provide rapid response to data questions, and which will showcase how access can be achieved faster and far more cost-effectively via decentralized renewables than conventional wisdom predicts.  

“Achieving universal energy access is not only one of the most pressing issues of our time—but also one of the most solvable,” said Professor Dan Kammen, director of RAEL and recently appointed U.S. Science Envoy for the U.S. State Department“If we enable entrepreneurs, civil society organizations and governments to quickly and easily access the best science and research on distributed renewables in emerging markets, we believe we can help accelerate universal energy access.”

PEAK, a joint project of RAEL and Power for All,  is coordinated by Dr. Rebekah Shirley (Post-Doctoral Researcher, UC Berkeley) and Dr. Peter Alstone (ITRI-Rosenfeld Post-Doctoral Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)—both of whose doctoral studies were advised by Professor Kammen—and a team of graduate student researchers at UC Berkeley.

PEAK will be previewed at the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM 7) parallel program, EnergyAccessX, on June 1 in San Francisco.

The full press release can be found on the UC Berkeley RAEL website.

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