The doctoral research project targets to understand the relevance of frugal and affordable energy innovations in sustainable energy transitions among low-income communities in emerging economies. The target technology is solar micro-grids in India. The various related sustainability challenges are studied as well as the role of distributed energy in the country's energy mix among rural energy users. Key methods include field trials, interviews, data analysis and sustainability and reliability assessments.

Team

SUCCEED is a capacity building project which seeks to enhance and promote climate change, environmental and renewable energy education, research, and development. The overall objective of SUCCEED is that the partner countries are able to train and educate national experts capable of advocating national and international climate change policy and renewable energy promotion from the perspective of the least developed countries, especially with regards to: climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation, climate finance, energy policy and renewable energy technology. Other objectives include improved skills of teaching staff to ensure successful implementation of climate change and renewable energy education in energy, and environmental degree programmes, improved research and pedagogical skills, improved facilities at ITC, NUOL, RUPP & YTU and promotion of networking and cooperation with national and international institutions and stakeholders.

Team

Jyrki Luukkanen, Mika Korkeakoski, Visa Tuominen

The objectives of the project are to analyze the emergence of bioenergy governance systems and regulation from a transnational scale to local environments. This research project aims to study means how the conflicts are dealt with and develop tools to include stakeholders to governance processes. The study aims to: 1) Study how conflicts and stakeholder involvement are taken into account in the emerging transnational BEG by focusing on two cases: Global Bioenergy Partnership (GBEP) and EU bioenergy policy. 2) Scrutinize concrete local bioenergy projects through case studies in Europe and Africa (Kenya, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone). 3) Examine bioenergy conflicts globally by constructing a broad database, as well as develop related educational resources.

Team

Jarmo Kortelainen, Javier Arevalo, Moritz Albrecht