1. Development Happens Somewhere
GEO Week 2017
Washington, DC
Global Themes Knowledge Management (GTKM)

2. My name is Benjamin Stewart, and I am a geographer with the World Bank Group’s Geospatial Operational Support Team, or GOST. The goal of GOST is to improve the planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of World Bank operations through the use of geospatial technologies and data. While we work across the World Bank Group Portfolio, there are specific practice groups with especially interesting geospatial projects and geospatial approaches, and energy is one of those. My connection to the Energy practice is through a number of Energy specialist colleagues who I want to make sure I mention: Oliver James Knight leads the work ESMAP does on renewable energy mapping, and I am currently working with Yann Tavez, Dana Rysankova, and Christopher Arderne on least-cost electrification planning; both of which I will elaborate on later in the talk

3. All projects are geospatial
With the wealth of globally consistent, free data now available to us, we can incorporate geospatial insight into international development projects in a way that has never been possible before. From landcover data, to nighttime lights, to population, to solar energy potential, the geospatial information now available to us can be overwhelming. While our team inside the World Bank Group focuses on numerous areas, I want to focus on two specific energy initiatives I have been involved with during my time at the World Bank Group: Renewable Energy Mapping, and Least-Cost Electrification Planning.

4. Renewable Energy Mapping
As part of efforts to stimulate the renewable energy sector in client countries, the World Bank Group has been developing renewable energy resource potential maps
Since 2012, the project has spent 23.2 million in 13 countries:
Launched the Global Solar Atlas
Helped 8 countries to obtain an initial assessment for wind power and 5 countries for solar power
Carried out the first biomass mapping in Pakistan
Set a new standard for resource assessment studies that has been adopted by partners and used in the IRENA Global Atlas on Renewable Energy

5. Renewable Energy Mapping
One of the guiding principles for this initial project was that resource potential maps were proliferating, and while this was beneficial in some areas, there was also increased confusion as to the various sources of data, and their proper use in various locations. Many global products had unknown errors dependant on both the geography of the region and the model used. For country specific models, currency, access rights, and accuracy continued to be problematic. The hope was that centralizing and standardizing their generation would improve the data quality and data use

6. Global Solar Atlas Launched in January 2017
Based on high quality modeled solar data from Solargis
Around 50,000 visitors since launch
Poster maps and GIS layers for all developing countries
After 5 years of focusing on country level maps of solar, wind, and biomass mapping, the ESMAP team published the Global Solar Atlas. This dataset is of top quality, while maintaining a methodology across the study area

7. Mapping Completed
While the global solar atlas is now the focus on the solar mapping initiative, there are still individually published country maps that highlight the country’s own strengths and weaknesses in visualizing solar potential. These are also individually available on the ESMAP website

8. Uncertainty Need to invest in high quality measurement data
However, uncertainty is still a problem; the lack of high resolution ground measurement data makes map validation difficult. These are two examples of the kinds of sensors the WBG has purchased and installed in client countries, but it is just a start
Need to invest in high quality measurement data

9. Open is Essential
The focus on open data is important here – the measurements are published and collected regularly on EnergyData.info, and the World Bank Group, along with other international organizations, such as UN-DESA, are turning to open source code repositories such as github for making the analytical tools and packages public.

10. Renewable Energy Mapping
The World Bank Group is dedicated to this project, and dedicated to maintaining an open, accessible platform for its use
A similar global wind atlas is nearing completion as well, which will provide similar levels of access as the global solar atlas
The project is emblematic of the kind of open source, open data solution that drives many of the decisions in the energy practice

11. SE4All Problem Statement Proposed Response
Achieving universal access by 2030 will require a step change in the rate of new connections and in levels of investment, particularly in low access countries. Sector-wide programs in the electricity sector are showing better results than what can be achieved using a project-by-project approach. These programs are based on national electricity access roll out plans based on geospatial planning and using least-cost combinations of coordinated grid and off-grid electrification. The geospatially determined plan in turn anchors the sector investment financing prospectus.
The World Bank Group’s Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), has also validated this approach and recommended that a greater use of such an approach would provide the scale and speed necessary to achieve universal access by 2030 in low access countries.
Building on the learnings provided by the first phase of the S-TAP facility, together with the latest Independent Evaluation Group recommendations to the World Bank Group, ESMAP proposes to expand such initiative in 10 additional countries. The second phase of S-TAP will continue to focus primarily on low access countries to provide them with the required tools to define and implement a long term, sector wide approach to mobilize investments and achieve universal access by 2030.
In addition, based on the demand received during the first phase, S-TAP will also include an allocation for just-in-time support to countries that need specific improvements and complements to their existing geo-spatial plans (e.g. integrating off-grid electrification etc.)
The second project I want to discuss is a new initiative focused on Least Cost Electrification Planning (or LCEP). In order to achieve the SDG goals of universal access, there needs to be a step change in how we increase connectivity. The first phase of the SE4All initiative focused on a number of pilot projects. While successful, it was quickly realized that LCEP plans are not standardized, comparable, or sustainable without some foundational work on the fundamental planning of the tools, products, and outcomes.

12. Contextual Information
1.1 billion people lack access to electricity
Reduction of 0.1 billion largely driven by improvements in India
Many countries in Africa have growing numbers of unelectrified households
Leverage private sector investment
Development of investment prospectus, which will identify both public and private sources of funding for the proposed investments
Supporting off-grid electrification investments, by giving potential investors more certainty about the future grid roll-out
To emphasize the scale of the electrification work, and the focal areas, we have some basic numbers we are working from. Over 50% of the un-electrified are in sub-Saharan Africa, and over 85% are rural – this makes the area of study pretty well defined, as this is very much a focus on rural Africa.

13. SE4All Program Statement
Background
In order to meet stated SE4All objectives, countries with low electrification rates need to increase investments from public and private actors, and adopt a broad strategy that includes all available technologies and business models for providing electricity services.
Planning and targeting these require good electrification planning tools, and many countries have little internal capacity for this work. Thus the development community is supporting these countries to bring in expertise and to support the transfer of capacity into local institutions.
Based on the experiences from the first SE4All pilots and the analytical numbers we have, we are focusing on three pillars to improce the efficiency, cost-effectiveness and long-term impact of the SE4All efforts.
Objectives
Building on the lessons learned in the previous iteration of this facility, it aims to introduce three pillars to improve the efficiency, cost-effectiveness and long-term impact of SE4All electrification efforts funded and supported by the World Bank Group and other donors.

14. Three Pillars of the Global Plan
Global electrification tool and standards
Develop LCEP standards for both data inputs and outputs
Develop a first-cut model of least cost electrification
Develop a web-mapping application for visualizing global model and standards
Harmonization of country electrification procurement
Streamline internal procurement
Save our TTLs time and money
Increase transparency, comparability, and sustainability of planning
Global capacity building based on client needs
Standard training material
Online learning and regional centers
Reduce cost, increase impact
The focus here is on three pillars – 1) establishing data input and output standards through a first-cut global model 2) streamline procurement to leverage the standards of the global model and 3) develop and implement training programs that leverage the global model and tools

15. Where are the transmission lines?
In many places, infrastructure has simply never been collected. In many such situations, we can turn to novel geospatial data from satellites. In Africa, we are using synthetic aperture radar to identify transmission network pylons in many remote areas. In the image on the right, we car see the purple SAR image highlights the regularly spaced transmission pylons, which are completely absent in the brown optical image from the same sensor, highlighting the power of the diverse geospatial datasets at our disposal

16. Questions? Global Themes Knowledge Management (GTKM)
For a long time, we didn’t know where any of these things were; but that is no longer the case. With a centralized team focused on integrating the use of geospatial into operations, we now have the opportunity to make our projects faster, cheaper, and more effective. Geospatial data and technologies cut across GPs and regions; an investment in one area is an investment everyone can take advantage of. Geospatial insight has the power to transform World Bank operations, and I hope we all take advantage of it.
Global Themes Knowledge Management (GTKM)