Electricity access for low-income households: good policy intentions, bad trade-offs and unintended consequences.
This working paper published by local partner Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI) focuses on how the affordable energy access goals of South Africa’s energy policy have been undermined: our analysis indicates that this is the result of a combination of poor system governance, the failure to allocate clear accountability for delivering affordable access, haphazard institutional alignment and an overarching failure to identify and address critical competing policy tradeoffs, particularly between affordable energy access for households and municipal financial viability.