2018 Reports

Columbia World Projects Forum Report: Expanding Access to Energy

Columbia World Projects

On February 19 and 20, 2018, Columbia World Projects (CWP) convened more than 30 energy experts from government, multilateral institutions, nongovernmental and philanthropic organizations, the private sector, and academia, among other fields, to discuss concrete ways in which research and scholarship can be brought to bear on expanding access to energy. This report summarizes the main findings of that Forum. Specifically, Section II summarizes the Forum’s opening plenary discussion on the scope and nature of the problem, key cross-cutting issues, and different ways of approaching the challenge of expanding energy access. Section III reports on the discussions held by the Forum’s five thematic working groups, in which a series of project proposals for how to bring research and scholarship to bear on expanding access to energy were evaluated. Section IV summarizes the closing plenary session, in which the projects developed in the working groups were discussed and participants ultimately weighed in on what they considered to be the top two or three ideas most worthy of further development. Section V sets out the next steps Columbia World Projects will undertake in developing the four ideas that received the most support from participants as potential CWP projects.