29 September 2014: The Alliance for Rural Electrification (ARE) and Partners for Euro-African Green Energy (PANGEA) are partnering to accelerate the adoption of decentralized bioenergy and off-grid systems in developing countries and emerging economies. The partnership, supported by a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), was developed under the auspices of the UN Sustainable Energy for All Initiative (SE4ALL).

The partnership aims to attract and implement off-grid, biomass-based projects that will provide clean energy for cooking, lighting and other uses, such as agricultural processing and manufacturing. The partnership will further be supported by PANGEA’s current work to train energy entrepreneurs in Africa. Besides on-the-ground implementation, PANGEA and ARE plan to leverage the partnership’s strength to advocate sound, long-term policies to provide an attractive and stable regulatory environment for private investors.

The two organizations foresee that combining their respective strengths and experiences will increase clean energy access in rural areas, especially from biomass sources. PANGEA is a network promoting sustainable African bioenergy production, while ARE is a business association working to integrate renewables into rural, off-grid and decentralized energy markets. PANGEA serves as secretariat for the African HII for the High Impact Opportunity on Sustainable Bioenergy, and ARE serves as secretariat for the High Impact Opportunity on Clean Energy Mini-Grids. [ARE – PANGEA Press Release] [ARE Press Release]