Energy Access and Urban Livelihoods: the impact of clean energy access on the livelihoods of low-income, urban enterprises in Accra, Ghana

This thesis investigates the impact of energy access on the livelihoods of low-income, urban enterprises in the Global South, particularly those operating in the informal economy reliant on energy for primary income generating activities. Existing research on energy access and livelihoods has tended to be based on the household level, with a strong emphasis on rural income generation. Where there has been a focus on energy access and urban businesses this has focused on the formal economy. This study seeks to generate original empirical insights by exploring how energy access affects urban income generation in the informal economy. This research analyses how urban livelihoods are impacted by reliance on existing forms of conventional cooking (traditional biomass stoves) and lighting energies (grid electricity, kerosene lanterns and torches), and how urban livelihoods are impacted when these are replaced with cleaner alternatives (LPG, improved biomass stoves and solar lamps). A qualitative approach is taken involving 123 semi-structured interviews and 7 focus group discussions with enterprises across six case study communities in Accra, Ghana, and stakeholders such as policymakers and industry experts. A Sustainable Livelihoods Framework is used as a conceptual framework to analyse the multiple ways how the livelihoods of enterprises are impacted by the energies they depend on, which enriches existing bodies of literature that usually focuses on specific aspects of livelihoods such as health, gender or financial implications.

The key empirical findings of the research coalesce around issues of reliance and vulnerability, structural barriers hindering access to cleaner alternatives, and limited state intervention to address the energy access challenges facing urban livelihoods due to the prevailing neoliberal mode of governance. Enterprises reliant on conventional energies were vulnerable to shocks and trends weakening livelihood assets, particularly financial and human capital. Adopting clean energy alternatives tended to strengthen these livelihood assets, as well as social capital, decreasing vulnerabilities and improving the sustainability of livelihood strategies and enterprises’ capacity to achieve livelihood outcomes. The key barriers of accessing clean alternatives were the upfront cost, increased energy costs, incompatibility, safety concerns and physical availability. Low-income, urban enterprises were unsupported by government policy in overcoming these barriers as existing clean energy policies consistently overlook and do not address their energy needs due to focusing policies into rural energy provision, utility-scale electricity generation and prioritising energy security over energy equity. Instead, interventions from the NGO and private sector, based on five case studies, were the driving force of disseminating clean energy alternatives in urban Ghana, and these were also largely unsupported by existing government policies.

The key conceptual implication of these findings and the thesis more generally is that they illustrate why the ways in which energy access is understood by some influential policymakers in Ghana, and across Sub-Saharan Africa, need revising. The emphasis these key actors place on quantitative factors when trying to understand energy access can obscure more nuanced and subjective dimensions such as affordability, reliability, adequacy, quality and compatibility. It can also result in misleading depictions of energy, particularly regarding the urban poor. These empirical and conceptual findings make a contribution to knowledge by demonstrating how adopting a more holistic conceptualisation of energy access in low-income urban areas, can enable policymakers to formulate policies that more adequately address the energy needs of low-income, urban enterprises operating in the informal economy.