ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on how Sri Lankan planners attempted to supply energy services as they dismantled the functions of the welfare state, promoted privatization and restructuring, and emerged from a 26-year old civil war, providing insight for how such tensions can be managed. It explores the Energy Services Delivery (ESD) focus on renewable energy and energy efficiency highlight how low-carbon options can be successfully promoted in an emerging economy. The ESD project also benefited from the involvement of local governments firstly as interlocutors to the communities that were being targeted and later on as additional funders in off-grid projects, especially for village hydro schemes. The chapter discusses, the ESD was the World Bank's first foray into what has now become known as a 'market-based renewable energy services provision model', and it thus illuminates how two very prominent global energy actors, the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), now design and implement their energy projects.