ABSTRACT

India is a country that is still overwhelmingly rural, with approximately 70 percent of its 1.2 billion people, or close to 800 million, living in rural areas-the largest in the world. For this reason, India's economic and social development is inherently linked to growth in the rural sector and access to modern electricity and fuel sources. Despite more than a half-century's worth of government efforts to improve rural electricity infrastructure, household electrification levels and electricity availability is still far below the world average. This chapter presents a detailed analysis of the Village Energy Security Programme (VESP), a project dedicated to increase energy access for India's rural population through the use of community-scale biogas units. It explores the VESP's project objectives, examines the technologies harnessed for the VESP, and explains its service delivery model. The chapter then concludes by critiquing the challenges and best practices of the VESP and reviewing the project's structure, technological performance, financial strategy, and feedback from stakeholders.