ABSTRACT
Encouraging the spread of renewables in developing countries presents a different set of challenges to those in industrialized countries. The unique social, political and economic profile of each developing country will affect the feasibility of different policy measures. The most obvious of these in relation to FITs is the issue of whether or not there is a substantial national grid, without which the system cannot be directly applied in the same way as for developed countries. Using rural grid-connection as a dividing line helps demonstrate some of the profound differences in circumstance between developing countries – in much of sub-Saharan Africa only between 2 and 5 per cent of the rural population are connected to the grid, while in Thailand this figure is 98 per cent (Martinot et al, 2002).
