Confronting energy poverty behind the bamboo curtain: A review of challenges and solutions for Myanmar (Burma)

• Only 13% of Myanmar’s population accesses electricity.
• Almost 95% depend on solid fuels.
• Poverty, conflicting priorities, and poor capacity compound the problem.
• Planners can utilize a variety of tools to expand energy access.

In Myanmar (Burma), only 13% of the country's population has access to electricity, and almost 95% depends on solid fuels such as wood and rice husks for cooking and heating. This review discusses four sets of energy poverty and access challenges in Myanmar related to poverty and subsistence needs, conflicting priorities, lack of resources, and policy fragmentation. Planners in Myanmar, however, can utilize a variety of mechanisms to overcome these challenges. They can offer financing and micro-financing for woodlots, nurseries, and renewable energy equipment. They can create community mobilization funds to promote women's empowerment and offer skills training. They can implement education and awareness campaigns for households and private sector entrepreneurs, and decentralize energy access programs to communities themselves. The government can promote public private partnerships for larger, grid-connected wind farms, large-scale hydroelectric dams, geothermal power plants, biomass power plants, waste-to-energy facilities, and liquid biofuel manufacturing facilities. Planners can harmonize regulatory authority for energy access to a single agency, establish national technology standards to ensure technical quality, and construct maintenance and training centers to ensure communities care for energy equipment.