Navigating Policy and Regulation in the Clean Energy-Agriculture Nexus: A Guide for Companies to Engage Policymakers

Innovators and entrepreneurs are introducing new technologies and business models that hold great promise for increasing agricultural productivity, reducing post-harvest loss and boosting farmer incomes in emerging markets. In the same way off-grid solar home systems commercialization has reached hundreds of millions of users, there is great potential for clean energy-agriculture solutions to grow exponentially given the right market conditions.

Governments, however, have an integral role to play in developing, modifying and increasing the transparency of policies and regulations to facilitate the growth of agriculture-focused clean energy technology. This guide is designed to empower entrepreneurs and advocacy associations involved in clean energy-based water pumping, cold storage and agricultural processing to start or continue a dialogue with policymakers and major donors to develop policies and programs that enable the sector to grow and deliver transformative services to communities.

Based on more than 30 interviews and an in-person policy dialogue that convened businesses and other stakeholders, the guide presents key policy and regulatory issues in four topic areas: 1) promoting ease of business operations, 2) stimulating market growth, 3) recognizing and rewarding quality, and 4) strengthening private sector-government partnerships.

This guide was written by Dr. Augusta Abrahamse, Program Manager of Powering Agriculture: An Energy Grand Challenge for Development, and Araí Monteforte, Mikael Matossian, and Paolo Mele of Tetra Tech ES, Inc. with signification contributions and revisions by Dr. Carolina Barreto of the Power Africa Off-Grid Project and Wynne Cougill of Tetra Tech ES, Inc.