Leveraging the potential of women microentrepreneurs in delivering clean energy solutions: the Wonder Women Eastern Indonesia program

Abstraksi

While Indonesia’s development indices have improved in the past years, they do not fully represent the realities of last mile communities who lack access to energy for daily cooking and lighting. Kopernik’s Wonder Women program has been reducing energy poverty through increased access to clean energy sources in eastern Indonesia over the past 4 years. Kopernik adopted a market-based approach by identifying and sourcing affordable technologies (biomass stoves, solar lights, water filters), and recruiting and training women micro entrepreneurs, or “Wonder Women”, to sell these technologies in their communities. A gender perspective is fundamental to the program because provision and use of conventional fuels (e.g. woodfire, kerosene) traditionally fall within the women’s domain. As such, women hold considerable weight in the purchase decision of these appliances. Wonder Women thrive in peer-to-peer selling, especially in rural markets where economic decisions are largely based on personal bonds and mutual trust. Between 2014-2017, 25,620 technologies were sold by 488 women. Impact was measured through household surveys with 400 customers. In three years, technology adoption has resulted in an estimated US$ 1.9 million in fuel expenditure savings for users. Factoring in profit generated by Wonder Women, the value of reduced carbon emissions, and the program cost, we estimate the program to result in US$1.6 in returns for every US$1 invested. Insights and best practices discovered through rapid experimentation and potential ways the program can be scaled up in collaboration with the public and private sectors are discussed.