The role of energy in driving irrigation led agrarian development is well established. Energy Transition in agriculture driven by solarisation of irrigation will have several spill-over benefits such as improved food security and income from livelihoods. It can also contribute to building climate resilience while aiding the adoption of different climate adaptation strategies. The government and many international development agencies in India have experimented with different strategies and schemes for upscaling solar powered irrigation in the past decade. These experiments and pilots have helped different stakeholders understand the costs, benefits, opportunities, and threats associated with the new energy technology from different perspectives for agrarian community. This paper presents the evolution of public policy associated with energy transition in irrigation in the last decade and synthesizes the critical techno-socio-economic insights from the most notable experiments that have shaped the energy transition discourse in irrigation in the country.

Emissions reductions may not meet expectations, and groundwater use will likely increase.

Irrigation expansion is critical for agricultural and rural development, food and nutrition security, and climate change adaptation in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Lack of accessible energy for irrigation development due to limited off- and on-grid infrastructure and the resulting dependence on costly fuel-based irrigation have been key inhibiting factors for irrigation expansion in the region. Off-grid solar-powered irrigation pumps (SIPs) can overcome many of the energy access and other challenges in the region, but their uptake has been slow. Given the nascent development of the solar irrigation sector in SSA, this paper combines a review of the peer-reviewed and grey literature with key informant interviews to identify systemic barriers to the adoption and growth of solar-powered irrigation. We identify uncovered risks, lack of incentives, and lack of capacity as the key factors limiting the adoption of solar-powered irrigation. Moreover, despite significant global cost reductions, solar-powered irrigation systems remain costly in SSA due to limited market development and geographical constraints. Lack of regulation and low investment in building local institutions and value chains further affect uptake and inhibit leveraging the energy transition for ensuring food security and agriculture-led poverty alleviation in SSA. We propose a move away from thinking of SIPs as “silver bullets” and towards a systems approach and the design of context-specific solutions to address risks, incentives and capacity challenges.

Affordable and reliable energy is an important driver for improving access to irrigation in South Asia. Policies for improving electricity access and augmenting supply are likely to impact affordability and equity in irrigation access, especially in regions where agriculture is the mainstay of the economy. In this paper, we focus on the state of Bihar in eastern India to study trade-offs across economic, equity, and political dimensions of energy transition in irrigation. We argue that in the context of the nascent but steadily increasing solar-powered irrigation, a decentralised energy regime is techno-economically and socio-politically distinct from a conventional centralised grid supply. With different economic costs, governance issues, and varied incentives of stakeholders, there are significant trade-offs associated with the two pathways of energisation. We further assess the multidimensional trade-offs associated with the conventional ‘centralised’ and the modern ‘decentralised’ energy supply systems for irrigation to present a comprehensive understanding of the technical systems aiming to address economic development and livelihood security issues. We find that the life cycle costs (LCC) of centralised grid supply are not only higher than that of decentralised solar-powered irrigation (SIP) but also the LCC for grid supply has a high sensitivity to average cost to supply electricity (ACS). We also find that at lower pumping hours or lower average cost to supply (ACS), grid electricity is competitive compared to SIP, but with an increase in pumping hours, ACS or both, there is a considerable increase in the LCC of the grid connected pump, making SIP a more economical option. Furthermore, we augment the analysis using primary data on farmers to examine the economic, equity, and political trade-offs. By highlighting the complexities associated with the diffusion of decentralised energy solutions in irrigation, our findings provide useful insights for public policy related to energy transition in irrigation in India.

Irrigation expansion remains a critical development goal for poverty alleviation and climate adaptation in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Lack of affordable energy for irrigation due to limited grid infrastructure and high dependence on fuel-based irrigation have been key inhibiting factors for irrigation expansion in the region despite abundant untapped surface and groundwater potential. Off-grid solar pumps for irrigation overcome many of the obstacles associated with grid expansion and may provide a quick alternative for scaling carbon-free irrigation in the region. However, despite the estimated market potential for solar-powered irrigation pumps (SIP) in SSA, the demand has been faint. Through a review of literature and interviews with key stakeholders, this paper synthesizes the knowledge around systemic barriers to the adoption and growth of solar-powered irrigation in the region. We find that the major structural barriers are resulting in uncovered risks, lack of incentives, and lack of capacity that are inhibiting the adoption of solar-powered irrigation. We find that despite significant cost reductions in solar-powered irrigation across the world, the costs in Sub-Saharan Africa have remained higher due to a lack of market development. The distinction between the technology and product is poor because of less suppliers and no regulation or standardisation of products in the region. We see that the lack of technical capacities among different stakeholders and lack of incentives for effective institution building are the major bottlenecks for leveraging the energy transition for ensuring food security and agriculture led poverty alleviation in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In the ongoing energy transition in India, ground mounted photovoltaic (GM-PV) plays a crucial role which becomes evident when looking at both governmental PV targets and recent developments. Despite cost-effectiveness speaking in favor of GM-PV, generally, a major drawback of GM-PV is the high land usage. One possibility to overcome conflicting interests of land use is agrivoltaics – a combined land-use for food and electricity production.This paper summarizes the findings of a feasibility study on a 50 MWp agrivoltaic project in Maharashtra conducted by Fraunhofer ISE in 2018/2019 focusing on social impact and economic viability. The analyses indicate that an agrivoltaic system appears economically feasible with expected levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of INR 2.02 (EUR 0.0243) already including cost on water management, rainwater harvesting, water storage, and irrigation. Depending on the institutional arrangement between the farming community and the investor, the social impact is expected to vary from high benefits to risk of severe poverty among affected farmers.Further findings indicate that the use of bifacial glass-glass PV modules raises electrical yield by 6.4% compared to mono facial modules. Regarding land use, the study suggests that the analyzed agrivoltaic system is likely to almost double average land use efficiency measured by the combined output of electricity and agriculture per unit of land (+94%).

South Asia's groundwater economy stands at the threshold of a revolution in adoption of solar irrigation pumps (SIPs). This has potential to unlock the region's perverse energy-groundwater nexus. In much of South Asia, the price of energy used in irrigation, the only surrogate for water price, fails to signal the abundance or scarcity of groundwater, resulting in myriad distortions. We analyse these in South Asia's eight distinct energy-groundwater interaction settings. We then explore SIP promotion policies to ease pressure on scarce groundwater in South Asia's 'groundwater depletion zone' and accelerate groundwater irrigation for poverty reduction in its 'groundwater abundance zone'.

Tushaar Shah, Neha Durga, Shilp Verma and Rahul Rathod Solar Power as Remunera ve Crop Anand, the small Gujarat town that gave India its dairy coopera ve movement, has now spawned a new coopera ve that may well grow into a genre of its own. The Dhundi Solar Pump Irrigators' Coopera ve Enterprise (SPICE) provides the proof of concept for promo ng Solar Power as a Remunera ve Crop (SPaRC). We argue that SPaRC presents the best chance of taming western India's groundwater anarchy, of improving the finances of power distribu on companies, of curtailing the carbon footprint of our agriculture and of crea ng a new, risk-free source of serious cash income for India's farmers. 10 2 0 1 6