RELEASE: WRI India launches Energy Access Explorer for Nagaland

• EAE serves Nagaland after Jharkhand and Assam.
• EAE will help Nagaland's government and policymakers to provide the least cost and most sustainable energy solutions to unserved and underserved communities.

July 28, Kohima: WRI India launched its flagship geospatial platform the Energy Access Explorer, or EAE, for Nagaland in the state's capital today.

EAE is a geo-spatial platform that provides data on electricity, health, education and livelihood indicators in the regions that it serves, to aid policymakers, entrepreneurs and governments, decide the least cost and most sustainable energy access solutions for unserved and underserved communities to accelerate development.

Speaking at the event Mr. Abu Metha, Chairman of Investment and Development Authority of Nagaland (IDAN) and Advisor to Chief Minister said, "EAE is going to play a vital role in the development of the state and will bring a new narrative for the state of Nagaland. When we talk about progress and development, one of the backbones is energy. Without energy, no progress is possible. We look forward to strengthening our partnership with WRI India so that we can collectively share knowledge and move towards our collective aspirations."

About a third of Nagaland's 434 sub-health centers and 12% of 2074 public schools do not have access to electricity. As several of them are in remote regions, deploying innovative solutions to meet such demands of social infrastructure is key for the state's equitable development.

Ms. Akansha Saklani, Manager, Energy Program, WRI India said, "The EAE platform can be layered with different data sets to help us visualize the state of play of each sector. For instance, if we overlay the Global Horizontal Irradiation data onto the existing demand information, we could potentially estimate how best to solarize these underserved communities."

Beyond providing energy access related solutions EAE could aid in decarbonizing the health and education sectors by deploying Decentralized Renewable Energy (DRE) systems, thus supporting India in its efforts to meet half its energy needs from renewables by 2030 and attain Net Zero emissions by 2070.

Aside from Jharkhand, Assam and Nagaland in India, EAE has been implemented in six sub-Saharan countries in Africa. They are Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Zambia and Nigeria.

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Almas Naseem
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Shivani Shah
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