Kenya and Mexico: new COBENEFITS partner countries

COBENEFITS has entered the sec­ond project phase, fac­ing excit­ing new devel­op­ments. We are hap­py to announce that Mex­i­co and Kenya are new COBENEFITS part­ner coun­tries. The cur­rent project phase runs from May 2020 until April 2022.

Co-ben­e­fits relat­ed activ­i­ties in Mex­i­co have already start­ed: In an affil­i­at­ed project in col­lab­o­ra­tion with GIZ and CONECC a series of assess­ment stud­ies on the social and eco­nom­ic co-ben­e­fits of renew­able ener­gy and ener­gy effi­cien­cy for Mex­i­co has been car­ried out. In the cur­rent project phase Mex­i­co has joined the list of COBENEFITS part­ner countries.

Kenya is our newest COBENEFITS part­ner coun­try. Over the past 20 years, access to elec­tric­i­ty has increased dra­mat­i­cal­ly in Kenya, reach­ing an elec­tri­fi­ca­tion rate of 89% in 2017. How­ev­er, the coun­try must over­come chal­lenges like the lack of social and eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties and uni­ver­sal access to clean, reli­able, and afford­able ener­gy ser­vices. COBENEFITS activ­i­ties will be car­ried out in coop­er­a­tion with the local focal point, the Strath­more Ener­gy Research Cen­tre.

South Africa and Turkey will remain part­ner coun­tries for the next project peri­od. New coun­try reports and pol­i­cy reports includ­ing key find­ings and pol­i­cy rec­om­men­da­tions are under­way and will be pub­lished soon. Viet­nam and India will also stay COBENEFITS part­ner coun­tries, how­ev­er with few­er activities.

Last but not least, the estab­lished COBENEFITS train­ings will remain a cen­tral pil­lar of our activ­i­ties. All infor­ma­tion on the train­ings can be found on the RENAC web­site .