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ABOUT US

AHEAD Energy^®

Access to Energy for African Development™

Twenty years ago an effort was mounted at the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and Africa-American Studies at the University of Rochester, based on the idea that energy had a critical role to play in assisting developing nations to overcome the scourge of poverty. What became the nonprofit AHEAD Energy Corporation also proposed that development of locally-available energy sources could ignite rapid development and provide a model for sustainable energy transitions. Until recently, energy's role in development has not been well-understood. Whereas it is easy for the common person to recognize the need for food, water, housing, education and medical care, it has required long arduous efforts to get even international development aid professionals to grasp the idea that energy is a key to economic and social development.

Since the United Nations meeting on Sustainability in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2000, there has been a growing recognition that the Millennium Development Goals cannot be achieved without provision of modern energy services. Since then, AHEAD's goal of universal access to clean, efficient, reliable, affordable energy services has been adopted by many in the international development community. Recently, the question of how to provide modern energy to an additional 3.5 billion people, while protecting environmental balances has become perhaps the greatest challenge of our time. AHEAD has responded by developing the concept of "evolving energy mixes." AHEAD has produced reports for the World Bank and Shell Foundation on assessing the potential of pro-poor small-scale energy projects. In conjunction with its partners, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane and Empresa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos de Moçambique, AHEAD completed a pre-feasibility study in 2006 on energy supply extensions in Moçambique. Besides working with Moçambique, AHEAD has worked on projects in Ghana, and with the Seneca Nation of Indians in upstate New York. Through AHEAD, university students and faculty have produced numerous studies on Africa's energy sector, some involving field work in Africa. In 1991, AHEAD assisted Mozambican officials in designing a system to provide electricity to the Town of Vilankulo (population 60,000). The project, the first of its kind in Africa, has been held up as a model by the World Bank. AHEAD staff returned in 1998 to work on evaluating progress.

Over the years, AHEAD has established expanding relationships with energy professionals and organizations in Africa. As of September 2007, two university professors from Mozambique have come to Rochester for a year to study sustainable energy transitions in the developing world at the University of Rochester and work with the nonprofit AHEAD to craft projects applicable to their national context. The Rochester community has much to share with these visitors about innovations in energy production, transmission, and efficiency. Our Mozambican visitors have much to share with Rochesterians about the need for global energy equity, realities in the developing world, and downscaling technologies to meet the needs of emerging nations.

AHEAD's mission

The goal of AHEAD Energy is to provide universal access to appropriate, sustainable, safe clean, efficient, reliable, affordable energy services. AHEAD assembles the resources needed to develop local energy services in biomass-dependent areas of the world, making modern energy available to improve lives and livelihoods in ways that safeguard the natural environment.

For the half of humanity that does not have access to modern energy service, life is difficult. Resources are not the problem. Access is. The poor in Africa don't need us to send them energy - even if we could. They do need our help, however, in developing the abundant resources they have in an environmentally conscientious, technologically appropriate manner.