Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what estimate she has made of the effectiveness and value for money of projects to provide energy to developing countries in the last five years.

All projects must demonstrate value for money before they can be implemented and are monitored through regular annual reviews. All project business cases and annual reviews are published on our website at https://devtracker.dfid.gov.uk/

For example, the UK Government’s Energy Africa campaign and associated programmes provide cost effective household solar products such as solar lights. The World Bank reports that replacing kerosene with simple solar lights offers returns on investment of at least 15 times the cost of the solar light.