Dr Long Seng To

I’m very pleased to announce that a summary of the outcomes of ‘community energy resilience and electricity systems’ workshops in the UK, Nepal and Malawi is now available.

The report gathers together the expertise of 75+ practitioners, policymakers and researchers from 13 countries. We call for further action and research on:
1. Energy system design to improve energy system resilience
2. The role that community plays in ensuring energy system resilience, and
3. The role energy systems play in community resilience.

This project was a collaboration with the Energy and Economic Growth programme and the Low Carbon Energy for Development Network with support from the UK Energy Research Centre Whole Systems Networking Fund. A huge thank you to all the participants for contributing their expertise!

Read the executive summary and download the report here.

Our journal article on ‘Decentralization: the key to accelerating access to distributed energy services in sub-Saharan Africa?’ has just been published in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences. Drawing on the experiences of Kenya and Malawi, the paper explores the inter-linkages between distributed energy services and decentralized local governance systems.

Read the article here.

I am delighted to contribute a chapter on ‘Towards community energy resilience’ to a book on Energy Access and Forced Migration edited by Owen Grafham from Chatham House. The book brings together author-teams of practitioners, academics, businesses and policymakers in an interdisciplinary dialogue about the best way of approaching energy provision for the forcibly displaced.

My chapter, co-authored with Niraj Subedi, develops the emerging concept of community energy resilience. Firstly, we examine definitions of resilience and community resilience and how they relate to energy services. Secondly, we discuss energy resilience in the broader context of the community and the research needs identified during a series of workshops with experts from energy access and disaster risk reduction. Thirdly, we take a deep dive into the case study of Nepal after the major earthquake in 2015, an event that displaced 2.6 million people. Lastly, we will reflect on the concept of community energy resilience in relation to forced migration and avenues for further research.

You can order your copy of the book here.

As a member of the Solar Energy Sub-Group of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s Expert Group on Resource Management, I am delighted to announce that the specifications for the application of the United Nations Framework Classification for Resources (UNFC) to solar energy has now been endorsed and is now operational.

The new Solar Specification will accelerate the shift towards solar energy by enabling the reporting and classification of solar projects in an internationally-harmonised way. The next step is to develop case studies to demonstrate their real-world application and to raise awareness of the new standard.

You can access the Solar Specifications here.

PV Magazine featured my work on the draft Solar Specifications for the application on the UN Framework Classification for Resources for their August 2019 issue.

“As solar comes to represent a larger proportion of the global energy mix, direct comparisons with conventional energy sources, and even with other renewables, are becoming more and more important. This is reflected in a bid by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s (UNECE) Expert Group to standardize reporting on solar energy potential. Long Seng To, Royal Academy of Engineering research fellow at Loughborough University, and part of the UNECE solar energy subgroup, discusses the draft standards.”

Read the full interview with PV Magazine here.

As a member of the Solar Energy Sub-Group of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s Expert Group on Resource Management, I am pleased to announce that the draft specifications for the application of the United Nations Framework Classification for Resources (UNFC) to solar energy is open for public comment.

The new Solar Specification will give financial institutions a standardised way to compare solar energy with other energy sources, paving the way for further investment as costs of solar energy technologies reduces. It will also help industry to accelerate the development of solar energy projects and help governments to manage their national resources sustainably. It will also help us to understand our energy resources on a global level.

The draft Solar Specification is open for comment until 30 August 2019 here.

I’m excited that my new journal article on ‘Tacit networks, crucial care: Informal networks and disaster response in Nepal’s 2015 Gorkha earthquake’ has been published in Urban Studies as part of a special issue on ‘Transcending (in)formal urbanism’.

Read the article here.

The second paper in the Low Carbon Energy for Development Briefing Paper series is out! In it, Jon Leary, Alfred Alsop and I explore the continuing role for small wind in rural electrification programmes.

Read the full paper here.

Read the full paper here.