Giving Compass' Take:

• Marc Gunther explains why donors should focus on scale when prioritizing energy projects, forgoing home-size solar projects in favor of grid systems. 

• How can donors identify opportunities to support energy projects that bring power at scale? 

• Learn about investing in access to energy. 

Who could object to efforts to bring clean, renewable energy to people without electricity? Donors and investors love social enterprises and nonprofits that bring solar panels, lights or phone chargers to poor households in Africa and south Asia.

Trouble arises, though, when these well-intentioned, small-scale initiatives draw attention away from utility-scale energy projects that can power businesses and drive economic growth–the kinds of big projects that lifted the US, Europe, Japan, China and much of the rest of the world out of poverty. Or, worse, when an absolutist devotion to renewable energy stands in the way of big, centralized projects–specifically, the natural gas, coal and nuclear power projects that, even today, provide more than 80 percent of the electricity used in the US.

This is Todd Moss’s concern. Moss, 48, is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a former state department official and a PhD economist who recently launched the Energy for Growth Hub. The Energy for Growth Hub is a network of scholars and advocates who want to bring some common sense to the conversation about how get energy to everyone in Africa and Asia. They are focused not just on the 1.3bn people whose homes are without a light switch but the 3bn or so who live in places where a lack of reliable, abundant electricity remains a barrier to progress.

Read the full article about why energy projects need to prioritize scale by Marc Gunther at Nonprofit Chronicles.