Renewable Energy, Vol.49, 271-274, 2013
Women selling and promoting energy efficient products in Northern Pakistan
Aga Khan Planning and Building Service, Pakistan (AKPBSP) has developed appropriate Energy Efficient House Improvement (EE-HI) Products through participatory approach by including women, which improves the thermal efficiency, ventilation, illumination, and space management in rural houses. To sustain its interventions at the local level, AKPBSP trains local entrepreneurs, craftsman, and Sales Persons (50% female), in manufacturing, installing and selling EE-IH products. This paper identifies the great value addition female Resource/Sales Persons have brought in scaling-up the EE-HI products through an incentive based sales and promotion market mechanism. Most (80%) [1] of the households in northern Pakistan can buy more than one product given that families have easy access to BACIP EE&HI products and are linked with microcredit facilities. At-least combination of 03 BACIP EE&HI products can have a cumulative impact on increasing the thermal efficiency of houses. AKPBSP therefore, is applying a twofold incentive based approach to scale-up the replication of product combinations, which includes training Sales/Resource Persons in Promotions and Sales of energy efficient products and linking them with AKPBS trained and certified manufacturers and microcredit organizations to sell EE&HI products on 10% commissions. In the pilot phase, more than 60 Resource/Sales Persons took part in the initiative throughout Northern Pakistan and as a result (in two years time) more than 2354 EE-HI products were sold to 1812 household in 15 remote villages. Among the 1812 households, 444 households were linked with microfinance institutions to purchase EE&HI products. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.