Energizing Healthcare 2025: Key Insights for Sustainably Powering Health Facilities
SEforALL’s Energizing Healthcare 2025 in Nairobi | Photo credit ©SEforALL
The Energizing Healthcare 2025 conference, hosted by SEforALL from Feb 3 - 4 in Nairobi, brought together thought leaders, funders, and innovators to address a critical issue: how to close the energy access gap for the 1 billion people globally who rely on health facilities without reliable power. The discussions focused on innovative solutions to sustainably and efficiently power healthcare facilities, particularly in regions like sub-Saharan Africa, where the need is most urgent.
The Energy Challenge in Healthcare
Over 650 million people worldwide have no access to electricity, with the majority in sub-Saharan Africa. While significant commitments like the $500 billion Mission 300 initiative in Tanzania aim to address Africa's broader energy challenges, it is estimated that only $2.5 billion is needed to fully close the energy access gap in African health facilities.
This gap has real consequences: unreliable electricity contributes to the failure of one-third of medical devices. Most health facility power demand in Africa (71%) comes from non-hospital settings like rural clinics and primary health posts. These facilities are often the first—and sometimes only—point of care for millions living in rural and peri-urban areas.
Sustainable energy solutions are the solution to address this humanitarian challenge and provide a reliable, climate resilient, and cost-effective solution. However, deploying these interventions at scale requires innovative financing models and collaborative efforts across sectors. Below are key insights raised during the conference on how we can address these challenges effectively.
1. Rethinking Funding Models for Sustainability
The sustainability of healthcare electrification hinges on how operation and maintenance (O&M) costs are funded. Historically, large-scale projects have relied heavily on donor grants for capital expenditures (CAPEX). However, there is a growing shift toward integrating operational expenditures (OPEX) into pricing models.
Innovative approaches such as long-term service models, combined with mechanisms like renewable energy credits (RECs) or carbon credits, are emerging as viable solutions. These models not only enhance profitability but also ensure consistent system uptime through modular designs that can scale with demand. By crowding in multiple funders and aligning incentives, these frameworks offer a path toward sustainable healthcare electrification at scale.
2. Linking Energy Quality to Health Outcomes
A recurring theme at the conference was the need for better metrics to demonstrate how energy quality impacts health outcomes. While methodologies exist, there is no industry-wide consensus on specialized indicators that connect energy reliability with improved health service delivery indicators.
Remote monitoring technologies are revolutionizing this space by enabling outcome-based financing models. Metrics such as battery health, voltage stability, and system uptime can be directly tied to healthcare performance indicators. This shift ensures that success is measured not merely by "energy access" but by tangible improvements in health services enabled by reliable power. Collaboration between medical professionals and energy experts will be critical in refining these metrics further.
3. Energy-as-a-Service (EaaS): A Promising but Context-Dependent Model
Energy-as-a-Service (EaaS) has gained traction as a sustainable model for powering healthcare facilities, offering flexibility and scalability. However, it is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Different contexts require tailored approaches based on local needs, stakeholders, and infrastructure readiness.
A case study from Chhattisgarh, India—shared during the conference by WRI India—highlighted how EaaS succeeded due to specific regional factors and partnerships. To replicate such success elsewhere, robust public-private partnerships and effective de-risking strategies are essential. Governments must play a central role in fostering these collaborations to achieve scale and sustainability.
4. Leveraging the Energy-Health-Climate Nexus
Framing healthcare electrification within the broader energy-health-climate nexus opens new funding opportunities across sectors such as global health, climate finance, pharmaceuticals, and philanthropy. Innovative financial instruments like carbon credits and Health Renewable Energy Credits (HRECs) are already being explored to crowd-in diverse stakeholders.
By adopting blended financing models that draw from multiple sources—impact funds, donor agencies, private sector investments—healthcare electrification projects can achieve greater financial sustainability while addressing interconnected challenges across energy access, public health, and climate resilience.
5. Addressing Demand-Side Challenges
Sustainable energy technologies have largely addressed supply-side challenges to the health sector energy access gap. However, demand-side issues remain a critical bottleneck to a long-term sustainable solution—particularly regarding energy-efficient medical equipment. Without collaboration from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), healthcare facilities risk overloading their systems with devices that consume disproportionate amounts of power.
Engaging OEMs in this dialogue is essential to ensure that medical devices are designed with energy efficiency in mind. This alignment will enable more holistic solutions that maximize the impact of electrification efforts while minimizing inefficiencies.
What Lies Ahead?
The Energizing Healthcare 2025 conference underscored both the challenges and opportunities in sustainably powering healthcare at scale. While funding remains a significant hurdle, there is growing momentum around innovative financing models and cross-sector collaboration.
At EM-ONE, over a decade of experience powering health facilities across West Africa has shown first-hand how transformative reliable energy can be for communities; our firm powered over 300 clinics and hospitals and is currently developing 350 MW / 400 MWh of energy projects. Leveraging our expertise in engineering and technology through solar and energy storage, we continue to innovate by designing for scale. We are currently piloting an EaaS model at a large specialist hospital—with concurrent expansion at expand to an additional 10 specialist hospitals in Nigeria by the end of 2025. Our solution is focused on designing an energy solution tailored to the specific needs of the specialised medical equipment, conducting major energy efficiency upgrades and improvements, selecting the technologies that ensure a viable financial model and integrating remote monitoring and intelligence. This pilot project is expected to be operational by the end of Q2 2025.
EM-ONE is committed to advancing sustainable healthcare electrification at scale. By fostering collaboration across sectors and leveraging innovative technologies and financing mechanisms, the future of health-energy systems looks brighter than ever.
“Energy delivery models: Energy-as-a-Service to address the O&M conundrum?” panel moderated by Luc Severi (SEforALL)
About EM-ONE Energy Solutions
EM-ONE is an engineering and technology firm with over a decade of experience accelerating the energy transition in Africa by providing affordable, reliable, modern energy in the region. The firm has successfully designed and built over 320 solar microgrids with total PV capacity of 20 MWp and energy storage capacity of 90 MWh. The firm has extensive experience in leveraging sustainable energy technologies to power healthcare across the region – with a focus on innovation and capacity building.
