Standards for global development

IEC e-TECH

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How does IEC work contribute to global development? E-tech delves into the major theme of this year’s General Meeting (GM) in Hamburg, with a special focus on Germany’s contributions.

Each developing country faces its own unique set of challenges. But international standards have a critical role to play in ensuring new technologies, such as clean energy, are applied to  meet those challenges in the most effective and economic way possible.

Germany is a key player

Germany is the world's largest contributor to international development aid, making EUR 26 billion (over USD 29 bn) in public development funding available in 2025, according to the OECD. The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) is the federal enterprise responsible for development.

Among the schemes it supports is EnDev (Energizing Development), a global partnership that has helped bring modern energy services to more than 36 million people around the world. “Quality standards and conformity assessment are critical to expanding access to clean energy technologies across developing markets,” says Till Serafimov, Technical Lead at EnDev. “Consumer trust is fundamental to market development. People will only adopt technologies if they believe they are safe, reliable and effective.”

The sustainable energy transition depends on technologies such as solar and wind power being safe, efficient and interoperable wherever they are deployed. “Whether a system is being used in Namibia or in Germany, common standards can help provide a basis for achieving shared goals with those technologies,” says Henrike Gördes, Head of Governance at DKE, the German National Committee of the IEC and host of this year’s IEC GM in Hamburg.

Contributing to global development starts with international cooperation, she says. “Standards developed in isolation cannot address technologies and supply chains that are increasingly cross border. International cooperation, participation and exchange are the foundation for developing standards that can support global development.”

EnDev’s standards-based approach to development

Funded by Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland and coordinated by GIZ and RVO, EnDev works to improve access to clean cooking technology and renewable electricity through a market-based approach. Rather than focusing solely on technology deployment, the programme seeks to build sustainable energy markets that can continue to grow independently. “Our core objective is to promote functioning markets,” explains Serafimov. “We believe that private sector-led market development is the most efficient and durable way to scale clean energy technologies.”

Standards and product quality sit at the centre of this strategy. “In many countries, early experiences with poor-quality cookstoves or solar products damaged consumer confidence and slowed market uptake. Without performance and safety standards, products can enter the market without adequate testing, damaging consumer confidence and, ultimately, slowing down market development.”

From clean cooking stoves to solar power

As a result, EnDev has invested heavily in strengthening testing infrastructure, standards development and certification systems. In Rwanda, for example, EnDev supported the Rwanda Standards Board , an ISO member, in developing testing capacity for clean cookstoves. Through investments in laboratory facilities, staff training and institutional development, certification timelines were reduced from around six months to just a few weeks. EnDev aligns its clean cooking work with international standards such as ISO 19867‑1 for biomass cookstoves and has supported similar initiatives in Madagascar, Benin, Sierra Leone and Bangladesh.

The organization is also increasingly focused on electric cooking (eCooking) which is gaining momentum as a pathway to cleaner household energy use. “eCooking can be emissions-free at the point of use,” Serafimov explains. “However, the growth of eCooking also requires the development and enforcement of appropriate technical standards.” EnDev works with organizations including Modern Energy Cooking Services, CLASP and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to promote standards for electric cookstoves and other energy efficient appliances across several African and Asian markets.

IEC is also supporting clean cooking on the ground. One of the projects of the organization’s Impact Alliance aims to accelerate access to clean cooking solutions in communities that need it most. “Household air pollution, mostly from cooking smoke, is linked to around 3,7 million premature deaths a year. Cleaner technologies such as electric cookstoves exist, but limited access to electricity remains a major barrier to their use. We aim to bring standardization and conformity assessment more prominently into this sector to ensure more people have access to clean cooking solutions,” says Dr Matthew Doherty, Senior Advisor for the IEC Impact Alliance.

Another Impact Alliance project is with Differ Community Power (DCP), an international provider of solar energy services, which repurposed used electric car batteries to revive dead or dormant solar panels at rural schools and health centres in Kenya. This scalable project is designed to connect communities and reduce e-waste at the same time.

Quality assurance is especially important in the solar sector. EnDev supports internationally recognized certification schemes such as VeraSol for pico-solar products and solar home systems, based on IEC Technical Specification 62257­­‑9‑8. The IEC 62257 series of technical specifications cover recommendations for small renewable hybrid systems for rural electrification. The series has been recognized by both the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the World Bank. The series can be accessed by developing nations at a much-discounted price.

IECEE, the IEC System of Conformity Assessment (CA) Scheme for Electrotechnical Equipment and Components, addresses 23 different product categories, including solar PV parts and modules, while IECRE, the IEC System for Certification to Standards Relating to Equipment for Use in Renewable Energy Applications, provides third party certification and testing services for all power plants producing, storing, or converting energy from wind, marine and solar PV energy. “The standards assess product quality and safety through rigorous testing,” Serafimov explains. Products are evaluated for durability, battery performance and safety, helping consumers distinguish reliable products from lower-quality alternatives.

“From EnDev’s perspective, conformity assessment is not simply a regulatory requirement," he says. “It is a core market-development tool. Without trusted testing and certification systems, consumers lose confidence, quality companies struggle to compete, and market growth is ultimately undermined.”

Digital product passports can be a tool for global development

The key contribution to cementing and progressing a global industrial circular economy is the Digital Product Passport (DPP), for the time being mostly a European initiative. DKE has contributed significantly to driving its development and, now, its adoption. Its potential depends on creating a trusted, interoperable infrastructure that works internationally.

“The DPP is an enabler of trust, particularly trust in data,” explains Gördes. “The innovation is not simply the passport itself but the infrastructure behind it. DPP is a trusted and interoperable way of exchanging information about products.” The passport is expected to provide information about a product across its lifecycle and supply chain - where materials and components come from, how a product was manufactured and other relevant information, including how it operates and when it may need to be reviewed.

A product may contain multiple materials and components, each with its own origins and supply-chain information. A DPP could create greater accountability in production. “A DPP is not a solution to every problem in global supply chains,” she says. “What it can do is provide better access to information. If someone wants to examine particular aspects of a product - its environmental impact, for example, or the people involved in its production - the DPP could provide access to relevant information from which conclusions can be drawn.”

DKE’s role is to contribute to that international standardization process, while working with government ministries and regulators. A significant step came with the inauguration of the new joint committee between ISO and IEC on DPPs, IEC/ISO JTC 5. “The challenge now is to build consensus,” Gördes says. “Different regions and markets have different views about what the initial focus of a DPP should be, what information should be transmitted and how the underlying infrastructure should operate. Regulators and stakeholders in Europe and Asia, for example, may have different requirements and expectations.”

Bringing those perspectives together will be essential if the DPP is to support different markets while maintaining international interoperability. “The real value lies in creating infrastructure through which information can be exchanged consistently and accessed by those who need it,” she says.

EnDev has not worked on DPPs in the EU regulatory sense. However, many elements of its work are aligned with the DPP logic: digital product and sales data, operational monitoring, traceability for results verification and after-sales information. All essential in a global development perspective.