The Rockefeller Foundation has made a three year commitment to demonstrate the potential for significantly expanding decentralized renewable energy provision in rural India, by leveraging the rapidly expanding cellular telephone tower network as an anchor customer. The Foundation will work with a diverse set of partners from the private sector, rural development NGOs, and renewable energy experts to facilitate the establishment of commercially-operated small scale power plants, and to strengthen the overall enabling environment (policy, industry, finance) needed for scaling-up. Through these efforts SPEED seeks to validate that access to decentralized renewable energy can be sustainably expanded, providing affordable and reliable energy to poor rural populations, and thereby improving quality of life and enhancing livelihood security.