Equally, the expansion of productive energy use can play an important role in strengthening the electricity sector, by providing the demand needed to make investments viable, and possibly supporting the diversification of LDC energy sources. It requires proactive efforts to ensure “transformational energy access” and to promote the use of electricity in productive processes. Unless producers' energy needs are met — including in terms of adequate peak power, reliability, quality of supply and affordability — the unprecedented development opportunities offered by recent technological advances in electricity generation (and to a lesser extent storage) will be largely missed. Such investments are very long-term in nature, and may give rise to an important element of path dependency.