Across the world, billions of people in poor countries lack access to modern forms of electricity. When households lack access to electricity, economic development is hampered, because people have limited access to high-quality lighting to support educational, economic and social activities in the evening and must spend time gathering traditional sources of fuel, such as firewood, for cooking activities. In recent years, national governments, the international development community, and NGOs have implemented a wide range of policies and projects to provide the rural poor with access to clean energy. Often, these projects have the potential to meet not only the development needs of the rural poor, but also offer potential environmental benefits, such as reduced carbon dioxide emissions from renewable energy sources. As a result, new streams of carbon-related finance or environmentally-motivated aid have become available to support development projects, and national governments have adopted a suite of policies aimed at clean energy. Much remains unknown, however, about whether these policies and programs are effective at meeting their environmental and economic development objectives. In this panel, we evaluate projects and policies aiming to meet twin goals of economic development and reduced carbon emissions. The first paper by Jasmine Hyman and Rob Bailis evaluates household energy projects that use carbon market funding in Southeast Asia to determine how effective these projects have been in meeting their development goals. The following two papers use field experiments to examine clean energy project design from the perspectives projects’ intended beneficiaries. Marc Jeuland, Jessica Lewis, and Subhrendu Pattanayak use experimental evidence from rural India to determine end-users’ preferences for different types of improved cook stoves, as well as end-users’ valuation of the financial and time savings offered by improved cook stoves. Robyn Meeks and Eliana Carranza conducted randomized experiments in Central Asia to determine whether energy savings differ when households pay for CFLs or when CFLs are distributed freely. The final paper uses a statistical model to examine the drivers of renewable energy across low, medium, middle-high, and high countries, as well as examining whether renewable energy policies, donor aid, and participation in carbon market programs are equally effective at boosting renewable energy across counties with differing income levels. As more and more countries, donors, development organizations and NGOs turn to clean energy projects to improve development and achieve environmental objectives, there is growing need to understand the factors that help make clean energy projects and policies in developing countries successful. Drawing on a range of methods, these four papers produce the kind of research that is needed to inform program and policy design, investigating policies and programs across a diverse set of developing countries.