Productive uses of heat and electricity for small-scale industry, agriculture, telecommunications, health, and education in rural areas are a growing area of attention for applying modern renewable energy technologies. Examples of industrial applications include silk production, brick making, rubber drying, handicraft production, sewing, welding, and wood working. Examples of agricultural and food processing applications include irrigation, food drying, grain mills, stoves and ovens, ice making, livestock fences, and milk chilling. Health applications include vaccine refrigeration and lighting. Communication applications include village cinema, telephone, computers, and broadcast radio. Other community applications include school and street lighting, and drinking water purification. Despite this diversity of potential applications, existing projects are still small demonstrations. For the most part, large-scale development of these applications on sustainable or commercially replicable terms has yet to occur.

Even as applications of renewable electricity for lighting, water pumping, medical refrigeration, and motive power are beginning to receive greater attention, application of modern renewables to heating needs is still much less discussed or practiced. Traditional biomass fuels are used to produce heat and heat-related services such as cooking, space heating, crop drying, roasting, agricultural processing, kilns, ovens, and commercial food-processing. Applications of solar heating and advanced biomass technologies are just beginning to attract the attention of the development community. Developing-country governments are focusing more on these areas as well. For example, the Indian government has launched comprehensive programs promoting biomass for electricity, heat, and motive power in rural areas, including combustion, co-generation, and gasification. These rural energy programs target all forms of household, community, and productive needs in hundreds of rural districts.

A good example of applications in health and education is the World Bank/GEF Uganda Energy for Rural Transformation project. The project is providing energy for medical equipment, staff quarters, lighting, cold chain, sterilizing, and telecom, and demonstrating to the Ministry of Health the viability of such applications. For education, solar PV will power equipment for vocational training, lighting for night classes, and staff housing. Other applications include water pumping and small enterprises.Mexico’s "telesecundaria" program is another good example. This program is designed to enhance rural schools through distance education programs, and many remote schools rely on solar PV to power communications and other equipment for distance learning. In Guatemala, Honduras, and Bolivia, a new model for "telecenters" is emerging, combining publicservice centers with for-profit telephone services.

Approaches to financing small and medium-scale enterprises engaged in renewable energy-related productive business have gained considerable attention in recent years through programs like the UNEP/UN Foundation "rural energy enterprise development" (REED) program in Africa, Brazil, and China and other finance initiatives. These enterprises are providing a variety of services and products, including solar home systems, water pumping, solar crop drying, biofuels-powered engines for grinding and milling, solar bakeries, biomass briquettes and pellets, and other income-generating uses. The number of such enterprises is growing in rural areas, led by both donor programs and greater access to commercial bank credit.