1.6 billion people worldwide do not have access to electricity in their homes, representing more than one-quarter of the world's population
Lack of electricity exacerbates poverty and contributes to its perpetuation, as it precludes most industrial activities and the jobs they create. It also deprives people of basic necessities such as refrigeration, lighting and communication.
The access to affordable and reliable energy services will contribute to the alleviation of poverty and the improvement of the economic growth prospects of developing countries. It means a better education for children who can study in a lighted home, and access to public goods like information through TV and radio. Further, the provision of modern energy services will facilitate the achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Challenges
Three challenges face the international community if they are to meet the Millennium Development Goals to tackle world poverty:
Energy for cooking: there is an urgent need to address the continuing dependence on biomass for domestic energy, both to reduce the amount of time spent collecting fuel and to improve health.
Getting electricity to the rural poor: electricity is needed to power small industry and enterprise, run health clinics and light schools. Without it, rural poverty will not be eradicated. Decentralised energy options using local resources – such as wind, biogas, solar power or micro-hydro – offer many advantages for meeting the needs of the rural population.
Getting sustainable electricity to the urban poor: increasing numbers of the world's poor people are living in cities, and many are dependent on wood and charcoal for their energy needs. A long-term strategy is needed for a more sustainable supply of energy to poor urban areas as the rural poor continue to migrate to the cities.
Using BioMass as energy
Some 2.4 billion people rely on traditional biomass – wood, agricultural residues and dung – for cooking and heating. That number will increase to 2.6 billion by 2030. In developing countries, biomass use will still represent over half of residential energy consumption by 2030.
Unfortunately, fuel-wood supplies are fast dwindling in many parts of the developing world. Women and children are now spending more time and money to procure it. For example, in rural sub-Saharan Africa, many women carry 20 kilograms of fuel wood an average of five kilometres every day. The effort uses up a large share of the calories from their daily meal, which is cooked over an open fire with the collected wood.
Fuel-wood is inefficient, has negative health impacts and has low value in the commercial energy sector.
Health implications
The links between energy and health can be complex.
At the simple level, providing energy services to a community health centre will allow lighting to be provided in the treatment room, vaccines to be stored in a refrigerator, water to be boiled and instruments sterilized. Of course, this is often complicated by a lack of inputs from the health system (trained staff, medicines, inadequate buildings) and non-existent road and transport infurstructure.
In a more indirect example, electricity is often used to extract and treat drinking water.
And cooking requires energy too. Traditional stoves using dung and charcoal emit large amounts of carbon monoxide and other noxious gases. Poor people in the developing world are constantly exposed to indoor particulate and carbon monoxide concentrations many times higher than World Health Organisation standards. Women and children suffer most, because they are exposed for the longest periods of time.
Acute respiratory illnesses affect as much as 6% of the world population. The WHO estimates that 2.5 million women and young children in developing countries die prematurely each year from breathing the fumes from indoor biomass stoves.
Climate Change
The poor face another threat, paradoxically because of the over consumption of energy. Industrialised countries’ excessive fossil fuel consumption is driving climate change, and the poor are bearing the brunt because poverty makes them the most vulnerable and least able to cope. Thousands have already died and millions more made homeless due to extreme weather events. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change described Africa, the world’s poorest region, as "the continent most vulnerable to the impacts of projected change because widespread poverty limits adaptation capabilities".
Solutions
Energy needs and solutions vary across the globe, depending on people's needs, their local resources and the environment they live in. However, all solutions must be accessible, affordable and appropriate.
For the rural poor, without basic energy services, renewable energy is often the cheapest option including options such as Solar, small scale wind generators, micro hydro generation, biogas or improved fuel stoves. In urban areas, it may be a mix of fossil fuels combined with cleaner, more efficient renewable energy technologies.
In all cases, a balance needs to be struck between developmental and environmental objectives and it is vital that local communities have a voice in the decision making process on how to meet their energy needs.
Information from this page was researched and collated with the help of Practical Action, Alliance for Rural Electrification and Engineers Against Poverty