The month of Ramadan, when thoughts turn to charity and the struggles of those lacking the necessities of life such as food, water and clothing, can also turn attention to another basic human need. Without modern energy – electricity and clean fuels – many other essentials are unattainable or unaffordable.
Take seven-year-old Balyenge from Kasungu in central Malawi. Without electricity, she cannot study in the evening, access the internet or make mobile phone calls, receive safe refrigerated vaccines or drink purified water. Her parents cannot get well-paid jobs in a factory. Without modern fuels, they cannot breathe clean air indoors while cooking or lighting the house, nor can they get a motorcycle or bus ride to the city for work or trade. With inadequate education, girls are married off early, and farmers are unable to expand beyond subsistence agriculture.
The World Bank estimates that 1.2 billion people worldwide are without electricity, and 2.8 billion can only cook and heat their homes by using smoky crop wastes, dung and wood.
Yet in the past two decades there has been the largest ever expansion of modern energy – since 1990, 1.7 billion have gained electricity and 1.6 billion cleaner cooking fuels. The largest part of this came in developing Asia – mainly China and India.
Solving energy poverty requires a pragmatic strategy. The amounts of energy needed to give a person basic access over the course of a year are tiny – the same amount the average American burns through in three days.
Even if fossil fuels were used to bring modern energy to all those without it, the increase in global carbon dioxide emissions would be just 2 per cent.
But lending by multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, as well as by the US, has become constrained by narrowly defined environmental dogma. Lending to coal-fired and nuclear plants is virtually ruled out; support for gas and large hydroelectric dams is severely constrained. Yet these are the four major sources of electricity generation across wealthy countries. The rise of China's and India's power sectors has been based almost entirely on coal and hydropower.
It seems hypocritical for the rich world to ban multilateral lending to fossil-fuel power in poor countries, while importing their coal, gas, oil and uranium and burning it in long-paid-off plants at home. Many energy-poor people live in countries such as Nigeria, Mozambique and Indonesia, with large fossil fuel resources.
Much better would be a blend of renewable energy and the most efficient, cleanest fossil fuel power plants. In recent years, the cost of renewables has come down dramatically. Abu Dhabi's Masdar has brought solar and wind power to countries such as Mauritania and Fiji. A combination of these with small-scale hydropower and biomass based on agricultural waste can supply electricity to remote areas and industries such as mines, currently dependent on expensive diesel.
But the image of energy poverty as confined to picturesque agricultural villages is misleading. A third of the African population lives in cities, set to increase to half by 2030. Poor countries’ urban areas also need low-cost, concentrated reliable power – especially to feed business and industry, the route to strong economic growth.
Energy infrastructure has to be sustainable – in human as well as environmental terms. It needs skilled people to manage and maintain it. And even if the initial infrastructure is built by aid, from then on the electricity sector needs a viable business model, not dependent on subsidies or overseas donations.
The lack of modern energy is an economic and health crisis at least as bad as Aids, malaria or climate change. Balyenge and people like her need assistance to kick-start the solution: a pragmatic, multifaceted approach that adapts to local realities, and channels the power of the private sector.
Robin Mills is head of consulting at Manaar Energy, and author of The Myth of the Oil Crisis
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