Energy Apartheid Keeps Billions of People in Poverty Says New Report

MORE than one and a half billion of the world's poorest people will be condemned to a life of poverty if they continue to be denied access to basic energy services, according to international development charity Practical Action.
A lack of energy to power essential services such as lighting, heating and cooking in the developing world means that many if not all of the Millennium Development Goals simply cannot be met by 2015, says Practical Action's Poor People's Energy Outlook (PPEO) report.
In the inaugural report, which is supported by the United Nations Development Programme, the charity calls for an end to the ‘energy apartheid' between the developed and the developing world.
Currently one and a half billion people are living with no access to electricity, and three billion still rely on traditional biomass and coal for cooking, where in the developed world energy is often squandered.
The PPEO report proposes the concept of Total Energy Access - minimum standards of energy services for poor people in the developing world for lighting, cooking/water heating, space heating, cooling, information/communications and livelihoods.
Simon Trace, Chief Executive, Practical Action, said: "Energy apartheid is deeply unjust, it can and must be addressed.
"Development is not possible without energy access for poor people. This is a prerequisite for human development and poverty reduction. The Poor People's Energy Outlook proposes a framework for action to fight this injustice.”
Among the recommendations for minimum energy standards are the need for every house to have 300 lumens of lighting, 0.3kg of charcoal per person per day, a minimum daytime indoor temperature of 12C and a maximum indoor temperature of 30C.
This will mean families can be active after dark, won’t freeze in their homes, can cook without fear of smoke inhalation, can preserve food and medicines, have access to electronic information and gradually work their way out of poverty.
The report argues that Total Energy Access cannot be achieved by the formal energy sector working alone and that the ecosystem of energy access service providers must widen and deepen to include international agencies, governments, small and medium scale enterprises, universities, NGOs, community groups, financiers and more.
In sub-Saharan Africa more than 70 per cent of the population is still without access to electricity. This figure will only be reduced to 67% by 2015 when the MDGs expire, unless collective action is taken.
And it's not just electricity poverty which is an issue. Lack of energy for cooking means indoor smoke from traditional cookstoves causes 1.4 million deaths per year - more than malaria.
The report is published in the wake of the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook (WEO), which this year placed a special emphasis on energy poverty and published a chapter on how to make energy access universal in advance of the main report.
Practical Action welcomes the WEO's recognition of the importance of tackling energy poverty but calls for further action, including greater investment in energy access from developed countries and the establishment of a globally agreed set of minimum standards for energy access.
Trace added: "Practical Action is an organisation that puts poor people at the heart of all of its work, involving them in every step of their development and our report seeks to explore the issue of energy access in more detail and acts as a call to action for the creation of a coalition to tackle the issue from all sides."
For more information please visit #-Link-Snipped-# or #-Link-Snipped-# to view the report in full.
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