Energy Poverty Impacts Three Billion People. Time to Think Big.
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All Nations Need a High-Energy Future to Power Industrial and Commercial Development, Job Creation and Economic Growth.
But Small-Scale Solutions to Energy Poverty Can’t Build Competitive Economies. So the Hopes and Security of Billions are at Risk.
The Energy for Growth Hub Connects the Latest Research Directly with Policymaker Demand — To Fuel Prosperity for Everyone.
Featured Content
- PageWhy Energy is Everything — in 4 Unforgettable InfographicsLearn More
- ReportWho Decides Africa’s Net Zero Pathways? Five ways to fix how we model African energy transitions and why it matters for climate and developmentSummary To achieve an equitable global net zero future, lower-income and under-electrified countries must play a much bigger role in deciding how we get there.Learn More
- Op-Eds & ArticlesWhere are Africa’s Clean Energy Projects? A proactive agenda for the US GovernmentBLUF: The USG wants to fund as many new clean energy projects in Africa as possible, but the pool of bankable utility-scale generation projects is running dry.Learn More
- MultimediaEpisode #14 Ashvin Dayal: We Need to Redefine Energy & Development ProgressDayal, Senior Vice President of Power & Climate and The Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet at The Rockefeller Foundation, discusses how he got into working on energy, why he believes in raising the definition of energy access, and the power of philanthropy. Ashvin Dayal leads The Rockefeller Foundation’s Power & Climate program, aimed at scaling up energy access and accelerating an inclusive energy transition in emerging markets.Learn More
Recent Posts
- Memo
What is the true scale of unmet electricity demand in Sub-Saharan Africa?
The electricity access deficit is more pronounced in sub-Saharan Africa than in any other region globally, where despite recent progress in transmission and distribution capacities, around 580 million people still lacked access to electricity in 2019.1 And those that do have access are often burdened with poor reliability. As of April 2022, a survey found that 43% of Africans reported having access to a reliable supply of electricity, up by only three percentage points since 2015, and about 28% of connected households have power half the time, occasionally, or never.2 The latest World Bank Enterprise Surveys data suggests that customers across sub-Saharan Africa experienced an average of nine outages per month, each lasting an average of 5.7 hours.3 Yet, understanding the exact scale of energy poverty in the region remains elusive. Assessing the ‘unmet’ electricity demand A recent study by Garg, et al.Continue Reading - Memo
The Eskom crisis update: Where we are now
Summary: South Africa’s energy crisis has deepened but could still get worse. Delayed reforms and persistent allegations of corruption obscure a clear pathway forward. Relevance: Technically insolvent state-owned power company Eskom now implements rolling blackouts (known as ‘load-shedding’) on a daily basis, at a huge cost to the South African economy and society. The Eskom crisis has implications for the entire southern African region.Continue Reading - Memo
How does energy impact economic growth? An overview of the evidence
The positive relationship between energy and economic growth is clear: income and energy consumption are tightly correlated on every continent and across every time period for which data exists.Continue Reading - Memo
How to de-risk clean energy projects and cultivate the project pipeline in sub-Saharan Africa
Large-scale clean energy projects are capital intensive, which makes them difficult to finance when project risk – real or perceived – is high.Continue Reading - Multimedia
Rose Mutiso on Good Clean Energy podcast: How to End Energy Poverty
Rose Mutiso joins the show to discuss the connection between access to affordable electricity and poverty and details a path forward for energy-poor countries in Africa.Continue Reading - Blog
Power quality in donor-funded infrastructure projects
This post is co-authored with Eric Hsu, Edward Miguel, and Catherine Wolfram. Governments and foreign aid institutions routinely finance large infrastructure construction projects in developing and emerging markets.Continue Reading - Memo
2023 Update: Who in Africa is Ready for Nuclear Power?
Demand for electricity across Africa will grow many times over by 2050. Nuclear power is a potential source of clean power to drive industrialization and grow incomes, especially with new smaller, safer, and more flexible designs expected to come to the market over the next decade.Continue Reading - Blog
Nuclear Power in Uganda and Rwanda?
Solar, hydro, wind, and gas are the most common options for African countries to meet their energy needs, yet several are increasingly interested in adding advanced nuclear power to their mix. South Africa already operates a nuclear power plant, and Ghana has recently signed nuclear cooperation agreements with the United States and Japan.Continue Reading - Blog
Infographic: Our Unequal Energy World
Entire countries use less electricity than some (pretty small) cities in the United States. Berea, Kentucky is a small college town of just 16 thousand and uses about the same amount of electricity as 5 million people in Liberia.Continue Reading - Op-Eds & Articles
Europe’s Hunger for Gas Leaves Poor Countries High and Dry
Originally published in Foreign Policy, February 1, 2023. Almost one year after Russian forces invaded Ukraine, Moscow’s natural gas exports to Europe have declined by well over half due to sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, lower European purchases, and Moscow’s throttling of deliveries in retaliation for Western support of Ukraine.Continue Reading