Energy Poverty Impacts Three Billion People. Time to Think Big.

How we aggregate global data affects how we talk about it, and -- more importantly -- what we do about it.

Electricity generation in India has risen almost ten-fold since 1985, a dramatic increase leading to a surplus of capacity. Despite this technical surplus, and the claim of “universal village electrification,” 240 million people in the country continue to lack any access to electricity, with the remaining population experiencing regular blackouts, voltage fluctuations and other distribution-related problems.1 Since generation isn’t the issue, what is? The transmission and distribution (T&D) sectors face massive technical constraints and corruption issues - close to 25% of all power generated in India is lost to theft, corruption, and malfunctioning infrastructure.

10 Recommendations to enhance Power Africa’s impact on energy poverty, economic development, and climate change The US Government’s Power Africa initiative grew out of a bipartisan commitment to addressing energy poverty.

As availability and quality of grid-based electricity services remain abysmal in many parts of Africa, homes and businesses have sought coping strategies to mitigate the adverse economic impacts of service interruptions.

Originally appeared in a World Economic Forum post, March 22, 2021 The majority of western funding institutions have pledged to stop financing fossil fuel projects overseas. Yet western economies are benefiting from Africa's natural gas resources – this contradiction must be addressed. African nations deserves an adaptation-first energy strategy to level the playing field and build a green economy. The West’s approach to climate prioritizes emissions mitigation and energy austerity, which is exactly the opposite of an adaptation-first energy-abundance strategy that vulnerable African nations need. Africa’s energy poverty is staggering.

Mozambique, one of the world’s poorest countries with a GDP per capita under $500, is also home to Africa’s third largest confirmed reserves of natural gas.

Firms across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) view power outages as significant obstacles to productivity, and firms in the Maghreb share this concern, despite better infrastructure and greater government capacity.

Ghana’s electricity sector faces an urgent crisis of immense financial strain that calls for a new, more transparent approach for contracting power in the future.

Planning efficient, least-cost electricity infrastructure can benefit from using modern tools to gather improved information describing areas of interest. Building location data in the form of latitude and longitude coordinates are important when outlining the most efficient ways to electrify an area with limited resources.

The term ‘developing countries’ has become passé, but it’s especially outdated for thinking about energy and climate. Grouping incredibly diverse societies together can be misleading, a problem that has struck me lately in reading about the energy transition and the frequent implicit or explicit use of South Africa and/or India as stand-ins for other countries across Asia, Africa, or Latin America. India obviously looms very large because of its scale, but is it really indicative of the economic development and energy transition issues faced by other countries? What about South Africa? Many countries are facing the dual challenge of (a) urgently providing infrastructure to enable job growth and higher incomes and also (b) managing decarbonization.