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

Electricity is a critical input for businesses that rely on productivity-enhancing technologies. As a result, firms, particularly small and medium enterprises (SMEs), incur substantial productivity losses from unreliable electricity supply, which is extremely common in emerging market economies.1 Our study finds that, in Ghana, there is essentially no effective method that SMEs can employ to fully compensate for unreliable power supply in power-reliant businesses – and solving this challenge will likely require broader investment or policy intervention.2 Unreliable electricity supply is a major obstacle for firms More than one in ten firms in Sub-Saharan Africa cite unreliable electricity as the biggest obstacle to their operations (Figure 1).

The Guardian recently published an article supposedly exposing new African plans to expand oil and gas production and raising alarm bells about the climate implications.

The White House released President Biden’s Sub-Saharan Africa Strategy yesterday, aiming to reset strained relationships, clarify US priorities, and draw a line in the sand from the previous Administration.

Todd Moss testified along with Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (World Trade Organization), Donald Kaberuka (African Union), and Rama Yade (Atlantic Council) at the House Foreign Affairs Committee Congressional Roundtable: "U.S.

Originally appeared in Foreign Policy, July 14, 2022. Few should be surprised that, facing energy shortages and rising costs for fuel and electricity, rich countries are turning back to more and dirtier fossil fuels.

Experts agree that climate change mitigation will ultimately require removing carbon from the atmosphere to the tune of a billion tons of CO2 per year in only a few decades.

Originally published in the IMF Public Financial Management Blog, June 21, 2022.  Soon after the reformist businessman Hakainde Hichilema won Zambia's presidency in August 2021, he learned that his country’s finances were far worse than he feared.

To meet clean energy and energy access goals, we need to rapidly scale electricity through transparent, competitive power markets. But in most emerging markets, power contracts shrouded in secrecy prevent this progress. We launched our new initiative, PPA Watch, to shed light on the problem of secret power purchase agreements.

For the world to have any chance of scaling electricity fast enough to eradicate energy poverty or meet our clean energy goals, we need transparent, competitive power markets.

Originally appeared in Forbes, June 1, 2022 The world must solve two global crises – energy poverty and climate change – at the same time.