Towards a green economy Millennium Development Goal 1 2, 3


Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by reducing the proportion of people whose income is less than US$ 1 per day (in US$ PPP)


Achieve universal primary education and promote gender equality


4, 5, 6 Reduce child and maternal mortality and reduce disease


7 Ensure environmental sustainability How modern energy will help attain the MDGs


Increases household incomes by improving productivity in terms of time saving, increasing output, and value- addition, and diversifying economic activity. Energy for irrigation increases food production and access to nutrition.


Provides time for education, facilitating teaching and learning by empowering especially women and children to become educated on health and productive activities, instead of traditional energy related activities.


Improved health through access to clean water, cleaner cooking fuels, heat for boiling water, and better agricultural yields. Health clinics with modern fuels and electricity can refrigerate vaccines, sterilise equipment, and provide lighting.


Cleaner fuels, renewable energy technologies, and energy efficiency can help mitigate environmental impacts at the local, regional and global levels. Agricultural productivity and land-use can be improved to run machinery and irrigation systems.


Table 3: Millennium Development Goals and links to energy access Source: based on GNESD (2007) and Modi et al. (2006)


and this is an area getting increased attention to reduce possible negative impacts as much as possible (IPCC 2011).


2.4 Energy poverty


Expanding access to energy is a central challenge for developing countries. Reliable and modern energy services are needed to facilitate poverty reduction, education and health improvements, as reflected in a number of studies (GNESD 2007, 2010; Modi et al. 2006) identifying access to energy services as crucial for the achievement of most of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Table 3 shows the link between various MDGs and modern energy access.


The scale of the challenge is massive with 1.4 billion people currently lacking access to electricity, and 2.7 billion depending on traditional biomass for cooking in developing countries as calculated by IEA, UNDP and UNIDO (IEA 2010a). In Sub-Saharan Africa 80 per cent of people rely on traditional use of biomass for their cooking, making it the region with the highest dependence on this energy source. While 53 per cent of urban populations in sub-Saharan Africa have access to electricity, the figure for the rural population is only 8 per cent (UNDP 2007). This rural-urban electrification imbalance contributes


to a highly uneven spatial


distribution of economic activity, encouraging larger and more rapid rural-urban migration. On average, 26 per cent of people have access to electricity in sub- Saharan Africa, ranging from 3 per cent in Burundi, Liberia and Chad, to 75 per cent in South Africa and to 92 per cent in Togo at the top (UNDP and WHO 2008). Unless dedicated new efforts are implemented, the IEA estimates that by 2030 1.2 billion people will still lack access to electricity and the number relying on biomass will even rise slightly to 2.8 billion. In some African countries, the share of the population without access to electricity might even increase. Renewable energy sources offer some cost-effective solutions to solving


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Grid expansion is generally the lowest-cost option in urban areas and in more densely populated rural areas. Successful expansion has been achieved recently on a large scale in China, South Africa and Vietnam. Grid expansion at a regional level in Africa could facilitate hydropower trading among countries, thereby supplying low-cost power while reducing the continent’s vulnerability to varying oil prices and its carbon emissions (World Bank 2009).


In remote locations, off-grid and mini-grid options tend to be more cost effective than expanding existing electricity grids. Renewable off-grid solutions – small hydro, mini-


energy poverty; one of the opportunities is explored in the next section.


Solutions for energy access There are various technological options to addressing the energy-poverty challenge described above. Implementing most of these options requires additional, publicly-financed investment, including development assistance, as the commercial market potential is likely to remain limited in some cases. Public-private partnerships may be one option along with promising alternative financing mechanisms, including cost- recovery from users, and are discussed in section 4 below.


In terms of technologies for electricity delivery, there are potentially three broad options for expanding access. First, existing centralised grids can be expanded to non-served areas, potentially based on new renewable sources of energy. Second, decentralised mini-grids can be installed to link a community to a small generating plant. Third, off-grid access can be facilitated by producing electricity for a single point of demand. The optimal mix of these options for any given country is determined by the availability of energy resources, the regulatory and policy environment, the institutional and technical capacity, geographic considerations, and relative costs (AGECC 2010). Intelligent planning should allow for the flexibility to integrate these systems as countries develop.


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