Increasing access to energy services in rural areas - REEEP ...

MODULE 10: INCREASING ACCESS TO ENERGY SERVICES IN RURAL AREAS
page 10.9
The rate of electrification and use of traditional fuels for cooking, two of the most
significant benchmarks for energy provision, are not overlaid in table 1 as specific
electrification rates in rural areas are difficult to obtain in so many countries, and
statistics on the use of biomass per country are even less available, although
cooking comprises 95 per cent of energy use in LDCs.
However, the World Energy Assessment estimates that between 1970 and 1990,
rural electrification programmes reached about 800 million additional people and
some 500 million saw their lives improve substantially through the use of better
methods for cooking and other rural energy tasks. 14 While much of the rural electrification
programmes were through grid connection, the amount of renewables
now being utilized in LDCs has been estimated to be providing the extra energy
services needed to about 25 million people. The renewable energy capacity is
made up of 1 million solar home systems (SHS), 150,000 PV and wind powered
clinics and schools, 50,000 domestic wind turbines, 300,000 solar lanterns (in
India alone), 150,000 family-hydro units (in China and Vietnam) and hundreds of
thousands PV and wind water pumps. 15
But despite the enormous efforts to improve energy services to rural populations
(including the use of renewables) in the past thirty to forty years, the un-served
population has not decreased significantly in absolute numbers – about two billion
people still rely on traditional biomass for cooking and lack clean, safe fuels 16
and 1.7 billion have yet to achieve any electrification. 17
So, energy provision for all remains a key problem and challenge for billions of
poor people who often have a limited choice of technologies that convert energy
into useful services. The technologies most readily available to them are typically
inefficient or low quality. 18 So they end up paying much more per unit of useful
energy service than the more well off.
On the face of it, this challenge looks formidable, yet to meet the basic cooking
needs of two billion people would correspond to no more than 1 per cent of global
commercial energy consumption 19 and to provide the basic electricity needs of offgrid
households and enterprises is certainly technologically achievable and, using
the right financing instruments, often financially viable.
14
World Energy Assessment: Overview 2004 Update – United Nations Development Programme, United
Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, World Energy Council, 2004, page 59.
15
Greenpeace/The Body Shop – Power to tackle poverty, June 2001, ISBN 9073361745, page 9.
16
Greenpeace/The Body Shop – Power to tackle poverty.
17
World Energy Assessment, 2002 – United Nations Development Programme, United Nations
Department of Economic and Social Affairs, World Energy Council, 2002.
18
DFID – Energy for the Poor, page 7.
19
Reddy (1999), quoted in WEA, 2002.