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

SUSTAINABLE ENERGY REGULATION AND POLICYMAKING TRAINING MANUAL
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locally owned businesses, which will create employment – and assists in bridging
the “digital divide”.
• To reduce hunger and improve access to safe drinking water – energy services
can improve access to pumped drinking water and 95 per cent of staple
foods need cooking before they can be eaten.
• To reduce child and maternal mortality; and to reduce diseases – energy is a
key component of a functioning health system, for example, lighting operating
theatres, refrigeration of vaccines and other medicines, sterilization of
equipment and transport to health clinics.
• To achieve universal primary education; and to promote gender equality and
empowerment of women – energy services reduce the time spent by women
and children (especially girls) on basic survival activities (gathering firewood,
fetching water, cooking, etc.); lighting permits home study, increases security
and enables the use of educational media and communications in schools,
including information and communication technologies (ICTs).
• Environmental sustainability – improved energy efficiency and use of cleaner
alternatives can help to achieve sustainable use of natural resources, as well
as reducing emissions, which protects the local and global environment.
United Nations
The UN has taken the energy-MDGs nexus forward under their Millennium Project,
which over a period of three years will work on a plan of implementation that will
help all developing countries to meet the MDGs and thereby substantially improve
the human condition by 2015. Ten thematically-orientated Task Forces perform the
bulk of the research, within which energy is represented. 28 In October 2004 a workshop
in the USA defined the energy services and corresponding targets required
to meet the MDGs in the poorest countries with a special emphasis on sub-
Saharan Africa. The recommendations on how the scaling up of access to improved
energy services is to play an essential role in meeting the MDGs, are described
in the report “Energy Services for the Millennium Development Goals” 29
(November 2005).
Global Village Energy Partnership
The Global Village Energy Partnership (GVEP) 30 has also stressed the following as
the key areas of linkage of energy provision in rural areas to the MDGs:
28
www.unmillenniumproject.org
29
www.energyandenvironment.undp.org
30
see www.gvep.org