Water for people.pdf - WHO Thailand Digital Repository

2 5 2 / C H A L L E N G E S T O L I F E A N D W E L L - B E I N GDeveloping Energy to Meet Development NeedsThe Challenges for ElectrificationWhile it is clear that access to electricity is a prerequisite foreconomic and social development, it will be difficult to achieve on auniversal scale. At present in many developing countries, rural andurban electrification – whether hydro- or fossil-fuel-based – is oftenhampered by the economies of reticulated grid distribution, byinadequate management and billing practices, by illegal connectionsand by the limited purchasing power of the poorer customers. Theseproblems are even more intense in sparsely populated, remote andisolated areas.To foster sustainable development, it will be necessary to identifythe most suitable means of generating electricity. The requiredservice must be available at the lowest social, environmental andeconomic costs to the population. Yet this must be done rapidly soas not to unduly delay development. Furthermore, different systemswill be required for different areas: densely populated urban centreswith manufacturing activities might be well served by a centralized,compact electric system, whereas remote areas might be betterserved by decentralized, off-grid projects.Electrification has to cope with all these economic,environmental, social, institutional and technical issues. Decisionmakersnecessarily have to make trade-offs between costs andbenefits. One key issue is how to respect human rights and aim atsocial justice through a transparent, participative process so that allstakeholders are actively involved in the choices made.Rural and urban energy needsTable 10.1 shows the access to electricity of forty-three developingcountries by region and income situation. It illustrates the strongcorrelation between electricity supply and income.As a symbol of modernity and a basic aspiration for the poor,electricity is attractive, but the reality is that it is not always the mostappropriate form of energy for the poorest households and villages.In fact, electric lighting has no cost-benefit in a poor rural household,while an efficient stove, fed with a reasonably clean fuel, will becheaper and more readily usable for cooking and boiling water thanan electric stove. While electricity is essential for conserving vaccinesand medicines in village dispensaries, in the home, pumping water byhand may be more appropriate and cheaper than using an electricpump. These concerns all have to be weighed in the balance, aselectricity, while being a key factor in the fight against poverty, mustnot be seen as providing the answer to all rural problems.Access to electricity in urban and peri-urban areas, on the otherhand, is essential for the emergence of entrepreneurial andindustrial initiatives that can lead the way out of poverty. As withrural areas, however, electrification of shantytowns will not be apanacea. Reforms to world-trade barriers giving developingcountries access to world markets are also needed if their increasingindustrialization is to be a real source of development opportunity.In other words, looking at problems in a one-dimensional fashionwill never provide all the solutions. While access to electricityremains an essential tool to improve manufacturing capabilities inurban areas, it needs to be part and parcel of integrated policiesthat tackle all facets of poverty.A key element in electrifying both rural and urban areas is that thechoices made must not aggravate unequal access to such resources,thus intensifying the displacement of rural poor to the cities. Inaddition, innovative billing techniques and foolproof connectionprocedures will be required to counter the massive abuse that occursthrough illegal connections and default in payments.Use of energy in rural areasEnergy use in rural areas can be broken down into household,agricultural and small-scale rural industry subsectors and services.The amount of energy use for services (health clinics, schools,street lighting, commerce, transport) is generally quite small in ruralareas, and therefore is often included in the rural industries sector.Over 85 percent of energy is consumed by households mainly in theform of traditional energy sources used for cooking and heating. Onthe contrary, agricultural activities, depending on levels ofmechanization, consume only about 2 to 8 percent of the totalenergy use, mainly in the form of commercial energy used to powermechanical equipment and irrigation pump-sets. Commercial energy,often kerosene and electricity where available, is mainly used forlighting, which on average constitutes about 2 to 10 percent oftotal rural consumption. Small amounts of electricity are used tooperate radios, television sets and small appliances in electrifiedvillages. The energy consumption of rural industries, including bothcottage industries and village level enterprises, amounts to less than10 percent of the rural aggregates in most countries. In a few casesin Asia and Africa, the share of traditional fuels in rural householdenergy rises to more than 95 percent.Household energy consumption patterns are extremely varied inthe rural areas of developing countries. How much is consumed andthe types of energy sources used depend on a variety of factors,which include the availability and costs of energy sources. Amongthe poorest families in most developing countries, cooking andspace heating (depending on the climate) accounts for between 90and 100 percent of energy consumption. The remainder of theenergy consumed is for lighting, provided either by the cooking fire,kerosene lamps, candles or electric torches. At higher income levels,better lighting is one of the first energy services sought to improveliving standards and, frequently, to extend the working day. At stillhigher incomes, water heating, refrigeration and cooling begin to