http://www.itdg.org/html/advocacy/power_to_the_people_paper.htm
Power to the People: sustainable energy solutions for the world's poor
ITDG - Practical Answers To Poverty
Sustainable energy solutions for the world's poor
Energy and poverty
Energy cooks the food we eat, it heats our schools, it lights our
hospitals, it powers our industries, it is central to all human
economic activity.
Access to basic, clean energy services is essential for sustainable
development and poverty eradication, and provides major benefits in
the areas of health, literacy and equity. However, over two billion
people today have no access to modern energy services.
The issue of energy choice is fundamental to the great challenge
facing the world at the beginning of the 21st century - how to
eliminate the obscene levels of poverty without further polluting the
planet. ITDG believes that there does not have to be a trade-off
between human development and the environment. Millions can be lifted
out of poverty without ruining the planet with the help of clean
sustainable energy.
Poverty and energy are inextricably linked. Poverty will not be
halved without energy to increase production and income, create jobs
and reduce drudgery. Improving health and reducing death rates will
not happen without energy for vaccination campaigns. The greatest
child killer, acute respiratory infections, will not be tackled
without dealing with smoke from cooking fires in the home. Children
will learn less without light in their homes to allow them to read.
Water will not be pumped or treated without energy.
The international community is committed to tackling world poverty
though a series of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. While
energy goals are not specifically incorporated into the MDGs, access
to affordable, sustainable energy is an essential input to achieving
most of them.
In August this year world leaders will assemble in Johannesburg for
the World Summit on Sustainable Development. A priority for the
Summit will be how to respond to the needs of the two billion poor
people who lack access to modern energy services. The Summit will be
a critical opportunity to establish the political will towards
achieving the MDGs and to incorporate sustainable energy as a key
component of the Goals.
Three challenges
Energy for cooking
The first energy priority of poor people is to meet their household
energy needs. Poor people spend up to a third of their income on
energy, mostly to cook food. Around 2 billion people in the
developing world use biomass, such as wood, dung and charcoal, for
cooking. Due to poverty, many will continue to rely on biomass as
their primary energy source for cooking in the foreseeable future.
Women, in particular, devote a considerable amount of time to
collecting, processing and using traditional fuel for cooking, often
spending four to six hours per day and walking up to ten kilometres
to gather 35 kg of firewood - time which could be spent on child
care, education or income generation. Reducing the amount of firewood
or dung used through simple affordable technology such as more
efficient stoves is vital.
Every year 1.8 million people die of illness related to smoke for
cooking fires. Smoke is a major factor contributing to acute
respiratory infection, which is the greatest single cause of
under-five-year-old deaths. Simple affordable solutions to deadly
indoor pollution are available. The use of smoke hoods would go a
long way to reduce deaths from indoor pollution.
There is urgent need to address the continuing dependence on biomass
for domestic energy. ITDG is calling for a concerted effort, by 2015,
to:
* Provide one billion people with improved, clean stoves
* Halve the numbers of deaths from indoor air pollution
ITDG has worked with Maasai women in the Kajiado region of
Kenya to find appropriate solutions to the extreme problem of air
pollution in their homes - where average smoke daily levels were
recorded at over 100 times the accepted international standards and
several hundred times higher during cooking times. The women assisted
in developing a simple smoke hood which has reduced smoke levels in
the houses by an average of 75 per cent.
Getting electricity to the rural poor
The second major challenge will be to provide electricity to the
rural poor. Electricity is needed to power small industry and
enterprise, run health clinics and light schools. Without it rural
poverty will not be eradicated.
Although some 800 million people have been connected to power grids
in the last 20 years, nearly two billion people still do not have
access to electricity, particularly in rural areas.
The conventional approach to electrification tends to marginalise
rural communities who are located far away from the grid. Rural
population densities are generally low and the cost of energy supply
is high compared with densely populated areas. Electricity companies
- public or private - have little incentive to provide services to
these areas.
Where centralised approaches have failed to reach the poorest
communities, there is a need for a new approach based on small-scale
sustainable energy options. Decentralised energy options using local
resources - for example, wind, biogas, photovoltaic, micro-hydro -
offer many advantages for meeting the needs of the rural population.
Decentralised alternatives can make use of local manufacturing and
technical capability, and can be controlled by the communities
themselves.
Relatively small investments are needed to produce or improve
technologies that are within the reach of low-income communities.
There are many examples of best practice in this field. Success
stories should be replicated, especially through South-South transfer
of technologies and experience.
The options for decentralised rural electrification are either
through diesel or renewable energy sources. Renewable energy has
distinct advantages over diesel as it has much lower running costs,
the energy source is local and does not run out, it is much cleaner
and does not contribute to global warming.
ITDG is calling for the following rural electrification target to be
met by 2015:
* To halve the proportion of people without access to electricity
* Two thirds of these to be from renewable technologies
ITDG has been using Inter-America Development Bank funds in
Peru since 1983 to implement a "Revolving Fund" of soft loans with
technical assistance on the construction of micro hydropower schemes
in isolated rural areas. So far 15 schemes have been completed under
this scheme, benefiting about 10,000 people. Loan repayments are fed
back into the Fund to support new micro hydro stations in remote
villages.
Getting sustainable energy to the urban poor
Increasing numbers of the world's poor people are living in cities
and many are still dependent on traditional fuels (wood and charcoal)
for their energy needs. Large concentrated populations draw
significantly on scarce natural resources.
In the short term fossil fuels will continue to be the main
alternative fuel for poor urban households. The increased use of LPG
(liquid petroleum gas) and kerosene is the most feasible way to
improve air quality in the home and reduce the environmental damage
of deforestation around cities in the short term. However, there is
need for a longer-term global strategy for more sustainable supply of
energy to poor urban areas as the rural poor continue to migrate to
the cities.
ITDG is calling for:
* International and national strategies to be put in place to assist
the urban poor in the transition to cleaner and more sustainable fuels
A small amounts of energy can have a significant impact on
income generation. For example, a solar lantern developed by IT
Consultants has extended the operating hours of a street vendor in
Kenya by lighting her stall in a local market.
Power to the people: an agenda for change
If these three challenges are met - clean energy for cooking, rural
electrification, energy to the urban poor - then significant progress
will have been made towards achieving the Millennium Development
Goals. For this to happen, the World Summit on Sustainable
Development must commit to a plan of action and clear targets to get
clean and sustainable energy to world's poorest people. The
international community must commit themselves to the following five
areas:
Ensure energy is incorporated into poverty reduction strategies
Energy strategies for the poor must be incorporated into national and
international development frameworks. In particular, national Poverty
Reduction Strategies in developing countries should explicitly state
the energy services required to achieve their poverty reduction goals.
Target trade and aid support to sustainable energy options for poor people
Firstly, development assistance must recognise that the principal
energy need of the poor remains cooking. Increased support is
required for clean cooking strategies, linked to health sector
development, to significantly reduce deaths from indoor air pollution.
Secondly, bilateral trade and aid policy in the energy sector,
currently predominantly focused on fossil fuel technologies, should
be reoriented towards sustainable energy and to encourage the
renewables market.
Develop financing mechanisms to reach the grass roots
The international community will need to commit to invest in the
dissemination of sustainable energy technologies in order to improve
the quality of poor people's lives and reduce the cost of providing
energy services to the poor. This will require the commercialisation
of renewable energy technologies through innovative financing
mechanisms, targeted subsidies and financing to reach the grass roots.
Encourage private sector partnerships to target the poor
While industrialised countries are leading the way in increasing the
viability of renewable energy technologies, there is also need to
address how to support the development of local technical skills and
knowledge needed in developing countries. The private sector -
particularly in the technology and banking sectors - must be
encouraged to form local partnerships to supply services which are
accessible and appropriate to the poor.
Give a voice to the poor
Last, but not least, people living in poverty must have their say if
energy policy and services are to meet their needs and provide long
term solutions. In energy sector planning, as elsewhere, poor people
are too frequently the invisible stakeholders. Yet evidence shows
that if the primary stakeholders are involved in the design and
implementation of development initiatives they are much more likely
to bring prolonged benefits.
ITDG hosted a multi-stakeholder seminar on energy and poverty
reduction in London on 17th July 2002.
The event presented four key visions from government, the private
sector, environmental and development NGOs in response to the
question: How can we deliver sustainable energy solutions to help
achieve the UN millennium goal of halving the number of people living
in absolute poverty by 2015?
Speakers included Sally Keeble MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of
State for International Development; Benedict Southworth, Director of
the Climate Campaign, Greenpeace International; Robert Kleiburg, Vice
President for Strategy and Planning, Shell Renewables and Cowan
Coventry, Chief Executive of ITDG. There were also three seminar
working groups on Energy and poverty linkages; Cooking, biomass and
clean energy; and Rural electrification.
Click here for further details.
A full seminar report and principal speeches will appear here shortly.
This briefing paper is also available to download as an Adobe PDF file ~72Kb
Further information
* Sustainable Life and Livelihoods: Energy for the Poor
* Read about the Choose Positive Energy campaign, supported by ITDG
in conjunction with Greenpeace and the Body Shop
* ITDG's position on the realities of renewable energy and poverty reduction
http://www.itdg.org/html/advocacy/renewable_energy_realities.htm
* Why energy is fundamental to improving the lives of poor people
http://www.itdg.org/html/advocacy/energy_fundamental.htm
* Technical solutions to energy needs must be accessible, affordable
and appropriate
* ITDG's energy programme
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