Energy access and living standards: some observations on recent trends

A subset of Sustainable Development Goals pertains to improving people's living standards at home. These include the provision of access to electricity, clean cooking energy, improved water and sanitation. We examine historical progress in energy access in relation to other living standards. We assess regional patterns in the pace of progress and relative priority accorded to these different services. Countries in sub-Saharan Africa would have to undergo unprecedented rates of improvement in energy access in order to achieve the goal of universal electrification by 2030. World over, access to clean cooking fuels and sanitation facilities consistently lag improved water and electricity access by a large margin. These two deprivations are more concentrated among poor countries, and poor people in middle income countries. They are also correlated to health risks faced disproportionately by women. However, some Asian countries have been able to achieve faster progress in electrification at lower income levels compared to industrialized countries' earlier efforts. These examples offer hope that future efforts need not be constrained by historical rates of progress

Renewables 2012 Global Status Report

Renewable energy markets and policy frameworks have evolved rapidly in recent years. This report provides a comprehensive and timely overview of renewable energy market, industry, investment, and policy developments worldwide. It relies on the most recent data available, provided by a network of more than 400 contributors and researchers from around the world, all of which is brought together by a multi-disciplinary authoring team. The report covers recent developments, current status, and key trends; by design, it does not provide analysis or forecast the future. As such, this report and subsequent editions will serve as a benchmark for measuring global progress in the deployment of renewable energy, which is of particular interest in this International Year of Sustainable Energy for All. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has marked the occasion with a new global initiative, Sustainable Energy for All, which seeks to mobilise global action on three interlinked objectives to be achieved by 2030: universal access to modern energy services, improved rates of energy efficiency, and expanded use of renewable energy sources

You are what you measure! But are we measuring it right? An empiric analysis of energy access metrics based on a multi-tier approach in Bangladesh

Measuring energy access through binary indicators is insufficient, and often, even misleading. In this work, the SE4ALL global tracking framework, and the recently introduced ESMAP multi-tier approach, is critically discussed analyzing questionnaire based primary data from rural Bangladesh. The performance of different energy interventions is evaluated using the new tier framework. The challenges in its application lie in reliable data collection, adequate gradation of indicators, and an effective algorithm for the tier assignment based on the specified set of attributes. The study showcases very high sensitivities to parameter changes, different algorithms, and data requirements. The results reveal a clear trade-off between capturing the multi-dimensionality of energy access and the simplicity of an easy to use global framework. Suggestions to improve the measuring approach are made and conclusions are drawn for possible implications of the tier framework for different energy service offers in the market. Strengths and weaknesses of the present measurement scheme are discussed and country specific results interpreted through targeted gap analysis for future policy advice

Outlook for modern cooking energy access in Central America

he Central American nations of Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua are among the poorest in the Americas. While the fraction of population dependent on solid fuels has declined in these nations over the last 25 years, the number of people using them has risen. Here, we first assess current patterns of cooking energy use in these nations. We then apply a discrete model of household cooking choices and demand to simulate future pathways of clean cooking uptake and the outlook for achieving target 7.1 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which aims to ensure universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services by 2030. We find that by 2030, ensuing income growth is likely to enable 90% of urban populations in these nations to switch to using modern cooking energy services. However, without supporting policies, between 40% to 50% of rural Guatemalans and Hondurans, while over two-thirds of rural Nicaraguans, are likely to find clean fuels or stoves unaffordable in 2030. A targeted subsidy on modern fuels, like liquid petroleum gas (LPG), is the most effective policy mechanism we studied that could provide such support. A 50% subsidy policy on LPG targeted to the rural and urban poor population could, by 2030, make cooking with LPG affordable to an additional 7.3 million people in these countries. We estimate that such a policy would cost about $250 million per year and would have negligible greenhouse gas emissions impacts. Such a policy could also have significant health benefits, preventing about 8,890 premature deaths annually from reduced exposure to cooking-related household pollution in 2030

Explaining income inequality trends: An integrated approach

In large parts of the world, income inequality has been rising in recent decades. Other regions have experienced declining trends in income inequality. This raises the question of which mechanisms underlie contrasting observed trends in income inequality around the globe. To address this research question in a comparative study, we examine a global sample of 73 countries between 1981 and 2010. Yet, we are particularly interested in the heterogeneity of inequality determinants across world regions, and along the income distribution. We find declining labour income shares and increasing imports from high-income countries to significantly contribute to increasing income inequality; taxation and imports from low-income countries exert countervailing effects. The impacts of technological change, financial globalization, domestic financial deepening, and public social spending turn out to be region-specific. Most importantly, we do not find systematic evidence of education’s equalizing effect across high- and low-income countries. Our results are largely robust to changing the underlying sources of income Ginis, but looking at different segments of income distribution reveals heterogeneous effects

Advancing energy poverty measurement for SDG7

Existing indicators used to track progress towards achieving target 7.1 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) narrowly interpret energy poverty as a lack of connections. Recently proposed measurement frameworks are more multidimensional, but complex and conceptually muddled. We propose an alternative framework that simplifies and distinguishes two conceptually distinct aspects of energy access – energy supply conditions and the status of household energy poverty. This approach, with refinements through further applications to real data, can improve the design and targeting of policies to both service providers and vulnerable groups to accelerate affordable and reliable energy service provision

Energy Primer. Online Textbook based on Chapter 1 of the Global Energy Assessment (GEA)

This Energy Primer aims at a basic-level introduction to fundamental concepts and data that help to understand energy systems holistically and to provide a common conceptual and terminological framework before examining in greater detail the various aspects of energy systems be them technological, economic, or environmental. As such the text aims to provide a basic introductory reader suitable for the core content of any introductory-level energy class or as framing complement to more specialized energy classes. Customary energy texts usually focus on describing current energy industries through a supply side perspective, which this Energy Primer does not intend to duplicate. (In depth treatments of energy supply and industry aspects of energy systems are provided in Chapters 11 to 15 of the Global Energy Assessment, all available online

Tackling the Challenge of Climate Change: A Near-term Actionable Mitigation Agenda

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has invited world leaders to come to the Climate Summit on September 23, 2014 to deliver "bold pledges" to tackle climate change. This paper was prepared at the request of the Republic of Nauru, Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, as part of their answer to that call. We believe the path to the global low-carbon transformation needed to tackle the climate crisis is within reach, but requires decisive political action from leaders around the world, now. This paper is unabashedly prescriptive on the need for action, but recognizes that there are multiple approaches and models from around the world that can be scaled up and adapted to national circumstances. Cost-effective technologies for a low-carbon economy are being implemented throughout the world, but at nowhere the scale and speed necessary. Emissions continue to rise. With every year of delay, human suffering, biodiversity loss, and the costs of mitigation and adaptation increase. We are running out of time

Policy trade-offs between climate mitigation and clean cook-stove access in South Asia

Household air pollution from traditional cook stoves presents a greater health hazard than any other environmental factor. Despite government efforts to support clean-burning cooking fuels, over 700 million people in South Asia could still rely on traditional stoves in 2030. This number could rise if climate change mitigation efforts increase energy costs. Here we quantify the costs of support policies to make clean cooking affordable to all South Asians under four increasingly stringent climate policy scenarios. Our most sringent mitigation scenario increases clean fuel costs 38% in 2030 relative to the baseline, keeping 21% more South Asians on traditional stoves or increasing the minimum support policy cost to achieve universal clean cooking by up to 44%. The extent of this increase depends on how poliymakers allocate subsidies between clean fuels and stoves. These additional costs are within the range of financial transfers to South Asia estimated in efforts-sharing scenarios of international climate agreements. Three billion people globally burn solid fuels such as firewood, charcoal, coal, dung, and crop resides in open fires and traditional stoves for cooking and heating. Household air pollution from the incomplete combustion of these fuels globally leads to 4.3 million premature deaths each year, with 1.7 million of those in South Asia. This exceeds the burden of disease from any other energy-related or environmental risk factor. Solid-fuel use also perpetuates income and gender inequality by forcing users, mostly poor women and children, to spend long hours collecting fuels and to suffer from its adverse health effects. To address this problem, the United Nations Secretary-General's Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) initiative and the new Sustainable Development Goals aim to achieve universal access to modern energy services by 2030. Numerous intervention efforts have focused on distributing more efficient and cleaner burning biomass stoves, but several of these programmes have had little or no demonstrable impact on health outcomes. In India, the nation with the largest population of solid-fuel users globally, government interventions have sought to make petroleum-based fuels, such as kerosene and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), more affordable through subsidy at an estimated cost of over US$6 billion per year. Although LPG use has grown rapidly, particularly in rural areas, over 72% of Indians continued to rely primarily on solid fuels in 2012. In the future, expanding clean cooking may become more challenging if climate policies increase the cost of fuels. Previous research has found that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions in Asia and Africa would increase the cost of kerosene and LPG. However, these studies do not explore compensatory policies that could counteract these effects, and assess only a limited set of climate mitigation scenarios. Only two studies explore normative scenarios that achieve access and climate goals simultanously, both of which do not explore the cost-effectiveness or distributional impacts on population subgroups of these policies. Meanwhile, studies that have evaluated the cost-effectiveness of energy access policies have not considered the impact of climate policy. Te latest assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that we have only low confidence in our understanding of the possible impacts of climate policy on access to modern energy services, and medium confidence in the policies needed to counteract them. In this study, we contribute new insights to the interaction of climate policy and clean cooking acces policies by quantifying the feasibility and costs of achieving universal access by 2030 for a range of climate policy stringencies, and under a wide range of fuel and stove price support policies. Our analysis suggests that the potential trade-offs between the two goals might be arger than suggested by previous studies. However, we find that efficient policy design could partially compensate for the additional access policy costs associated with climate mitigation. Furthermore, these costs fall below the level of potential financial transfers to South Asia that may result from international climate agreements