Poverty, Energy and Society Energy is a basic necessity for human activity and economic and social development.

Yet global strategies for how to meet this basic need for the world's rapidly growing population are sorely lacking. Lack of energy services is directly correlated with key elements of poverty, including low education levels, restriction of opportunity to subsistence activity, and conflict.

Despite great success in reducing poverty, it remains one of today's most pervasive global issues. Nearly one-half of the global population - 3 billion people - live on less than $2 a day, and one fifth of the world population - 1.5 billion people - live in extreme poverty on less than $1 a day. Eradicating poverty, however, requires more than advances in income. Human Development Report 1997 put forth a definition of "human poverty" that sees impoverishment as multidimensional, going beyond lack of material wealth. "Human poverty is more than income poverty - it is the denial of choices and opportunities for living a tolerable life."[1] Poverty means more than a lack of what is necessary for economic wellbeing. Poverty manifests itself in the deprivation of people's lives in the denial of the opportunity. The shift in thinking about development issues in terms of human development is thanks, in large part, to economist and philosopher Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, who have long advocated a softer, ethical approach to international development. A focus on freedom and capability directs attention to the ends that make development important, rather than merely to some of the means that, inter alia, play a part in the process. Poverty must be addressed in all of its dimensions, not simply income. Sections The Energy-Poverty Problem The Energy Ladder The UN: Energy & Human Development Energy Poverty & Conflict in Oil Producing Countries Research Goals & Topics

The Energy-Poverty Problem Access to energy services is a key component of alleviating poverty and an "indispensable element of sustainable human development," according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). "Without access to modern, commercial energy, poor countries can be trapped in a vicious circle of poverty, social instability and underdevelopment. During the past twenty-five years, electricity supplies have been extended to 1.3 billion

people living in developing countries. Yet despite these advances, roughly 1.6 billion people, which is one quarter of the global population, still have no access to electricity and some 2.4 billion people rely on traditional biomass, including wood, agricultural residues and dung, for cooking and heating. More than 99 percent of people without electricity live in developing regions, and four out of five live in rural areas of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa . The health consequences of using biomass in an unsustainable way are staggering. According to the World Health Organization, exposure to indoor air pollution is responsible for the nearly two million excess deaths, primarily women and children, from cancer, respiratory infections and lung diseases and for four percent of the global burden of disease.[2] In relative terms, deaths related to biomass pollution kill more people than malaria (1.2 million) and tuberculosis (1.6 million) each year around the world. Despite advances in areas such as rural electrification, the number of people lacking access to energy services has remained relatively constant due to increases in population. The total number of people without electricity has fallen by fewer than 500 million since 1990. Without modern energy services, millions of women and children face debilitating illness or premature death; basic social goods like health care and education are more costly in both real and human terms, and economic development is harder to perpetuate. The services that energy enables, such as electricity, can create conditions for improved living standards, especially in areas of public health, education, and family life. Absent radically new innovations in global energy policy, by 2030, 1.4 billion people still will not have access to electricity under a business as usual scenario, while the number reliant upon biomass should increase from 2.5 billion in 2006 to 2.7 billion by 2030 (IEA 2006). This means that without drastic intervention between now and 2030 by a partnership of the corporate sector and the international aid community, one third of the world's population will still be using unhealthy and environmentally damaging fuels to meet their need for daily sustenance thirty years hence. The demand for energy is a derived demand because its value arises from its ability to provide a set of desired services. When combined with energy-using capital equipment, energy provides the work necessary to produce goods and services in both the household and in industry. Modern energy, especially electricity, allows the introduction of relatively low cost capital goods such as tools and sewing machines that can have a major impact on labor productivity (and hence living standards). Because most economic studies on global poverty focus on the provision of finance and education to create economic activity, the role energy services play in alleviating abject poverty and promoting sustainable development has not been clearly identified. Although it is clear that people demand more energy as their incomes rise and that increased use of modern energy by households is a key element in the broader process of human development, the shift from traditional to modern energy sources - the energy ladder - is not a smooth one. When a country's per capita income is less than US$300 per day,

approximately 90 percent of the population uses fuelwood or dung for cooking. Once incomes have exceeded US$1000 per capita, most people switch to modern fuels and substitution is nearly complete.[3] As electricity becomes available, it is first used for lighting and communications. Only later, as per capita income permits, is it used as a source of power and energy for other domestic purposes. Energy Ladder: Household Fuel Transition

Note: ICT is information and communications technology. Source: IEA Analysis, World Energy Outlook 2002. As per capita incomes increase, the transition to commercial energy sources, which include natural gas, petroleum products and electricity, does not simply represent a substitution of more convenient and expensive fuels for cheaper traditional fuels. Commercial energy sources also permit the use of modern technologies that transform the entire production process at the factory level, in agriculture and within the home. The resulting increase in productivity generates higher incomes and increases the ability of people to explore and develop their capabilities. Electricity allows tasks previously performed by hand or animal power to be done much more quickly with electric powered machines. Electric lighting allows individuals to extend the length of time spent on production and hence on income producing activities. It also allows children time to read or do homework and access to television and film, which opens

rural residents to new information that can instill the idea of change and the potential for self -improvement. Modern liquid fuels permit modern modes of transportation that cut the cost, both monetary and in time, of travel to nearby towns where, again, individuals are exposed to different ways of doing things and different views. Faster and cheaper transportation can increase the reliability of supply of modern fuels, reducing the need to maintain supplies of firewood as a back up and facilitating movements up the energy ladder. The United Nations, Energy and Human Development The importance of energy services was first widely acknowledged in 1986 by the World Commission on Environment and Development report Our Common Future , also known as The Brundtland Report . In 2000, the United Nations, through its Commission on Sustainable Development, returned to this issue with the publication of two major reports: The UN Development Program's World Energy Assessment: Energy and the Challenge of Sustainability and the UN Economic and Social Council's "Ad Hoc Open-Ended Intergovernmental Group of Experts on Energy and Sustainable Development." As result of its early attention to this critical subject, the UN has described expanding access to sustainable energy services as essential to bringing its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to fruition. A 2006 report entitled Energy Services for the Millennium Development Goals notes that "without increased investment in the energy sector, the MDGs will not be achieved in the poorest countries." In support of the MDGs, the UN Development Program's work centers upon "six thematic practice areas, selected because of developing country demand: poverty reduction, democratic governance, sustainable energy and the environment, crisis management, ICT, and HIV/AIDS." Access to energy is a component part within UNDP's approach to sustainable energy. UNDP's priorities on sustainable energy involve: (a) s trengthening national policy frameworks, (b) promoting rural energy services, (c) promoting clean energy technology, and (d) increasing access to financing for energy. Micro-energy applications at the community level have recently been examined in the UNDP study Expanding Access to Modern Energy Services: Replicating, Scaling Up and Mainstreaming at the Local Level (2006). Achieving many of the UN Millennium Development Goals by 2015 will be extremely difficult without increasing access to affordable, cleaner, and safe energy.[4] In order to halve the number of people living on less than $1 per day, there is a concomitant need to reduce the number of people who lack electricity services by some 560-600 million. The investment required to provide electricity service to these people may be in the order of $200 billion. Community-based efforts aimed at improving localized access to energy services may be able to learn from activities undertaken through the Millennium Villages Project (MVP), now folded into a new NGO called Millennium Promise. The MVP approach includes farm inputs, health services, safe water, latrines, professional training, motor vehicles for village use, on-grid or off-grid electricity and better roads. Moreover, a study conducted by Winrock International in Nepal, Report on Assessment of Rural Energy Development

Program-Impacts and Its Contribution in Achieving MDGs , affirms that "co-investment in improved health and educational services, telecommunications, in productive enterprises and infrastructure, are needed to make access to energy [a] more powerful element for development" (2007). Energy Poverty and Conflict in Oil Producing Countries The question of sustainable development for communities living amid oil and gas production is also one of critical importance. Increasingly, certain national and state governments, local leaders, and energy companies have been accused by human rights monitors of practicing a deleterious form of "petro-politics" in which local communities bear the brunt of devastating oil spills and grossly inadequate public services-without benefiting in tangible ways from resource extraction on their lands. To the extent that local populations feel, as did the indigenous peoples of Bolivia, that they will not share in the economic benefits of oil and gas development but will be left with environmental and other social burdens, their support for such development may be denied, creating license to operate issues for potential oil and gas investors and potentially worsening the shortage of global energy supply. An extreme case is the Niger Delta where severe deprivation has prompted local opposition leaders to resort to violent tactics. Ironically, while substantial oil profits are being collected by the government and foreign investors, numerous local communities near oil facilities typically lack electricity and running water. This situation is creating damaging humanitarian crises and political conflicts. Other such conflicts have been seen in Aceh , Indonesia , where natural gas exports were interrupted by violent protests among indigenous people. This risk of violence in oil producing communities is yet another side to the energy poverty and sustainability question, one that might be addressed by corporate partnerships with government and multinational aid agency partnerships in development assistance. Research Goals The Baker Institute research project on "Poverty, Energy and Society" is meant to provide economists, corporate leaders and development aid professional with a useful model for understanding and identifying the link between energy and poverty and empirical analysis of possible solutions for the provision of sustainable energy through well-designed development assistance programs as well as localized commercial initiatives for distributed energy. By identifying the most efficient, existing energy alternatives, the institute also hopes to better inform policymakers and international development agencies with a clearer understanding of why energy is vital to sustainable development and which avenues have proved most effective in the provision of energy services in developing countries including the poorest rural communities. In addition, the institute plans to use this study as an educational tool to enhance the public's understanding of the link between energy and poverty and its potential to alleviate many of the challenges facing developing countries.
Respiratory illness from cooking on primitive stoves, like this one in Ethiopia, will be causing 4,000 premature deaths each year by 2030 if nothing is done to address the problem.

Marianne Lavelle National Geographic News Published September 21, 2010 This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge. The United Nations goals for fighting extreme povertyan effort being assessed at a summit this week in New Yorkwill fall short unless nations also work to bring electricity and modern, safe cooking technology to the billions of energy-poor people around the globe, a new report says. The worsening problem of energy poverty, however, can be solved without breaking the banks of nationsand without a significant worsening of the climate change problem, said the study released Tuesday by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and two UN bodies, the Development Programme (UNDP) and the Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). Providing modern energy to the very poorthe population that the United Nations seeks to reach in its Millennium Development Goals programwould require an annual investment of about $41 billion per year over the next five years, or just 0.06 percent of global GDP, said the report. Tackling the larger goal of universal energy access reaching all 1.4 billion people who lack access to electricity and the 3 billion relying on unventilated and inefficient wood, charcoal, and dung cooking stoveswould require only a modest increase in carbon dioxide emissions, the report calculated. Thats because the amount of fuel needed to address basic needs is small, and the opportunities for using cleaner energy are great. If the world takes the problem on, by 2030, global electricity generation would be just 2.9 percent higher, oil demand would rise less than 1 percent and carbon emissions would be just 0.8 percent higher than the worlds current trajectory. This is what is most compellingthe evidence that there is no reason why we should not make this commitment, said Kamal Rijal, the UNDPs policy adviser on sustainable energy and coauthor of the report. The money is not a problem and in terms of climate it is also not as big as people think. And from a health standpoint, it would save so many lives. More Deadly Than AIDS The report said that if nothing is done to address energy poverty, by 2030 nearly 4,000 people per day around the world will die due to the toxic smoke and indoor fires from unsafe primitive cookstovesmore than the premature death estimates for malaria, tuberculosis, or HIV/AIDS. The greatest challenge, the report said, is in sub-Saharan Africa, where only 31 percent of people have electricity and 80 percent are using so-called traditional biomass for cooking.

Exposure to burning crop waste, wood, or dung burned on open fires causes lung and heart disease as well as acute respiratory ailments. The report was released amid a three-day summit on progress toward the UNs Millennium Development Goals, a kick-off to this weeks opening of the General Assembly. Nearly 140 heads of state and high-ranking government officials were expected to attend the session to identify what remains to be done to reach the goal adopted by the UN in 2000 to address the worlds most extreme poverty by 2015. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has signaled that he views access to energy as essential for reaching that goal, after a special advisory panel this spring detailed the importance of energy in assuring proper function of health clinics and schools, providing pumping capacity for clean water and sanitation, and assuring delivery of food. Ban is expected to call on the United Nations to adopt a goal of universal world energy access by 2030. Of course, the UN already had has trouble gaining the financial commitments needed to achieve its Millennium Development Goals on poverty without adding a new challenge on energy. The UN has called for nations to set aside 70 cents of every $100 generated by their economic activity to fight poverty. But only five European countries now meet that level of giving, and the United States, which has never agreed to the target, spends no more than 20 cents per $100 of GDP. Targeting Solutions For Rural Poor To finance global energy solutions for the poor, aid agencies will need to break from thinking that they need to fund huge projects or model initiatives, said Thomas Taha Rassam Culhane, cofounder of Solar CITIES, a nonprofit organization that works with residents of the poorest neighborhoods in Cairo, Egypt, and other African countries to install rooftop solar water heaters and home-scale biofuel systems. Instead, Culhane, who was a 2009 National Geographic Emerging Explorer, argues that aid organizations should use their financial clout to buy in huge quantity the materials needed for small energy and cooking projects and make them available to people in poor communities at a radically reduced cost. That would liberate their innovation and entrepreneurial skills, he says. For example, a biogas digester that takes less than a day to turn kitchen scraps and other organic waste into clean-burning methane that can be used for cooking and electricity would cost $400. For people living on $2 a day, this is a tough investment, said Culhane. But with help to buy such systems for groups of residents, communities could easily switch from primitive cookstoves and tackle waste-related health problems at the same time. We need to emphasize parts and patterns rather than packages and services, he said. People can be fairly easily given capacity building training to solve their own energy problems. (Related: Cairo Slums Get Energy Makeover)

Just such an effort to address the cookstove problem was launched Tuesday by the United Nations Foundation, the nonprofit begun by media billionaire Ted Turner to support the UN in its work. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a $50 million U.S. contribution to the public-private partnership, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. In addition to biogas digesters, potential solutions include advanced biomass cookstoves that greatly reduce the products of incomplete combustion, and stoves that use liquefied petroleum gas, or LPG (of which propane is a form). (Related: Grant Helps Explorers Turn Garbage Into Fuel) Advanced biomass and biogas are considered carbon-neutral fuel sources by some experts, because they offset more emissions than they create. And even though LPG is not free of greenhouse gas emissions, it would greatly reduce global warming and health impacts compared with fuels currently used in primitive cookstoves. Inefficient wood and waste stoves create black carbon particulate emissions, a large contributor to climate change that has a devastating impact on health. Women and children are disproportionately affected by respiratory illnesses such as pneumonia that can be caused by breathing in the smoke, says Richenda Van Leeuwen, senior director on energy and climate for the UN Foundation. A variety of financing approachespublic-private partnerships like the cookstove alliance and microfinancewill be needed to reach the worlds energy-poor, said Van Leeuwen. The UN Foundation is working on coordinating a group of 20 UN agencies to develop a multi-year campaign to address the energy poverty issue. Solar technology is one way to reach the worlds energy poor at an affordable cost, said Van Leeuwen. Even though the cost of big solar arrays on homes in the developed world continue to be expensive, solar lamps with battery storage that could provide good night lighting in a room and enough power to charge a cell phone are available for less than $30, she said. While solar might be one of the most expensive options for rich people, it might be one of the least costly for the poor, she said. (Related: Solar Brings Light to Quake-Darkened Haiti) For the energy-poor who live outside of cities, local energy solutions such as solar or wind energy would be less expensive than connection to centralized power stations by extending electrical grids, the IEA-UNDP report said. About 85 percent of the people in the world who lack electricity live in rural areas, the report said. The IEA has calculated that 100 kilowatt-hours per person annually is the amount of electricity needed to provide basic energy needs to those who now have none. The average U.S. household, with about three people, uses 11,040 kilowatt-hours per year. (5)

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Score: 1 Name withheld structurechaos 12:56 AM on September 22, 2010 This comment is hidden because you have chosen to ignore structurechaos. Show DetailsHide Details Maybe we should stop procreating, at least at an exponential rate. I don't know, but it seems we are constantly trying to validate every consciousness. It is the one solution that (at certain levels) solves every environmental problem. Governmental control is unethical and reminiscent of Nazi Germany, but what if we could fight our physiological urge to continue our genetic line? Maybe we should have a group of parents raising kids that in retrospect hate the process explain to those thinking about raising kids how painful it can be (not just birth-long term pain). I suppose that is like explaining to alcoholics or meth addicts that yes it does fulfill temporary urges, but in the long run it sucks... for everyone. No I am not diminishing any culture. In my mind we are algae anyway, with more complex means of expression. A deer, a rat and a stomach virus so far as I have seen have no right to be here any more than the other. But that is just a thought. Reply Recommend (1) Report Abuse

Score: 0 Name withheld tehsolo 2:07 PM on September 22, 2010 This comment is hidden because you have chosen to ignore tehsolo. Show DetailsHide Details structurechaos: that makes no sense, its not procreation thats the problem. those countries are poor partly because of the huge infant mortality. the rich countries are rich because they have a huge youthful workforce giving their money value. if all the rich countries step up and help build an electrical infrastructure in places like rural africa you would have alot less people hating them and doing terrorist attacks and the jobs created would keep all the university grads from leaving to make any money which would decrease the perceived problem in rich countries of high immigration. just a thought from a first generation born american with ethiopian roots. Reply Recommend Report Abuse

Score: 0 Name withheld charly_green 3:12 PM on September 23, 2010 This comment is hidden because you have chosen to ignore charly_green. Show DetailsHide Details For people working on farms is better to have more children and that means higher revenues in the long term and that is a fact at least in Latin America.

Regarding to the 1st comment in poor countries where populations are dissipated is very expensive to create grids for small groups of people and the solution is raised in the article is highly feasible and much cheaper. II. Write a brief definition of each key word below The Pilgrims Thanksgiving Taxation without representation The Louisiana Purchase Abraham Lincoln The Appalachian Mountain The great plain The Appomattox Court House The Articles of confederation The Hawaiian Islands The Pilgrims Thanksgiving Taxation without representation The Louisiana Purchase Abraham Lincoln The Appalachian Mountain The great plain The Appomattox Court House The Articles of confederation The Hawaiian Islands