Regular readers of this blog know that I wish that delivering greater access to modern energy services were higher up policymakers’ priority list. In a paper last fall, several coauthors and I estimated the cost of delivering universal access to electricity at $12-$134 billion (best guess: about $60 billion) over the next couple decades. Read more »

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of spending a day with people from around the world who are deeply involved in trying to deliver electricity to the nearly two billion people who lack it. I learned a lot, but I was struck by one pattern: a large fraction of the people and countries working to expand energy access seem to be shaping their initiatives so that they can tap into the hundred billion dollars a year of climate-related funding that developed countries have promised they’ll try to mobilize by 2020. In practice, this means that many appear to be tilting their energy access efforts strongly toward renewable energy and away from fossil fuels, and toward dependence on a yet-to-be-created Green Climate Fund. These are dangerous trends. Read more »

I’m a coauthor on a new paper, “Understanding the Scale of Investment for Universal Energy Access”, just published in Geopolitics of Energy. (The other authors are from UNIDO, the IEA, and Margaree Consultants.) We assess the cost of delivering basic electricity and modern cooking fuels to those who currently lack them (about 1.3 and 3 billion people respectively). After presenting a comprehensive review of other estimates, we derive our own: $12-134 billion for electrification, and $1.4-2.2 billion for clean cooking fuels. To be clear, this isn’t a cost estimate for government spending: it is the total annual cost, including private expenditures. The sources of this money and the policy framework for mobilizing it are separate matters. Read more »

As (some) Americans focus their attention on addressing climate change and energy security, it’s easy to forget that a quarter of the world (about 1.6 billion people) have absolutely no access to electricity. That situation undermines pretty much every aspect of development, from health to education to personal safety. A new UN report (PDF), released today (on what organizers have called “Energy for Development Day“), admirably draws attention to the issue, and to some options for addressing it. (For a non-PDF news account, take a look here.) Read more »