Solar Energy Vital to Poverty Alleviation

Close to half of the world’s population live in poverty and are disproportionately burdened by inadequate access to clean energy. Evidence shows that the energy consumption is critically related to all aspects of human development including access to clean water, lighting, food (agricultural productivity), health and education. Therefore one could argue that access to energy could be vital to poverty alleviation. In addition, it has been well argued that the amount energy consumed is a measure of poverty¹. In March 2011, United Nations adopted a resolution and to scale up efforts to achieve universal access to modern energy services by 2030².

It should be noted that the goal of universal access to energy is not incompatible with our goal of reducing global green house gas emissions. Access to adequate energy can be expanded to All, through adoption of sustainable energy technologies (e.g., Solar and Wind) coupled with energy efficiencies. Four out of five people in the world, who lack the access to adequate energy, live mainly in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, where the Sun’s energy is plentiful throughout the year. By moving them from their traditional biomass fuels (crop waste, charcoal and wood) to solar energy, in fact reduces the global green house gas emissions.

The talks at the Bloomberg New Energy Summit (April 2011) indicate that the capital investment required to deliver clean energy services to all of the world’s poor is in the order of 40 billion USD per year, which is only around three per cent of the total global energy investment per year.

Providing access to Solar Energy and efficient energy services is central to sustainable development and poverty reduction efforts. It will minimize all aspects of poverty -- improving livelihoods, access to water, agricultural productivity, health, education, and gender-related issues, while cognizant to environmental issues. This requires significant investment in developing low cost technologies to capture and store Sun’s energy³, new policy measures that induce positive change and coordinated action between the governments, the private sector, the local communities and the international organizations.

1. S. Pachauri and D. Spreng, “Energy use and energy access in relation to poverty,” CEPE Working Paper #25, June 2003.
2. http://www.undp.org/energy/
3. http://research.binghamton.edu/BinghamtonResearch/2008/squeezingjuicefrom.php