Business as usual "will not remotely suffice" to meet goals of clean and universal energy, says a World Bank-led report.
Marianne Lavelle
The world needs to double or triple its current spending—estimated at about $400 billion a year—to meet the United Nations' goal of bringing clean and modern electricity to all people by 2030, says a new report by a wide group of international agencies led by the World Bank.
Although nations are succeeding in bringing power to more people, those efforts have barely kept pace with population growth over the past two decades, said the report, released Tuesday in Vienna. As a result, about 1.2 billion people—nearly as many as the entire population of India—still live without access to electricity, while 2.8 billion people rely on wood, crop waste, dung, and other biomass to cook and heat their homes. Unless the world addresses the widespread problem of energy poverty, the World Bank said, other efforts at economic development are likely to fall short. (See related story: "The Solvable Problem of Energy Poverty.")
"Access to energy is absolutely fundamental in the struggle against poverty," said World Bank Vice President Rachel Kyte. "It is energy that lights the lamp that lets you do your homework, that keeps the heat on in a hospital, that lights the small businesses where most people work. Without energy, there is no economic growth, there is no dynamism, and there is no opportunity."
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