Global electricity access growing but gaps need plugging

AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File

AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File

Published Apr 8, 2017

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London - Access to

energy is necessary to meet people's basic needs: to grow,

distribute and cook food, to light homes, and to power machines

and technologies.

It is also a key requirement for agriculture, commerce and

industry and the provision of public services, such as education

or health.

But more than one billion people, or one in seven, still

lacked access to electricity in 2014 and many more suffer from

poor supply, which keeps them trapped in poverty, experts say.

This week, governments, business, development agencies and

others will meet in New York to work out how to reach three

international goals by 2030: universal access to modern energy

services, doubling the rate of improvement in energy efficiency,

and doubling the share of renewables in the global energy mix.

Read also:  Musk: Electricity is just a bonus

Here are some facts about access to energy, based on 2014

figures when comprehensive data was last compiled :

- More than 95 percent of those living without electricity

are in sub-Saharan Africa and developing countries in Asia,

predominantly in rural areas.

- Africa, excluding North Africa, has the largest percentage

of people living without electricity at 37 percent overall and

just 17 percent in rural areas.

- South Sudan is the country with the lowest access rate in

the world at five percent, followed by Burundi at seven, Chad at

eight and Liberia at nine percent.

- Urban areas across the world have close to universal

access at 96 percent although challenges remain in the rapidly

growing cities of Africa and in the Asia-Pacific region.

- Progress in electrifying urban areas has outpaced that in

rural areas where electrification rates have reached 73 percent.

- Even regions with almost universal access to electricity,

such as Latin America and the Caribbean, have countries that lag

behind: in Haiti only 38 percent of people have access

electricity.

SOURCES: International Energy Agency, World Bank 

THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION

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