As more than 600 million people, the majority from African countries, still remain without access to electricity, the World Bank believes universal access to energy by 2030 will not be achieved.
However, unlocking the distributed renewable energy’s (DRE) potential globally can ensure that no one is overlooked.
These were the remarks of the financial institution’s lead energy specialist Raihan Elahi, during a presentation at the Africa Energy Indaba this week.
According to a report on The World Bank website, globally the number of people without access to electricity declined from 1.2 billion in 2010 to 759 million in 2019.
The state of access in the Sub-Saharan African region was characterised by population growth outpacing gains in the number of people with access.
“Our focus is SDG7, this is access to clean, affordable, and sustainable electricity for all. A 2020 report shows we are really off track in achieving this universal goal.
“About 675 million people are still without electricity and in 2021, 2.3 billion, about a third of the world’s population remained without access to clean cooking solutions. We need to scale up our electrification efforts and this will need all of us to work together. This can also be done by setting our goals and implementing them,” said Elahi.
He said in some of these countries due to the lack of access to electricity they did not have access to adequate information, and were deprived of healthcare and education facilities that the modern world can offer.
To intervene The World Bank is promoting DRE and recently launched a platform “Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-up.”
“Our internal target is that we would want to provide electrification to 300 million people, 100 000 schools and clinics, 1 million farmers, 1 million micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) by 2030.”
Through the DRE they had areas of focus including households which are all levels of access including providing lighting, income generation which entails energy for MSMEs and jobs and agricultural production.
Alliance for Rural Electrification’s Deepak Mohapatra who was the moderator at the session said the resistance to change needed to be addressed along with the mindsets of all stakeholders in the sector to achieve the energy access targets.
“The public and private trust issues that have been mentioned must not be there so that a common goal is reached.”
Cape Times