It is alarming that today in the 21st century there are billions without access to electricity and clean cooking facilities. This absence of sufficient choice in accessing adequate, affordable, reliable, good quality, safe and environmentally benign energy services to support daily life and economic activity is known as Energy Poverty.
Energy deprivation results in four major, interrelated, negative consequences: poverty, death, gender inequality, and environmental degradation.
Poverty and energy deprivation form a vicious cycle
The poor are kept poor by having to pay more for everyday energy needs whilst contending with poor quality outcomes. Poor households direct some 20-30% of income towards fuels, and an additional 20%–40% to face the aftereffects such as healthcare costs, injuries, or loss of time. A lack of electricity further limits productive hours of the day for business and study, limiting current and future incomes.
Health effects of energy poverty range from damaging to being lethal
Indoor Air Pollution (IAP) from inefficient burning of solid fuels in poorly ventilated indoors areas creates dangerous cocktails of health-damaging chemicals – making it fourth in the global burden of disease risk after high blood pressure, tobacco smoking and alcohol use, and outranking obesity, drug use and unsafe sex. Besides the psychological damage of breathing in smoke, physical, long-term consequences of IAP include acute, chronic respiratory infections, tuberculosis, lung cancer, heart disease, asthma, cataracts, low birth weights, and adverse pregnancy outcomes.
Women and girls suffer disproportionately more from the effects of energy poverty. Long hours spent cooking in front of open fire or inefficient stoves exposes women and their young children to greater risks of contracting diseases associated with IAP. In addition women and girls spend disproportionately more time gathering wood and other fuels – depriving them of earning and education opportunities. In India alone this results in a loss of 30 billion hours of productivity and an economic loss of USD6.7 billion annually.
Energy deprivation affects us all through deforestation and climate change.
Felling of trees for firewood is a major driver towards deforestation and desertification. Besides the environmental damage, depleting forest reserves puts significant pressure on fuel prices for the poor. As stockpiles are depleted, women and children must travel longer distances to collect fuel which requires more time and energy.
Inefficient burning of solid fuels releases of the toxic mix of pollutants and green house gases (GHG) such as carbon dioxide, methane and black carbon contributes to climate change at regional and global levels. It is projected that by 2050 the smoke from wood fires will release about 7 billion tons of GHG into the atmosphere. Most often emissions exacerbate already deadly air pollution in cities and large towns, affecting those with and without access to clean energy alike.
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