bne IntelliNews – Global energy access begins to decline for the first time in a decade

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), population growth means that access to global energy has begun to decline for the first time in a decade, despite massive investments in clean energy to combat the climate crisis.

The number of people living without electricity increased in 2022 for the first time in over a decade. Currently, 685 million people do not have access to it, which is 10 million more than in 2021.

“To achieve Sustainable Development Goal 7, we will need significantly more investment in emerging and developing economies to increase access to electricity and to clean technologies and cooking fuels,” said Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency. “Today, only a fraction of total energy investment goes to countries where electricity access and clean cooking issues are critical, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.”

The report was prepared by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO).

“It finds that the world remains on track to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 on energy by 2030. SDG 7 is about ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy,” the IEA said in a press release.

The hardest hit region remains sub-Saharan Africa, where 570 million people (over 80% of the world’s population has no access to electricity) live without electricity, an increase from 2010 levels.

The world still has failed to achieve universal access to clean cooking by 2030. Today, as many as 2.1 billion people still rely on polluting fuels and technologies for cooking, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Traditional biomass use means households spend up to 40 hours a week collecting firewood and cooking, making it difficult for women to enter employment or participate in local decision-making, and preventing children from attending school.

Household air pollution from the use of polluting cooking fuels and technologies causes 3.2 million premature deaths each year.

Renewable electricity consumption increased by more than 6% year-on-year in 2021, increasing the share of renewables in global electricity consumption to 28.2%. Installed renewable energy capacity per capita reached a new global record of 424 watts in 2022. However, significant differences remain, with developed countries at 1,073 watts per capita, 3.7 times higher than developing countries at 293 watts per capita.

The pace of improvement in energy intensity increased slightly in 2021 by 0.8%, compared to 0.6% in the previous year. Still, progress remains below the long-term average. The slow progress came amid a solid economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, during which annual growth in energy use was the highest in 50 years. To achieve SDG 7.3, the average annual improvement by 2030 must now accelerate to above 3.8%.

International public financial flows supporting clean energy in developing countries increased to $15.4 billion in 2022, an increase of 25% compared to 2021. However, this amount is still about half of the peak in 2016 , which amounted to USD 28.5 billion.

It is estimated that by 2030, under current policies, approximately 660 million people will still have no access to electricity, and approximately 1.8 billion will not have access to clean cooking technologies and fuels. Progress on energy efficiency indicators also lags, reaching just 2.3%, well below the level needed to achieve SDG 7.