A few facts about energy access and electricity production in Africa: * About 70% of Africans have no access to electricity. * The entire electric capacity of sub-Saharan Africa is 68% that of Spain. * South Africa’s electricity generation accounts for more than half of all SSA capacity. * Commercial users register power outages over 50 times a year, whereas the US standard is one day in ten years. * 80% of the African continent still relies on biomass as cooking fuel. African scientists issue policy recommendations to increase access and generation of electricity Often missing from ambitious global campaigns Continue reading
Energy Poverty
Haiti’s charcoal crisis comes into focus, but is anyone listening?
(Reporter William Wheeler writes about Haiti’s addiction to biomass in the most recent issue of Good Magazine)
Elizabeth Sipple, an agronomist who recently took a post as the director of International Lifeline Fund’s Haiti program, is working to wean Haiti off a lethal addiction: wood and charcoal, which supply the majority of Haiti’s energy needs.
The main source of revenue in the countryside is cutting trees for firewood and charcoal production—part of a hugely inefficient wood habit that consumes trees much more quickly than they can regenerate.
This dependency has cost the country its forests, sapped its fertility, and set the stage for an increasing series of natural disasters, including—by driving migration into the congested, anarchically-constructed capital—the human impact of the earthquake that killed roughly a quarter of a million people.
Who speaks for the Energy Poor?
OPINION The Climate Change movement has for some time been on a collision course with the developing world’s hunger for energy for economic development. But because the carbon footprint of poor countries is a fraction of those of industrialized nations, productive energy solutions for the energy poor has never been on top of the Climate Change movement’s agenda. Dear Mr. and Ms. Energy Poor, we’d like you to meet your savior And guess who is coming to defend the energy needs of the poor? The very same industry facing staunch opposition by industrialized countries seeking to move away from fossil Continue reading
NYT: Energy poverty on the agenda for 2011
Energy poverty may not mean much to most people because up until now no one has bothered explaining the concept. And even though “energy poverty” was not mentioned directly, the knowledge vacuum began to be filled on December 24th when the New York Times published African Huts Far From the Grid Glow With Renewable Power, an excellent overview of how renewable energy and energy efficient technologies are dramatically changing the lives of rural African populations that lack access to modern energy. The story leads with the example of a family in rural, off-grid Kenya with no access to electricity. However, Continue reading
A two-graphic argument for redefining what constitutes Clean Energy
What’s most glaring about this cool infographic on global investment in clean energy is not how much is invested around the world, but how little is invested in Africa, where over 90 percent of sub-Saharan Africa depends on wood, charcoal, and animal dung for cooking and heating. This graphic also raises a larger question: what constitutes “clean energy?” When close to 2 million people die each day (mostly women and children) for lack of energy efficient cookstoves or lack of access to alternative, sustainable biofuels, then it’s a clean energy issue, too, no? What’s more “Clean Energy” has been defined Continue reading