A woman sorts rice by candlelight in a home without electricity in the Joymuni village, at the edge of the Sundarbans February 18, 2014 in Khulna Division, Bangladesh. The Rampal Power plant, a 1,320-MW coal-fired power plant, is being constructed 14 kilometers away from the worlds largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans. The government is insistent that the project is needed to supply power to the country and that the plant is safe for the environment, but activists say that it will destroy the forest. About 50 to 60 thousand people depend on the Sundarbans, collecting crabs, fish, firewood and honey to earn a living.
Over the weekend, an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 people gathered in New York City for a rally organized by Peoples Climate, a coalition of more than 1,500 organizations that demand world leaders take action to combat climate change. For all of the media coverage and billboards protesting a plethora of topics such as fracking, the tar sands, coal, keystone XL, and nuclear, there doesn’t seem to be as much enthusiasm and urgency for tackling energy poverty.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) defines energy poverty as the lack of access to modern energy services, specifically: Household access to electricity and clean cooking facilities. Why is this important? The IEA defines an “initial threshold” of energy access to be 250 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year for rural households, and 500 kWh per year for urban households, assuming five people per household. Based on this criteria, the IEA estimates that roughly 1.3 billion people, 18 percent of the world’s population, lack access to electricity and 2.6 billion, 38 percent of the global population, are without clean cooking facilities.
A number of energy analysts have argued that the IEA’s definition of electricity access is misguided and unfairly low. Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado and Morgan Bazilian from Columbia University disputed the definition in the Summer 2013 edition of Issues, “This assumption (IEA definition) leads to projections of future energy consumption that are not only potentially far too low, but that also imply, even unintentionally, that those billions will remain deeply impoverished.”
Mr. Pielke Jr. and Mr. Bazilian question the threshold of 250 kWh for rural residents and 500 kWh for urban residents, contending, “This equates to 50-100 kWh/year per person, or about 0.5% of the electricity consumed by the average American or Swede, and 1.7% of the average Bulgarian.”
Therefore, even if millions do pass the initial threshold defined by the IEA, they will consume much less electricity than today’s wealthy countries. As citizens in poor countries strive to have access to a grid that offers between 50-100 kWh of electricity per year, the average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. residential utility customer is 10,837 kWh. The European Union’s consumption is about half of that. Yes, you read that correctly: The IEA’s definition of energy access amounts to providing people in poor countries with less than one percent of the energy used by the average American.
To get a better idea of what electricity consumption might look like in the future, The Breakthrough Institute, an Oakland-based think tank published the multi-author study “Our High-Energy Planet.” The report disputes the low benchmark required by the United Nations (UN). The report states, “The UN’s flagship energy access program, for example, claims that ‘basic human needs’ can be met with enough electricity to power a fan, a couple of light bulbs, and a radio for five hours a day.”
The same report argues “The way we produce and use energy will become increasingly clean not by limiting its consumption, but by using expanded access to energy to unleash human ingenuity in support of innovating toward an equitable, low-carbon global energy system.”
Referencing the fact that the poorest three-quarters of the world’s population use just one-tenth of the world’s energy, the report declares: “The risks presented by climate change should not and will not be managed through limiting access to energy by the populations that need it the most.”
Circling back to this week’s climate talks and next year’s negotiations, any legally binding or voluntary agreement to limit or decrease emissions could have big repercussions on today’s energy poor. If international leaders set such a low benchmark for energy consumption in developing countries, they could be stuck in a vicious cycle. Breakthrough’s “Our High-Energy Planet” authors warn, “What is problematic is that these minimal targets can be met with energy technologies that have little capacity for scaling up and meeting expanding needs of economically productive, non-household activities like manufacturing, transportation, or commercial agriculture.”
Therefore, if world leaders and climate negotiators are going to spend the next year drafting new framework concerning energy production and emission limits, it would be wise to make sure that the estimates of future electricity use by today’s developing countries are actually in line with the electricity ambitions of the developing nations.
Chris Pedersen is the Managing Director of U.S. Operations for Oak Leaf Energy Training Inc., an energy education firm with offices in Houston and Calgary. Chris is a California native, completing his undergraduate degree in International Relations at the University of California at Santa Cruz. While obtaining a graduate degree in Energy Policy at New York University, Chris studied the highly integrated and interdependent relationship between the United States and Canada concerning oil, gas, and electricity. Chris is an Energy Risk Professional – Certified by the Global Association of Risk Professionals.
