Clean Technica | By: The Beam | December 09, 2017:

Today we’re able to build self-driving trucks, to communicate with smart humanoids, and to play video games with virtual reality technologies. Yet there are 1.06 billion people living without access to electricity across the world (IEA and World Bank, 2017). That’s one in every five people, most of them living in rural Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, they rely on kerosene, candles, and battery torches for essential lighting.

Closing this gap and providing reliable and sustainable access of electricity to these families living off-the-grid is essential and will come with many benefits.

Light in the evenings could help between 142,000 and 2 million children to study at home, contributing to a higher level of education.

A health clinic that has reliable electricity would presumably provide better health services and outcomes to the community it serves.

Burning less kerosene or animal dung or charcoal indoors to cook, because there is now a solar induction stove in the corner, would improve the family’s health.

Universal access to modern energy services is a prerequisite for poverty eradication and an enabler of human and economic development.

Unfortunately, quantifying the gains to vulnerable populations from getting electricity access more quickly, or the missed opportunities of living without power for many more years, or even decades, remains challenging.

The research paper, Why Wait? Seizing the Energy Access Dividend, explores the concept of an energy access dividend that assigns economic, social, and environmental value to the time it takes for households, businesses and communities to obtain the benefits associated with electricity access.

The study looks at Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Kenya, three countries with significant energy access gaps, accounting for more than 180 million of the one billion people still living without power…

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To read the research paper, in PDF format – please click here.