Thoughts on Poor People’s Energy Outlook, 2010

            Energy is foundational to my lifestyle, and yet, it is a resource that I so often fail to appreciate. While wealthy nations are entirely dependent on modern energy, roughly 35% of the global population still lacks access to even basic energy services. The most salient point of this report is that access to modern energy services is a fundamental prerequisite to alleviating poverty and improving the lives of impoverished communities in developing nations.

Millennium Development Goals related to education, health care, information and communication technology, income generation, and gender equality cannot be achieved without improved energy access. I found the most resonating illustration of this idea to be the reliance of poor households on biomass fuel. I knew that gathering firewood was a huge burden for women in developing nations, but I was shocked to learn that the women in Tanzania, Bangladesh, and Ethiopia spend more than a day a week collecting wood. Moreover, biomass fuel is the culprit of so many serious health problems in developing nations: cooking with biomass causes 1.4 million deaths per year, with women and children most affected. I was surprised to read that household air pollution is the second greatest environmental risk factor for humans worldwide. During a homestay in Nicaragua, I experienced this problem firsthand. My host mother suffered from an unidentified respiratory disease, and regularly had terrible coughing fits, which she attributed to standing over a smoky cooking fire for many hours every day. My host mother was stuck in a catch-22 situation: she needed a fire to cook food for family and to keep them warm, but this life-preserving act was simultaneously endangering her own health. In addition to these health concerns, biomass fuel is also environmentally destructive, as it causes deforestation and contributes to climate change. 

Fortunately, sustainable and affordable solutions do exist. One such cooking fuel technology that I have experience with is a simple biogas fuel system. The system is essentially a large plastic bag containing manure, which inflates as methane is released. This methane can then be piped into a home and used to fuel a gas stove (shown below). Another neat technology that this report discussed is a zeer pot: a passive way to preserve food in a double clay pot with wet sand in between. I think these sort of technologies are powerful because 1) you don’t need an engineering degree to construct them, 2) they can be created using cheap materials locally available to the community, and 3) there’s the potential for local businesses to develop for the sale of these technologies.

I was pleased to see that many of the cost-effective technologies that this report mentioned ran on renewable energy, specifically solar power (such as solar lanterns). This illustrates to me that developing nations don’t need to follow the same dirty pattern of development as "developed nations." The report states that extension of “the grid” is actually not a cost-effective or feasible solution for supplying energy in developing nations, due to lack of infrastructure. Instead, off-grid, renewable tech such as small appliances can be more reliable and environmentally sound.

This report describes the relationship between economic and energy poverty as “a vicious circle” with unclear causality. Does increased energy access lead to a growth in incomes, or does a growth in incomes produce increased energy access? I believe that wealth doesn't need to precede energy access. Instead, by developing low-cost technologies, and empowering and educating communities, poor populations can gain some energy access, which can help them escape poverty.

Photo: earthedintl.blogspot.com