International Energy And Poverty

Around 2.8 billion people globally, also known as the "Other Third" or "energy poor", have little or no access to beneficial energy that meets their needs for cooking, heating, water, sanitation, illumination, transportation, or basic mechanical power. This book uniquely integrates the hitherto segmented and fragmented approaches to the challenge of access to energy. It provides theoretical, philosophical and practical analysis of energy for the low energy (non-hydrocarbon based) Other Third of the world, and how the unmet needs of the energy poor might be satisfied. It comprehensively addresses the range of issues relating to energy justice and energy access for all, including affordable - sustainable energy technologies (ASETs). The book breaks new ground by crafting a unified and cohesive framework for analysis and action that explains the factual and socio-political phenomenon of the energy poor, and demonstrates why clean energy is a primary determinant of their human progress. This is a must-read for all scholars, students, professionals and policy makers working on energy policy, poverty, and sustainable energy technologies.

An edited volume on energy poverty. Nearly one quarter of humanity still lacks access to electricity. Close to one third rely on traditional fuels like firewood and cow dung for cooking, at great cost to their health and welfare. The chapters explain the scope of the problem and suggest practical ways to fix it.

The first comprehensive political science account of energy poverty, arguing that governments can improve energy access for their citizens through appropriate policy design. In today's industrialized world, almost everything we do consumes energy. While industrialized countries enjoy all the amenities of modern energy, more than a billion people in the developing world still lack energy access. Why is energy poverty persistent in some countries and not in others? Offering the first comprehensive political science account of energy poverty, Escaping the Energy Poverty Trap explores why governments have or have not been able to lead in providing modern energy to their least advantaged citizens. Focusing on access to modern cooking fuels and household electrification, the authors develop a new political-economic theory that introduces government interest, institutional capacity, and local accountability as key determinants of energy access. They draw on case studies from India, East Asia, Africa, and Latin America to offer the optimistic conclusion that governments can improve institutional capacity and local accountability through appropriate policy design. Energy poverty is a policy problem, the authors assert, and engaging with it as such offers new opportunities not only for ensuring equal energy access, but also for political, economic, and environmental development.

Living with Energy Poverty: Perspectives from the Global North and South expands our collective understanding of energy poverty and deepens our recognition of the phenomenon by engaging with the lived experiences of energy-poor households across different contexts. Understanding the lived experience of energy poverty is an essential component in the design of any effort to alleviate what is fundamentally a deep-rooted, multi-faceted, wickedly complex problem. This requires a nuanced understanding of the causal factors and the research methods that can respond to the flexible spatial and temporal nature of the condition, as well as its wellbeing and justice implications. Drawing together the expertise and connectedness of authors from the Global South and North, this book presents novel approaches to understanding the often hidden forms of domestic energy deprivation. Case studies from 20 countries provide critical perspectives on this phenomenon while analysing the policy practices, government strategy, and sustainability implications of divergent manifestations. The book takes a multidimensional perspective, challenging the bias towards energy production and service provision, which often do not align with the aspirations and realities of energy households across global contexts, thus facilitating a useful dialogue on the nature of energy poverty. The book is a timely source for policymakers, practitioners, and scholars seeking fresh, diverse insights into the everyday reality of energy poverty and wanting to better understand the challenges a people-centred, just energy transition can present. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license. Chapter 2 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license. Chapter 22 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

This book showcases how small-scale renewable energy technologies such as solar panels, cookstoves, biogas digesters, microhydro units, and wind turbines are helping Asia respond to a daunting set of energy governance challenges. Using extensive original research this book offers a compendium of the most interesting renewable energy case studies over the last ten years from one of the most diverse regions in the world. Through an in-depth exploration of case studies in Bangladesh, China, India, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, and Sri Lanka, the authors highlight the applicability of different approaches and technologies and illuminates how household and commercial innovations occur (or fail to occur) within particular energy governance regimes. It also, uniquely, explores successful case studies alongside failures or "worst practice" examples that are often just as revealing as those that met their targets. Based on these successes and failures, the book presents twelve salient lessons for policymakers and practitioners wishing to expand energy access and raise standards of living in some of the world's poorest communities. It also develops an innovative framework consisting of 42 distinct factors that explain why some energy development interventions accomplish all of their goals while others languish to achieve any.

Access to modern energy is central in addressing the major global challenges of the 21st century, including poverty, climate change and famine. However large parts of the world, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have poor or no access to modern energy. Victoria Nalule argues that SSA countries have many common energy challenges which could be tackled with collective efforts through regional cooperation. By means of a legal and comparative analysis and a seven-step framework, the book explores the current regional mechanisms employed in Africa to address the challenge of energy poverty and access and whether they are effective in tackling the challenge of energy access, including regional energy infrastructure and regional energy regulations. Chapters discuss the evolution of regionalism in SSA and the role of regional cooperation in the development of renewable energy as a means of confronting both energy access and climate change. Specifically the nexus between energy access, renewable energy and climate change is covered as well as the potential of fossil fuels in addressing energy poverty. The establishment and development of regional energy infrastructure as one of the mechanisms of addressing energy access challenges in SSA and regional efforts to harmonise energy regulation are explored. Finally a concluding chapter provides recommendations for policy makers and other relevant stakeholders on how best to implement some of the suggestions made in previous chapters. International organisations, regional organisations, government officials, scholars and students with interest in the energy sector will highly benefit from this book.

This open access book aims to consolidate and advance debates on European and global energy poverty by exploring the political and infrastructural drivers and implications of the condition across a variety of spatial scales. It highlights the need for a geographical conceptualization of the different ways in which household-level energy deprivation both influences and is contingent upon disparities occurring at a wider range of spatial scales. There is a strong focus on the relationships among energy transformation, institutional change and place-based factors in determining the nature and location of energy-related injustices. The book also explores how patterns and structures of energy poverty have changed over time, as evidenced by some of the common measures used to describe the condition. In part, this means investigating the makeup of energy poor demographics across various social and spatial cleavages. More broadly, it also argues that energy sector reconfigurations are both reflected in and shaped by various domains of social and political organization, especially in terms of creating poverty-relevant outcomes.