London - Access to
energy is necessary to meet people's basic needs: to grow,
distribute and cook food, to light homes, and to power machines
and technologies.
It is also a key requirement for agriculture, commerce and
industry and the provision of public services, such as education
or health.
But more than one billion people, or one in seven, still
lacked access to electricity in 2014 and many more suffer from
poor supply, which keeps them trapped in poverty, experts say.
This week, governments, business, development agencies and
others will meet in New York to work out how to reach three
international goals by 2030: universal access to modern energy
services, doubling the rate of improvement in energy efficiency,
and doubling the share of renewables in the global energy mix.
Read also: Musk: Electricity is just a bonus
Here are some facts about access to energy, based on 2014
figures when comprehensive data was last compiled :
- More than 95 percent of those living without electricity
are in sub-Saharan Africa and developing countries in Asia,
predominantly in rural areas.
- Africa, excluding North Africa, has the largest percentage
of people living without electricity at 37 percent overall and
just 17 percent in rural areas.
- South Sudan is the country with the lowest access rate in
the world at five percent, followed by Burundi at seven, Chad at
eight and Liberia at nine percent.
- Urban areas across the world have close to universal
access at 96 percent although challenges remain in the rapidly
growing cities of Africa and in the Asia-Pacific region.
- Progress in electrifying urban areas has outpaced that in
rural areas where electrification rates have reached 73 percent.
- Even regions with almost universal access to electricity,
such as Latin America and the Caribbean, have countries that lag
behind: in Haiti only 38 percent of people have access
electricity.
SOURCES: International Energy Agency, World Bank