Powering the Unplugged: Overcoming the Barriers to Electrification in the Developing World
“The defining disparity in the world today is the enormous gap between the electricity rich and the electricity poor. About 3.7 billion people—or roughly 47% of the global population—are now living in the Unplugged World… It is time to bring more light to more people.”
In this paper, Robert Bryce argues that affordable, abundant electricity is vital to modern society, and offers practical solutions to bring power to developing nations.
Summary of Research Paper
The thesis
From switching on our kettles in the morning to charging our phones at night, nearly everything we touch has, in one way or another, been electrified.
Yet, about 800 million people in the world remain in the dark, with no access to electricity whatsoever. Hundreds of millions more use only tiny amounts. Haiti, for instance, only generates enough electricity for an individual to boil a single kettle of water per day. Chad has even less electricity, with enough for a person to boil a single kettle of water per week. Indeed, the defining inequality in the world today is the enormous gap between the electricity rich and the electricity poor. The availability of electricity does not guarantee wealth, but its absence almost always means poverty.
So, how can we help lift people out of poverty and into prosperity? This paper argues that affordable, abundant electricity is vital to modern society, and it offers several pathways that can help electrify the developing world.
Mind the (power) gap
While nearly one in ten global citizens have no electricity at all, billions more are limited to miniscule quantities of power. This paper organises the global population into three segments to accurately present the scale of the challenge now facing policymakers. These include:
Unplugged World: 3.7 billion people (nearly 47% of the global population) live in countries where per capita electricity use is less than 1,200 kilowatt-hours per year, enough energy to power a large kitchen refrigerator in the United States.
Low-Watt World: 1.3 billion people (16% of the global population) have access to between 1,200 and 4,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year.
High-Watt World: 2.9 billion people (37% of the global population) enjoy per capita electricity use of over 4,000 kilowatt hours per year.
What is the significance of these numbers?
The minimum electricity needed for a long, high-quality life is about 4,000 kilowatt-hours per year. When more than half of the world’s population has access to considerably less than this amount, there is a clear and urgent need to plug in the rest of the world to alleviate energy and economic poverty.
The way forward
The best chance we have to fix this problem is by helping nations become self-sufficient with respect to their power needs.
Policymakers must find solutions that can help empower these nations so they can create and sustain electric grids with affordable, reliable, and resilient power that can fuel their homes, schools, hospitals, factories, and water treatment plants.
In short, the countries that have abundant and reliable electricity are prospering, whereas the ones that lack power are languishing. It is time to help more people come out of the dark and into the bright lights of modernity.
