A lack of access to energy and, in particular, electricity is a less obvious manifestation of poverty but arguably one of the most important. This paper investigates the extent to which electricity ...access can be investigated using night-time light satellite data and spatially explicit population datasets to compare electricity access between 1990 and 2000. We present here the first satellite derived estimates of rural population without access to electricity in developing countries to draw insights on issues surrounding the delivery of electricity to populations in rural areas. The paper provides additional evidence of the slow progress in expansion of energy access to households in Sub-Saharan Africa and shows how this might be ascribed in part due to the low population densities in rural areas. The fact that this is a continent with some of the lowest per-capita income levels aggravates the intrinsic difficulties associated with making the investments needed to supply electricity in areas with low population density and high dispersion. Clearly, these spatial dimensions of the distributions of the remaining unelectrified populations in the world have an impact on what options are considered the most appropriate in expanding access to these households and the relative attractiveness of decentralized options.
Energy-efficient urbanization and public health pose major development challenges for India. While both issues are intensively studied, their interaction is not well understood. Here we explore the ...relationship between urban infrastructures, public health, and household-related emissions, identifying potential synergies and trade-offs of specific interventions by analyzing nationally representative household surveys from 2005 and 2012. Our analysis confirms previous characterizations of the environmental-health transition, but also points to an important role of energy use and urbanization as modifiers of this transition. We find that non-motorized transport may prove a sweet spot for development, as its use is associated with lower emissions and better public health in cities. Urbanization and improved access to basic services correlate with lower short-term morbidity (STM), such as fever, cough and diarrhea. Our analysis suggests that a 10% increase in urbanization from current levels and concurrent improvement in access to modern cooking and clean water could lower STM for 2.4 million people. This would be associated with a modest increase in electricity related emissions of 84 ktCO2e annually. Promoting energy-efficient mobility systems, for instance by a 10% increase in bicycling, could lower chronic conditions like diabetes and cardio-vascular diseases for 0.3 million people while also abating emissions. These findings provide empirical evidence to validate that energy-efficient and sustainable urbanization can address both public health and climate change challenges simultaneously.
The Central American nations of Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua are among the poorest in the Americas. While the fraction of population dependent on solid fuels has declined in these nations over ...the last 25 years, the number of people using them has risen. Here, we first assess current patterns of cooking energy use in these nations. We then apply a discrete model of household cooking choices and demand to simulate future pathways of clean cooking uptake and the outlook for achieving target 7.1 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which aims to ensure universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services by 2030. We find that by 2030, ensuing income growth is likely to enable 90% of urban populations in these nations to switch to using modern cooking energy services. However, without supporting policies, between 40% to 50% of rural Guatemalans and Hondurans, while over two-thirds of rural Nicaraguans, are likely to find clean fuels or stoves unaffordable in 2030. A targeted subsidy on modern fuels, like liquid petroleum gas (LPG), is the most effective policy mechanism we studied that could provide such support. A 50% subsidy policy on LPG targeted to the rural and urban poor population could, by 2030, make cooking with LPG affordable to an additional 7.3 million people in these countries. We estimate that such a policy would cost about $250 million per year and would have negligible greenhouse gas emissions impacts. Such a policy could also have significant health benefits, preventing about 8,890 premature deaths annually from reduced exposure to cooking-related household pollution in 2030.
Existing indicators used to track progress towards achieving target 7.1 of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) narrowly interpret energy poverty as a lack of connections. Recently proposed ...measurement frameworks are multidimensional, but complex and conceptually muddled. We propose an alternative framework that simplifies and distinguishes two conceptually distinct aspects of energy access-energy supply conditions and the status of household energy poverty. This approach, with refinements through further applications to real data, can improve the design and targeting of policies to both service providers and vulnerable groups to accelerate affordable and reliable energy service provision.
The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement have ushered in a new era of policymaking to deliver on the formulated goals. Energy policies are key to ensuring universal access ...to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy (SDG7). Yet they can also have considerable impact on other goals. To successfully achieve multiple goals concurrently, policies need to balance different objectives and manage their interactions. Refining previously contemplated design principles, we identify three key principles - complementary, transparency and adaptability - as highly pertinent for multiple-objective energy policies based on a synthesis of seventeen coordinated policy case studies. First, policies should entail complementary measures and design provisions that specifically target non-energy objectives (complementarity). Second, policy impacts should be tracked comprehensively in both energy and non-energy domains to uncover diminishing returns and facilitate policy learning (transparency). Third, policies should be capable of adapting to changing objectives over time (adaptability). These principles are rarely considered in current policies, implying the need to mainstream them into the next generation of policymaking by pointing to best practices and new tools.
•We synthesized seventeen coordinated energy policy case studies.•We identify three key principles for multiple-objective energy policies.•These principles are complementarity, transparency and adaptability.•These principles are rarely considered in current energy policies.•There is a need to mainstream them into the next generation of energy policymaking.
Fuel choices in urban Indian households FARSI, MEHDI; FILIPPINI, MASSIMO; PACHAURI, SHONALI
Environment and development economics,
12/2007, Letnik:
12, Številka:
6
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This paper applies an ordered discrete choice framework to model fuel choices and patterns of cooking fuel use in urban Indian households. The choices considered are for three main cooking fuels: ...firewood, kerosene, and LPG (liquid petroleum gas). The models, estimated using a large microeconomic dataset, show a reasonably good performance in the prediction of households’ primary and secondary fuel choices. This suggests that ordered models can be used to analyze multiple fuel use patterns in the Indian context. The results show that lack of sufficient income is one of the main factors that retard households from using cleaner fuels, which usually also require the purchase of relatively expensive equipments. The results also indicate that households are sensitive to LPG prices. In addition to income and price, several socio-demographic factors such as education and sex of the head of the household are also found to be important in determining household fuel choice.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought a halt to life as we knew it in our cities. It has also put a magnifying glass on existing inequalities and poverty. While everyone has been facing the pandemic's risks, ...the lived challenges of the lockdowns have been felt most acutely by the poor, the vulnerable, those in the informal sector, and without savings and safety nets. Here, we identify three ways that the COVID-19 pandemic and related containment measures have exacerbated urban inequalities and how subsequent recovery measures and policy responses have tried to redress these. First, lockdowns amplified urban energy poverty, while recovery measures and policies offer an opportunity to address entrenched inequalities in shelter and energy access. Second, preexisting digital divides even within well-connected cities have translated into inequalities in preparedness for living through the lockdown, but digitalization strategies can enhance equity in access to e-services, online work and education for all in the future. Third, slum dwellers in the world's cities have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic and lockdown measures, but the spotlight on them provides further impetus for slum upgradation efforts that through improved access to infrastructure can improve living conditions and provide more secure livelihoods.
An orthodox assumption frames gender equality as a panacea to the climate crisis, whereby empowering women is assumed to have tremendous positive effects on countries' environmental performances. ...However, the gender-climate nexus literature often disregards feminist epistemology, detrimentally integrating harmful gendered assumptions within its analyses, and therefore policy recommendations. To remedy this, links between gender equality and climate change mitigation action were investigated, through a mixed-method approach, which includes feminist theories. Two metrics of gender equity, the Global Gender Gap Index and the Gender Inequality Index, and their correlations to a sustainability metric, the Environmental Performance Index, were analyzed. This quantitative analysis was enriched by 13 interviews with gender-climate experts. Results showed that, despite statistically significant correlations between both gender equality indices and the Environmental Performance Index, the positive relationship between gender equality and environmental performances is contextual and multi-faceted. Disregarding situated gender constructs, understanding gender as binary, and positing women as a homogeneous group, all mask multiple interactions between gender equality and climate change mitigation. Unveiling these interactions necessitates better integration of radical gender theories within climate change science through interdisciplinary research, permitting epistemological pluralism. To further this, a methodological framework is proposed, to help guide environmental researchers willing to consider gender in their work. Furthermore, the impact of gender mainstreaming within climate policies is explored, presenting subsequent policy recommendations. Finally, findings and the systemic transformation potential of gender equality, amongst other forms of equality, are discussed, reinforcing the idea that there is no climate justice without gender justice, and that justice and equality are cornerstones of sustainable societies.
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