Nigeria, others top list of countries lacking access to electricity
Uncertainties over Nigeria’s power reform programme may have further blighted her chances of attaining a key Millennium Development Goal as the World Bank at the weekend ranked the country tops among twenty other countries in Asia and Africa that currently account for about two-thirds of nations lacking access to electricity, and three-quarters of those using solid fuels—wood, charcoal, animal and crop waste, and coal to cook and heat their homes.
The World Bank report which was the first set of global data on energy access , renewable energy and efficiency observed that about 1.2 billion people which is almost the population of India currently do not have access to electricity in the countries listed in the report.
Nigeria’s inclusion in the list may not be unconnected with her controversial power reform programme that has failed to record marked improvement more than three years after President Goodluck Jonathan flagged off the power reform Road Map in Lagos in 2010.
Though the World Bank has been actively involved in Nigeria’s power reform programme, it however feels uncomfortable with the level of progress so far recorded with transmission, generation and distribution infrastructures despite the elaborate plans that followed the unbundling of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria.
Meanwhile, the report observed that about 2.8 billion of the world population including Nigerians have had to rely on wood or other biomass to cook and heat their homes, as renewable energy only accounts for 18 percent of the global energy mix, with the largest energy savings and greatest expansion of renewables taking place in China.
The multi-agency team which produced the report compiled by experts from 15 agencies and led by the World Bank was the first of a series to monitor progress towards the three objectives of the Sustainable Energy for All initiative, launched in 2011 by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
The initiative, whose advisory board is co-chaired by World Bank Group President, Jim Yong Kim, is mobilizing a global coalition of governments, private sector and civil society to achieve, by 2030, its three objectives of universal access, doubled renewables and doubled energy efficiency improvement.
The Global Tracking Framework Report identifies countries with most potential to make “high-impact” progress on sustainable energy and specifies policy measures to scale up such actions.
The report puts numbers to those three objectives and identifies what needs to change where and how to do it.
“Demand continues to outpace supply of electricity which needs to be affordable, and generated more and more in a sustainable way, and used more efficiently,” said World Bank Vice President Rachel Kyte, while launching the report.
She noted that in order to rise to this challenge and meet peoples’ basic needs and to do so sustainably, clearly requires a scale of efforts that has never been seen before.
So far about 80 percent of those without access to modern energy live in rural areas, noting that although 1.7 billion people gained access to electricity between 1990 and 2010, this is only slightly ahead of population growth of 1.6 billion over the same period. The pace of expansion will have to double to meet the 100 percent access target by 2030.
Meanwhile in order to bring electricity to that one billion plus people using conventional energy sources would increase global carbon dioxide emissions by less than one percent.
The reports finds only “modest” progress since 1990 on expanding access to electricity and clean household fuels, increasing the share of renewable energy and improving energy efficiency.
The Sun
