Senior fellow Charles Kenny's piece on the benefits of clean energy on the developing world was featured in Grist.
From the Article
We usually speak of "alternative energy sources" as positives. Across the developing world, however, these "alternatives" take the forms of dung and wood for cooking, candles and kerosene for lighting. Governments have done an absolutely dismal job of rolling out access to modern energy.
But there is, as is so often the case, some good news buried here: Cleantech off-grid solutions are now competitive. Just as many in developing countries skipped landlines and went right to mobile phones, we may soon see the billions who now rely on traditional fuels skip coal and oil and transition directly into sustainable energy sources -- which will be an enormous help to the global environment.
The International Energy Agency suggests that 1.4 billion people worldwide still lack access to electricity in their homes. These people are overwhelmingly in poor countries, and most live in rural areas. That means, for example, that only one in seven of the rural population of sub-Saharan Africa has electrical access. Even many of those with access to electricity still have to depend on sources like wood or dung for cooking -- adding up to 2.7 billion people worldwide who use "traditional" or "biomass" sources. Wood and dung account for 10.2 percent of the global energy supply.
The limited reach of modern energy sources is grim news for the poor people left using alternatives. India alone sees 2.5 million cases of severe burns each year caused by overturned kerosene lamps. And the World Health Organization labels wood stoves "the killer in the kitchen" -- the indoor air pollution they produce is responsible for 1.5 million deaths a year.