Senior fellow Charles Kenny's piece on the benefits of alternative energy on the poor was featured in Slate.
Read if here
Beyond the fact that poor people just have less money to spend in general (that’s what it means to be poor), the greater cost of their energy sources is one reason why energy consumption is a lot lower in poor countries than in rich ones. World Bank data suggest that, every year, people in low-income countries (with average GDP per head below about $1,000) use energy equivalent to that produced by burning 364 kilograms of oil. Those in middle-income countries use up nearly four times as much—the equivalent of 1,254 kilograms, or a little more than a metric ton. The same figure for high-income countries is more than five tons.
From an environmental perspective, of course, it is probably a good thing that poor people use less energy. If they were using candles to light their houses anywhere near as brightly as rich people do using light bulbs, they’d be consuming 50 times the energy to do so—and that would mean a lot more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere (alongside a candle collection that would do shame to Methuselah’s birthday party).
Though it would be wonderful for poor people if they were all connected to the electricity grid, it could be devastating news for the global environment. According to World Bank data, the limited electricity sectors of low-income countries currently rely for nearly half of their power on hydroelectric sources, compared with about 7 percent from coal. If they were producing a lot more electricity, doubtless most of that power would come from fossil fuels. In middle income countries, for example, it is coal that accounts for nearly half of all electricity production, with hydro providing one-fifth. Fossil fuels as a whole account for only 30 percent of low income energy consumption compared with more than 80 percent in middle-income countries.
For all of the misery suffered by generations without electricity, at least the world has dodged one bullet—a huge legacy stock of dirty power plants in low-income countries belching out CO2 for the rest of their 30-year lives. But that silver lining on the cloud of global energy poverty may be about to fray because the cloud itself is evaporating. Many of the poorest of the world’s people are at last becoming richer—and they are going to demand more energy as a result.