posts: 24837

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id	title	slug	type	status	content	archieml	archieml_update_statistics	published_at	updated_at	gdocSuccessorId	authors	excerpt	created_at_in_wordpress	updated_at_in_wordpress	featured_image	formattingOptions	markdown	wpApiSnapshot
24837	Access to Energy	energy-access	page	publish	<!-- wp:html --> <!-- formatting-options subnavId:energy subnavCurrentId:energy-access --> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:owid/summary --> <!-- wp:list --> <ul><li><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#access-to-electricity">940 million (13% of the world) do not have access to electricity.</a></li><li><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#access-to-clean-fuels-for-cooking">3 billion (40% of the world) do not have access to clean fuels for cooking. This comes at a high health cost for indoor air pollution.</a></li><li><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#how-does-per-capita-electricity-consumption-vary-across-the-world">Per capita electricity consumption varies more than 100-fold across the world.</a></li><li><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#how-does-per-capita-energy-consumption-vary-across-the-world">Per capita energy consumption varies more than 10-fold across the world.</a></li><li><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#low-income-households-lack-access-to-electricity-and-clean-fuels">Energy access is strongly related to income: poorer households are more likely to lack access.</a></li></ul> <!-- /wp:list --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/summary --> <!-- wp:heading --> <h2>Access to electricity</h2> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3>What share of people have access to electricity?</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>13% of the world do not have access to electricity</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Electricity is a crucial for poverty alleviation, economic growth and improved living standards (these links are <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-and-changing-energy-sources/#energy-consumption-poverty-and-economic-growth">discussed later</a> in the entry).{ref}Also see: Panos, E., Densing, M., Volkart, K. (2016). Access to electricity in the World Energy Council's global energy scenarios: An outlook for developing regions until 2030. Energy Strategy Reviews, 9, 28-49. Available <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X15000450">online</a>.{/ref}</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Measuring the share of people with electricity access is therefore an important social and economic indicator. There is no universally-adopted definition of what 'access to electricity' means. However, most definitions are aligned to the delivery of electricity, safe cooking facilities and a required minimum level of consumption. The <em>International Energy Agency</em> (IEA) definition entails more than just the delivery to the household. It also requires households to meet a specified minimum level of electricity, which is set based on whether the household is rural or urban, and which increases with time. For rural households, this minimum threshold is 250 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year and for an urban household it is 500 kWh per year.{ref}IEA (2016). World Energy Outlook 2016 – Methodology for Energy Access Analysis. Available <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/energymodel/documentation/EnergyAccess_Methodology_2016.pdf" target="_blank">online</a>.{/ref}</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>At a global level, the percentage of people with access to electricity has been steadily increasing over the last few decades. In 1990, around 71% of the world's population had access; this has increased to 87% in 2016.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>This means 13% of the world did not have access to electricity in 2016.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>High-income countries – or countries defined by the UN to be 'developed' <a href="https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/files/Metadata-07-01-01.pdf">are assumed</a> to have an electrification rate of 100% from the first year the country entered that category. Therefore, the increasing global share has primarily been driven by increased access in low and middle-income economies. In many countries, this trend has been striking: access in India, for example, increased from 43 percent to almost 85 percent. Indonesia is close to total electrification (sitting at almost 98 percent) – up from 62 percent in 1990. For countries with strong population growth, such improvements in the share of the population with access is even more impressive.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Whilst the trend is upward for most countries, a number are still severely lagging. At the lowest end of the spectrum, only 8.8 percent of Chad's population has electricity access. For some countries, significant improvements in access will remain a pressing challenge over the next few decades.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-electricity-of-population" width="300" height="150"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3>How many people don't have access to electricity?</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>940 million people do not have access to electricity globally</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp-block-tombstone 24841 --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Global access to electricity has been steadily rising in recent decades. In 1990 <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-access-to-electricity?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL" target="_blank">just over 71%</a> of the world population had access; by 2016 this had risen to over 87%.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>This progress also holds true when we look at the <em>total number</em> of people without electricity access. In 2015, the total number without electricity <strong>fell below one billion</strong> for the first time in decades; very likely the first time in our history of electricity production.{ref}Although global electricity access data does not extend further back than the year 1990, I hypothesize that 2015 was the first year since the dawn of industrial electricity production that less than a billion have been without access. The global population was already over 1.4 billion by the time of <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth#shares-by-world-regions" target="_blank">the first power plant (in 1882)</a>. In fact, Asia (the world's most populous region) alone was approaching one billion at the end of the 19th century. The rapid development of the world's most populous regions has been focused within the most recent decades in the late 20th and early 21st century. Although the data is not available to confirm this, I would estimate that between 1882 and 1990 there has always been at least one billion people in the world without electricity access.{/ref}</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>This is shown in the chart: in 1990 more than 1.5 billion didn't have electricity; by 2015 this had fallen to 952 million. By 2016 it had fallen again to 940 million.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Progress has been fast. 1.26 billion got access to electricity for the first time in their lives between 2005 to 2016. Broken down to average daily change this means that on any average day in the last 11 years there were 314,770 people who got access to electricity for the first time in their lives.{ref}Number of people with access to electricity in 2005: 5,240,786,150<br>Number of people with access to electricity in 2016: 6,504,588,805<br>This is an average increase of 114,891,150 per year or 314,770 per day.{/ref}</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>This figure is still unacceptably high — and gains in access are moving much too slow to reach our <a href="https://sdg-tracker.org/energy#7.1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">goal of universal access by 2030</a>. This is particularly true for Sub-Saharan Africa — despite the <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-access-to-electricity?tab=chart&country=Sub-Saharan%20Africa" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>share</em> of the population with electricity</a> rising steadily, population growth meant that the total number of people without access was on the rise until 2016. Accelerated progress will be needed to ensure this number now continues to fall.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>You can explore these numbers for any country or region using the "Change country" function in the bottom-left of the interactive chart. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-people-with-and-without-electricity-access"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>The number of people without access to electricity by region and country</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>In the chart we see the total number of people without access to electricity, grouped by world region.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Here we see a regional shift in electricity access over the past few decades: in 1990, nearly half (45 percent) of people in the world without access lived in South Asia. By 2016 this had shifted significantly: the largest share now lives in Sub-Saharan Africa (which is now home to nearly two-thirds of the world population without electricity access).</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-without-electricity-by-region"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>This data is also available to explore by country in the map.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/people-without-electricity-country?tab=map" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:heading --> <h2>Access to clean fuels for cooking</h2> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3>What share of people have access to clean fuels for cooking?</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>40% of the world do not have access to clean fuels for cooking</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The use of solid fuels for cooking is a primary risk factor for deaths and morbidity from <a href="https://owid.cloud/indoor-air-pollution">indoor air pollution</a>. The obvious way to avoid indoor air pollution from solid fuel burning is for households to transition from traditional ways of cooking and heating towards more modern, cleaner methods. This can, for example, be in the form of transitioning towards non-solid fuels such as natural gas, ethanol or even electric technologies.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>In 2016, only 60% of the world population had access to clean fuels for cooking. This means 4-in-10 people globally did not have access.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The map shows the share of households with access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking across the world. This share has been increasing for most countries at low-to-middle incomes, however, rates of increase vary by country and region. Access to clean fuels are lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa where only 14% of households in 2016 had access. Progress has been much more significant in South Asia and East Asia over the last decade, with 18% and 16% of additional households gaining access, respectively.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-clean-fuels-and-technologies-for-cooking" width="300" height="150"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3>How many people do not have access to clean fuels for cooking?</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>3 billion people globally do not have access to clean fuels for cooking</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>40% of the world did not have access to clean fuels for cooking in 2016. This equates to 3 billion people globally.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>In the visualizations here we see the number of people globally with and without clean cooking fuels, and a world map of the number without access. The total number of people globally without clean cooking fuels has changed very little since 2000 – only falling from 3.1 to 3.03 billion since the turn of the century.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Both charts can be explored over time, and by country using the "change country" toggle, or by clicking on a given country on the world map.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-with-without-clean-cooking-fuels" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-without-clean-cooking-fuel" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3>What share of people use solid fuels for cooking?</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The burning of solid fuels fills the houses and huts in poorer countries with smoke that kills the world’s poor by causing pneumonia, stroke, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer. The solid fuels responsible for this include wood, crop residues, dung, charcoal, and coal. The solution for this problem is straightforward: shift from solid fuels to modern energy sources.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>And the following chart shows that the world is making progress in this direction. In 1980 almost two thirds of the world’s population used solid fuels for their cooking. 30 years later this is down to 41%. The chart also shows that it is a problem associated with poverty: In richer Europe and North America the share is much lower than in the rest of the world; and in the high income countries of the world the use of solid fuels is entirely a thing of the past.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The use of solid fuels is going down in all of the world’s regions. But the success rapidly developing South East Asia is particularly impressive: Here the share fell from 95% to 61%.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-using-solid-fuels-for-cooking" width="300" height="150"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:heading --> <h2>How does per capita electricity generation vary across the world?</h2> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>Per capita electricity generation varies more than 100-fold across the world</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Whilst access to electricity is an important metric to monitor (especially within a development context) it is insufficient in itself as a true measure of energy equity. Besides the fact that electricity is only one dimension of energy consumption (the others being transport and heating fuel), electricity access metrics provide no measure of levels of generation. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Electricity access does not provide an accurate indication of electricity or energy affordability at the individual or household level. Indeed, many households may only consume the minimum threshold of electricity usage necessary to be considered 'electrified' as a result of personal finance constraints.{ref}The minimum levels of consumption necessary to be considered as having electricity access based on International Energy Agency (IEA) methodology is 250kWh per year for rural households, and 500kWh per year for urban households. IEA methodology and definitions available <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/energymodel/documentation/EnergyAccess_Methodology_2016.pdf" target="_blank">online</a>.{/ref}</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p> In the map here we see the differences in average per capita electricity generation across the world. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>What becomes clear is the large inequalities which exist between countries. In many low-income countries, per capita electricity generation is more than 100-fold lower than the richest countries.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-per-capita"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:heading --> <h2>How does per capita energy consumption vary across the world? </h2> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>Per capita energy consumption varies more than 10-fold across the world</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>In the map we see differences in per capita energy use; this is inclusive of all dimensions of energy (electricity plus transport and heating). There are several important points to note. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Firstly, there are large inequalities in energy consumption between countries. The average US citizen still consumes more than ten times the energy of the average Indian, 4-5 times that of a Brazilian, and three times more than China. The gulf between these and very low-income nations is even greater- a number of low-income nations consume less than 100 kilowatt-hour equivalents per person.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Secondly, global average per capita energy consumption has been consistently increasing; between 1970 and 2014, average consumption increased by approximately 45%.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>This growth in per capita energy consumption does, however, vary significantly between countries and regions. Most of the growth in per capita energy consumption over the last few decades has been driven by increased consumption in transitioning middle-income (and to a lesser extent, low income countries). In the chart we see a significant increase in consumption in transitioning BRICS economies (China, India and Brazil in particular); China's per capita use has grown by nearly 250 percent since 2000; India by more than 50 percent; and Brazil by 38 percent.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Whilst global energy growth is growing from developing economies, the trend for many high-income nations is a notable decline. As we see in exemplar trends from the UK and US, the growth we are currently seeing in transitioning economies ended for many high-income nations by over the 1970s and 80s. Both the US and UK peaked in terms of per capita energy consumption in the 1970s, plateauing for several decades until the early 2000s. Since then, we see a reduction in consumption; since 2000, UK usage has decreased by 20 to 25%.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-capita" width="300" height="150"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:heading --> <h2>What determines levels of energy access?</h2> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3>Low-income households lack access to electricity and clean fuels</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The availability (and affordability) of electricity and clean fuels for cooking is strongly related to income. Poor energy access is strongly tied to having a low income.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>In the scatterplots here we see the relationship between access to electricity, and access to clean cooking fuels measured against <a href="https://owid.cloud/economic-growth">average income</a> (GDP per capita). In both metrics we see a strong positive correlation: energy access is low in poorer countries, and increases as incomes increase.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-electricity-vs-gdp-per-capita" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-clean-fuels-for-cooking-vs-gdp-per-capita"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3>Rural households lag behind on energy access</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Access to electricity has been increasing globally, with most of this increase coming from low-to-middle income economies. However, access to electricity is not equally distributed between rural and urban demographics. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>In the chart we have plotted the percentage of the rural population with electricity access (on the y-axis) versus the percentage of the urban population with access (x-axis). Countries which lie below the grey line have lower access in rural populations relative to access in urban areas. Nearly all lie below this line, meaning that for most nations electricity access in urban areas is higher than in rural regions.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-rural-population-with-electricity-access-vs-share-of-total-population-with-electricity-access" width="300" height="150"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:heading --> <h2>Data Sources</h2> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>World Development Indicators – World Bank</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:list --> <ul><li><strong>Data: </strong>Access to electricity; Access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking; Electricity use per capita; Energy use per capita</li><li><strong>Geographical coverage:  </strong>Global – by country and world region</li><li><strong>Time span:</strong> Last decades</li><li><strong>Available at</strong>: <a href="http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators"></a><a href="http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators">http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators</a><em><br></em></li></ul> <!-- /wp:list --> <!-- wp:separator --> <hr class="wp-block-separator"/> <!-- /wp:separator --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>IEA – International Energy Agency</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:list --> <ul><li><strong>Data:</strong> Data on energy access and use</li><li><strong>Geographical coverage:</strong> Global – by country</li><li><strong>Time span:</strong> Last decades</li><li><strong>Available at: </strong>Online at <a href="http://data.iea.org/">www.iea.org</a><strong><br></strong></li><li><em>The IEA is publishing the <a href="http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/ ">World Energy Outlook</a>.</em></li><li><em><em> You have to pay to access the IEA databases. But some data is available through the World Bank's World Development Indicators.</em></em></li></ul> <!-- /wp:list --> <!-- wp:heading --> <h2>Explore more of our work on Energy</h2> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp-block-tombstone 41045 --> <!-- wp:owid/grid --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy","mediaId":39373,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/data_explorer-featured.png","mediaAlt":"COVID-19 data explorer"} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Explore all the metrics – energy production, electricity consumption, and breakdown of fossil fuels, renewable and nuclear energy.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/energy#country-profiles","mediaId":39372,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/country_profiles-featured.png","mediaAlt":"COVID-19 country profiles"} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Get an overview of energy for any country on a single page.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"linkUrl":"https://github.com/owid/energy-data","mediaId":39375,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/download_dataset-featured.png","mediaAlt":"download complete COVID-19 dataset"} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Download our complete dataset of energy metrics on GitHub. It's open-access and free for anyone to use.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"title":"","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access","mediaId":41041,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-access.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>See how access to electricity and clean cooking fuels vary across the world.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption","mediaId":41039,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-production.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Explore long-term changes in energy production and consumption across the world.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"linkUrl":"https://owid.cloud/energy-mix","mediaId":41040,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-mix.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>How much of our energy comes from fossil fuels, renewables and nuclear energy? See the breakdown of the energy mix.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"linkUrl":"https://owid.cloud/electricity-mix","mediaId":41042,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Electricity-Mix.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Explore the breakdown of the electricity mix and how this is changing.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"linkUrl":"https://owid.cloud/fossil-fuels","mediaId":41037,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Fossil-Fuels.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>See the long-term changes in coal, oil and gas production and consumption.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"linkUrl":"https://owid.cloud/renewable-energy","mediaId":41035,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Renewable-Energy.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>How quickly are countries scaling up the production of renewable technologies? Explore the data.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"linkUrl":"https://owid.cloud/nuclear-energy","mediaId":41036,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Nuclear-Energy.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Explore the long-term changes in nuclear energy production across the world.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"linkUrl":"ourworldindata.org/transport","mediaId":45158,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/09/transport-thumbnail.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Explore trends in transport technologies and emissions across the world.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- /wp:owid/grid -->	{ "id": "wp-24837", "slug": "energy-access", "content": { "toc": [], "body": [ { "type": "entry-summary", "items": [ { "slug": "access-to-electricity", "text": "940 million (13% of the world) do not have access to electricity." }, { "slug": "access-to-clean-fuels-for-cooking", "text": "3 billion (40% of the world) do not have access to clean fuels for cooking. This comes at a high health cost for indoor air pollution." }, { "slug": "how-does-per-capita-electricity-consumption-vary-across-the-world", "text": "Per capita electricity consumption varies more than 100-fold across the world." }, { "slug": "how-does-per-capita-energy-consumption-vary-across-the-world", "text": "Per capita energy consumption varies more than 10-fold across the world." }, { "slug": "low-income-households-lack-access-to-electricity-and-clean-fuels", "text": "Energy access is strongly related to income: poorer households are more likely to lack access." } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Access to electricity", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 2, "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "What share of people have access to electricity?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "13% of the world do not have access to electricity", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 4, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Electricity is a crucial for poverty alleviation, economic growth and improved living standards (these links are ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-and-changing-energy-sources/#energy-consumption-poverty-and-economic-growth", "children": [ { "text": "discussed later", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": " in the entry).{ref}Also see: Panos, E., Densing, M., Volkart, K. (2016). Access to electricity in the World Energy Council's global energy scenarios: An outlook for developing regions until 2030.\u00a0Energy Strategy Reviews, 9, 28-49. Available ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X15000450", "children": [ { "text": "online", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ".{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Measuring the share of people with\u00a0electricity access is therefore an important social and economic indicator. There is no universally-adopted\u00a0definition of what 'access to electricity' means. However, most definitions are aligned to the delivery of electricity, safe cooking facilities and a required minimum level of consumption. The ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "International Energy Agency", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": " (IEA) definition\u00a0entails\u00a0more than just the delivery to the household. It also requires households to meet a specified minimum level of electricity, which is set based on whether the household is rural or urban, and which increases with time. For rural households, this minimum threshold is 250 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year and for an urban household it is 500 kWh per year.{ref}IEA (2016).\u00a0World Energy Outlook 2016 \u2013 Methodology for Energy Access Analysis. Available ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/energymodel/documentation/EnergyAccess_Methodology_2016.pdf", "children": [ { "text": "online", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ".{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "At a global level, the percentage of people with access to electricity has been steadily increasing over the last few decades. In 1990, around 71%\u00a0of the world's population had access; this has increased to 87% in 2016.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "This means 13% of the world did not have access to electricity in 2016.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "High-income countries \u2013 or countries defined by the UN to be 'developed' ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/files/Metadata-07-01-01.pdf", "children": [ { "text": "are assumed", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": " to have an electrification rate of 100% from the first year the country entered that category. Therefore, the increasing global share has primarily been driven by increased access in low and middle-income economies. In many countries, this trend has been striking: access in India, for example, increased from 43 percent to almost 85 percent. Indonesia\u00a0is close to total electrification (sitting at almost 98 percent) \u2013 up from 62 percent in 1990. For countries with strong population growth, such improvements in the share of the population with access is even more impressive.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Whilst the trend is upward for most countries, a number are still severely lagging. At the lowest end of the spectrum, only 8.8 percent of Chad's population has electricity access. For some countries, significant improvements in access will remain a pressing challenge over the next few decades.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-electricity-of-population", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "How many people don't have access to electricity?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "940 million people do not have access to electricity globally", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 4, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Global access to electricity has been steadily rising in recent decades. In 1990 ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-access-to-electricity?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL", "children": [ { "text": "just over 71%", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": " of the world population had access; by 2016 this had risen to over 87%.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "This progress also holds true when we look at the ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "total number", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": " of people without electricity access. In 2015, the total number without electricity\u00a0", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "fell below one billion", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-bold" }, { "text": " for the first time in decades; very likely the first time in our history of electricity production.{ref}Although global electricity access data does not extend further back than the year 1990, I hypothesize that 2015 was the first year since the dawn of industrial electricity production that less than a billion have been without access. The global population was already over 1.4 billion by the time of ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth#shares-by-world-regions", "children": [ { "text": "the first power plant (in 1882)", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". In fact, Asia (the world's most populous region) alone was approaching one billion at the end of the 19th century. The rapid development of the world's most populous regions has been focused within the most recent decades in the late 20th and early 21st century. Although the data is not available to confirm this, I would estimate that between 1882 and 1990 there has always been at least one billion people in the world without electricity access.{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "This is shown in the chart: in 1990 more than 1.5 billion didn't have electricity; by 2015 this had fallen to 952 million.\u00a0By 2016 it had fallen again to 940 million.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Progress has been fast. 1.26 billion got access to electricity for the first time in their lives between 2005 to 2016. Broken down to average daily change this means that on any average day in the last 11 years there were 314,770 people who got access to electricity for the first time in their lives.{ref}Number of people with access to electricity in 2005: 5,240,786,150", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "spanType": "span-newline" }, { "text": "Number of people with access to electricity in 2016: 6,504,588,805", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "spanType": "span-newline" }, { "text": "This is an average increase of 114,891,150 per year or 314,770 per day.{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "This figure is still unacceptably high\u00a0\u2014 and gains in access are moving much too slow to reach our ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://sdg-tracker.org/energy#7.1", "children": [ { "text": "goal of universal access by 2030", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". This is particularly true for Sub-Saharan Africa\u00a0\u2014 despite the\u00a0", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-access-to-electricity?tab=chart&country=Sub-Saharan%20Africa", "children": [ { "children": [ { "text": "share", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": " of the population with electricity", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": " rising steadily, population growth meant that the total number of people without access was on the rise until 2016. Accelerated progress will be needed to ensure this number now continues to fall.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "You can explore these numbers for any country or region using the \"Change country\" function in the bottom-left of the interactive chart.\u00a0", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-people-with-and-without-electricity-access", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "The number of people without access to electricity by region and country", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 4, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "In the chart we see the total number of people without access to electricity, grouped by world region.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Here we see a regional shift in electricity access over the past few decades: in 1990, nearly half (45 percent) of people in the world without access lived in South Asia. By 2016 this had shifted significantly: the largest share now lives in Sub-Saharan Africa (which is now home to nearly two-thirds of the world population without electricity access).", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-without-electricity-by-region", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "This data is also available to explore by country in the map.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/people-without-electricity-country?tab=map", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Access to clean fuels for cooking", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 2, "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "What share of people have access to clean fuels for cooking?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "40% of the world do not have access to clean fuels for cooking", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 4, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The use of solid fuels for cooking is a primary risk factor for deaths and morbidity from ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://owid.cloud/indoor-air-pollution", "children": [ { "text": "indoor air pollution", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". The obvious way to avoid indoor air pollution from solid fuel burning is for households to transition from traditional ways of cooking and heating towards more modern, cleaner methods. This can, for example, be in the form of transitioning towards non-solid fuels such as natural gas, ethanol or even electric technologies.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "In 2016, only 60% of the world population had access to clean fuels for cooking. This means 4-in-10 people globally did not have access.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The map shows the share of households with access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking across the world. This share has been increasing for most countries at low-to-middle incomes, however, rates of increase vary by country and region. Access to clean fuels are lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa where only 14% of households in 2016 had access. Progress has been much more significant in South Asia and East Asia over the last decade, with 18% and 16% of additional households gaining access, respectively.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-clean-fuels-and-technologies-for-cooking", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "How many people do not have access to clean fuels for cooking?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "3 billion people globally do not have access to clean fuels for cooking", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 4, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "40% of the world did not have access to clean fuels for cooking in 2016. This equates to 3 billion people globally.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "In the visualizations here we see the number of people globally with and without clean cooking fuels, and a world map of the number without access. The total number of people globally without clean cooking fuels has changed very little since 2000 \u2013 only falling from 3.1 to 3.03 billion since the turn of the century.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Both charts can be explored over time, and by country using the \"change country\" toggle, or by clicking on a given country on the world map.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-with-without-clean-cooking-fuels", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-without-clean-cooking-fuel", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "What share of people use solid fuels for cooking?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The burning of solid fuels fills the houses and huts in poorer countries with smoke that kills the world\u2019s poor by causing pneumonia, stroke, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer. The solid fuels responsible for this include wood, crop residues, dung, charcoal, and coal. The solution for this problem is straightforward: shift from solid fuels to modern energy sources.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "And the following chart shows that the world is making progress in this direction. In 1980 almost two thirds of the world\u2019s population used solid fuels for their cooking. 30 years later this is down to 41%. The chart also shows that it is a problem associated with poverty: In richer Europe and North America the share is much lower than in the rest of the world; and in the high income countries of the world the use of solid fuels is entirely a thing of the past.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The use of solid fuels is going down in all of the world\u2019s regions. But the success rapidly developing South East Asia is particularly impressive: Here the share fell from 95% to 61%.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-using-solid-fuels-for-cooking", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "How does per capita electricity generation vary across the world?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 2, "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Per capita electricity generation varies more than 100-fold across the world", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 4, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Whilst access to electricity is an important metric to monitor (especially within a development context) it is insufficient in itself as a true measure of energy equity. Besides the fact that electricity is only one dimension of energy consumption (the others being transport and heating fuel), electricity access metrics provide no measure of levels of generation. ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Electricity access does not provide an accurate indication of electricity or energy affordability at the individual or household level. Indeed, many households may only consume the minimum threshold of electricity usage necessary to be considered 'electrified' as a result of personal finance constraints.{ref}The minimum levels of consumption necessary to be considered\u00a0as having electricity access based on International Energy Agency (IEA) methodology is 250kWh per year for rural households, and 500kWh per year for urban households. IEA methodology and definitions available ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/energymodel/documentation/EnergyAccess_Methodology_2016.pdf", "children": [ { "text": "online", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ".{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": " In the map here we see the differences in average per capita electricity generation across the world. ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "What becomes clear is the large inequalities which exist between countries. In many low-income countries, per capita electricity generation is more than 100-fold lower than the richest countries.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-per-capita", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "How does per capita energy consumption vary across the world? ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 2, "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Per capita energy consumption varies more than 10-fold across the world", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 4, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "In the map we see differences in per capita energy use; this is inclusive of all dimensions of energy (electricity plus transport and heating). There are several important points to note. ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Firstly, there are large inequalities in energy consumption between countries. The average US citizen still consumes more than ten times the energy of the average Indian, 4-5 times that of a Brazilian, and three times more than China. The gulf between these and very low-income nations is even greater- a number of\u00a0low-income nations consume less than 100 kilowatt-hour equivalents per person.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Secondly, global average per capita energy consumption has been consistently increasing; between 1970 and 2014, average consumption increased by approximately 45%.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "This growth in per capita energy consumption does, however, vary significantly between countries and regions. Most of the growth in per capita energy consumption over the last few decades has been driven by increased consumption in transitioning middle-income (and to a lesser extent, low income countries). In the chart we see a significant increase in consumption\u00a0in transitioning BRICS economies (China, India and Brazil in particular); China's per capita use has grown by nearly 250 percent since 2000; India by more than 50 percent; and Brazil by 38 percent.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Whilst global energy growth is growing from developing economies, the trend for many high-income nations is a notable decline. As we see in exemplar trends from the UK and US, the growth we are currently seeing in transitioning economies ended for many high-income nations by over the 1970s and 80s. Both the US and UK peaked in terms of per capita energy consumption in the 1970s, plateauing for several decades until the early 2000s. Since then, we see a reduction in consumption; since 2000, UK usage has decreased by 20 to 25%.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-capita", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "What determines levels of energy access?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 2, "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Low-income households lack access to electricity and clean fuels", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The availability (and affordability) of electricity and clean fuels for cooking is strongly related to income. Poor energy access is strongly tied to having a low income.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "In the scatterplots here we see the relationship between access to electricity, and access to clean cooking fuels measured against ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://owid.cloud/economic-growth", "children": [ { "text": "average income", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": " (GDP per capita). In both metrics we see a strong positive correlation: energy access is low in poorer countries, and increases as incomes increase.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-electricity-vs-gdp-per-capita", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-clean-fuels-for-cooking-vs-gdp-per-capita", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Rural households lag behind on energy access", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Access to electricity has been increasing globally, with most of this increase coming from low-to-middle income economies. However, access to electricity is not equally distributed between rural and urban demographics. ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "In the chart we have plotted the percentage\u00a0of the rural population with electricity access (on the y-axis) versus the percentage of the urban population with access (x-axis). Countries which lie below the grey line have lower access in rural populations relative to access in urban areas. 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It's open-access and free for anyone to use.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "See how access to electricity and clean cooking fuels vary across the world.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Explore long-term changes in energy production and consumption across the world.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "How much of our energy comes from fossil fuels, renewables and nuclear energy? See the breakdown of the energy mix.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Explore the breakdown of the electricity mix and how this is changing.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "See the long-term changes in coal, oil and gas production and consumption.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "How quickly are countries scaling up the production of renewable technologies? Explore the data.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Explore the long-term changes in nuclear energy production across the world.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Explore trends in transport technologies and emissions across the world.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] } ], "type": "article", "title": "Access to Energy", "authors": [ "Hannah Ritchie", "Max Roser" ], "excerpt": "Access to electricity and clean cooking fuels are vital for a good standard of living and good health.", "dateline": "September 20, 2019", "subtitle": "Access to electricity and clean cooking fuels are vital for a good standard of living and good health.", "sidebar-toc": false, "featured-image": "Energy-access.png" }, "createdAt": "2019-09-20T15:41:27.000Z", "published": false, "updatedAt": "2022-04-13T11:19:13.000Z", "revisionId": null, "publishedAt": "2019-09-20T14:41:27.000Z", "relatedCharts": [], "publicationContext": "listed" }	{ "errors": [ { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag list" }, { "name": "unhandled html tag found", "details": "Encountered the unhandled tag hr" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag separator" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag list" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag owid/card" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag owid/card" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag owid/card" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag owid/card" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag owid/card" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag owid/card" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag owid/card" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag owid/card" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag owid/card" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag owid/card" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag owid/card" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag owid/grid" } ], "numBlocks": 87, "numErrors": 16, "wpTagCounts": { "html": 14, "list": 3, "heading": 23, "owid/card": 11, "owid/grid": 1, "paragraph": 49, "separator": 1, "owid/summary": 1 }, "htmlTagCounts": { "p": 49, "h2": 7, "h3": 7, "h4": 9, "hr": 1, "ul": 3, "iframe": 13 } }	2019-09-20 14:41:27	2024-02-16 14:22:40	1UstiwtN6kOSn3jv9fg_7WwjamPyepzz6rmvfE6_rGZE	[ "Hannah Ritchie" ]	Access to electricity and clean cooking fuels are vital for a good standard of living and good health.	2019-09-20 15:41:27	2022-04-13 11:19:13	https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Energy-access.png	{ "subnavId": "energy", "subnavCurrentId": "energy-access" }	## Access to electricity ### What share of people have access to electricity? #### 13% of the world do not have access to electricity Electricity is a crucial for poverty alleviation, economic growth and improved living standards (these links are [discussed later](https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-and-changing-energy-sources/#energy-consumption-poverty-and-economic-growth) in the entry).{ref}Also see: Panos, E., Densing, M., Volkart, K. (2016). Access to electricity in the World Energy Council's global energy scenarios: An outlook for developing regions until 2030. Energy Strategy Reviews, 9, 28-49. Available [online](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X15000450).{/ref} Measuring the share of people with electricity access is therefore an important social and economic indicator. There is no universally-adopted definition of what 'access to electricity' means. However, most definitions are aligned to the delivery of electricity, safe cooking facilities and a required minimum level of consumption. The _International Energy Agency_ (IEA) definition entails more than just the delivery to the household. It also requires households to meet a specified minimum level of electricity, which is set based on whether the household is rural or urban, and which increases with time. For rural households, this minimum threshold is 250 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year and for an urban household it is 500 kWh per year.{ref}IEA (2016). World Energy Outlook 2016 – Methodology for Energy Access Analysis. Available [online](http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/energymodel/documentation/EnergyAccess_Methodology_2016.pdf).{/ref} At a global level, the percentage of people with access to electricity has been steadily increasing over the last few decades. In 1990, around 71% of the world's population had access; this has increased to 87% in 2016. This means 13% of the world did not have access to electricity in 2016. High-income countries – or countries defined by the UN to be 'developed' [are assumed](https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/files/Metadata-07-01-01.pdf) to have an electrification rate of 100% from the first year the country entered that category. Therefore, the increasing global share has primarily been driven by increased access in low and middle-income economies. In many countries, this trend has been striking: access in India, for example, increased from 43 percent to almost 85 percent. Indonesia is close to total electrification (sitting at almost 98 percent) – up from 62 percent in 1990. For countries with strong population growth, such improvements in the share of the population with access is even more impressive. Whilst the trend is upward for most countries, a number are still severely lagging. At the lowest end of the spectrum, only 8.8 percent of Chad's population has electricity access. For some countries, significant improvements in access will remain a pressing challenge over the next few decades. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-electricity-of-population"/> ### How many people don't have access to electricity? #### 940 million people do not have access to electricity globally Global access to electricity has been steadily rising in recent decades. In 1990 [just over 71%](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-access-to-electricity?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL) of the world population had access; by 2016 this had risen to over 87%. This progress also holds true when we look at the _total number_ of people without electricity access. In 2015, the total number without electricity fell below one billion for the first time in decades; very likely the first time in our history of electricity production.{ref}Although global electricity access data does not extend further back than the year 1990, I hypothesize that 2015 was the first year since the dawn of industrial electricity production that less than a billion have been without access. The global population was already over 1.4 billion by the time of [the first power plant (in 1882)](https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth#shares-by-world-regions). In fact, Asia (the world's most populous region) alone was approaching one billion at the end of the 19th century. The rapid development of the world's most populous regions has been focused within the most recent decades in the late 20th and early 21st century. Although the data is not available to confirm this, I would estimate that between 1882 and 1990 there has always been at least one billion people in the world without electricity access.{/ref} This is shown in the chart: in 1990 more than 1.5 billion didn't have electricity; by 2015 this had fallen to 952 million. By 2016 it had fallen again to 940 million. Progress has been fast. 1.26 billion got access to electricity for the first time in their lives between 2005 to 2016. Broken down to average daily change this means that on any average day in the last 11 years there were 314,770 people who got access to electricity for the first time in their lives.{ref}Number of people with access to electricity in 2005: 5,240,786,150 Number of people with access to electricity in 2016: 6,504,588,805 This is an average increase of 114,891,150 per year or 314,770 per day.{/ref} This figure is still unacceptably high — and gains in access are moving much too slow to reach our [goal of universal access by 2030](https://sdg-tracker.org/energy#7.1). This is particularly true for Sub-Saharan Africa — despite the [_share_ of the population with electricity](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-access-to-electricity?tab=chart&country=Sub-Saharan%20Africa) rising steadily, population growth meant that the total number of people without access was on the rise until 2016. Accelerated progress will be needed to ensure this number now continues to fall. You can explore these numbers for any country or region using the "Change country" function in the bottom-left of the interactive chart. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-people-with-and-without-electricity-access"/> #### The number of people without access to electricity by region and country In the chart we see the total number of people without access to electricity, grouped by world region. Here we see a regional shift in electricity access over the past few decades: in 1990, nearly half (45 percent) of people in the world without access lived in South Asia. By 2016 this had shifted significantly: the largest share now lives in Sub-Saharan Africa (which is now home to nearly two-thirds of the world population without electricity access). <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-without-electricity-by-region"/> This data is also available to explore by country in the map. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/people-without-electricity-country?tab=map"/> ## Access to clean fuels for cooking ### What share of people have access to clean fuels for cooking? #### 40% of the world do not have access to clean fuels for cooking The use of solid fuels for cooking is a primary risk factor for deaths and morbidity from [indoor air pollution](https://owid.cloud/indoor-air-pollution). The obvious way to avoid indoor air pollution from solid fuel burning is for households to transition from traditional ways of cooking and heating towards more modern, cleaner methods. This can, for example, be in the form of transitioning towards non-solid fuels such as natural gas, ethanol or even electric technologies. In 2016, only 60% of the world population had access to clean fuels for cooking. This means 4-in-10 people globally did not have access. The map shows the share of households with access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking across the world. This share has been increasing for most countries at low-to-middle incomes, however, rates of increase vary by country and region. Access to clean fuels are lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa where only 14% of households in 2016 had access. Progress has been much more significant in South Asia and East Asia over the last decade, with 18% and 16% of additional households gaining access, respectively. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-clean-fuels-and-technologies-for-cooking"/> ### How many people do not have access to clean fuels for cooking? #### 3 billion people globally do not have access to clean fuels for cooking 40% of the world did not have access to clean fuels for cooking in 2016. This equates to 3 billion people globally. In the visualizations here we see the number of people globally with and without clean cooking fuels, and a world map of the number without access. The total number of people globally without clean cooking fuels has changed very little since 2000 – only falling from 3.1 to 3.03 billion since the turn of the century. Both charts can be explored over time, and by country using the "change country" toggle, or by clicking on a given country on the world map. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-with-without-clean-cooking-fuels"/> <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-without-clean-cooking-fuel"/> ### What share of people use solid fuels for cooking? The burning of solid fuels fills the houses and huts in poorer countries with smoke that kills the world’s poor by causing pneumonia, stroke, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer. The solid fuels responsible for this include wood, crop residues, dung, charcoal, and coal. The solution for this problem is straightforward: shift from solid fuels to modern energy sources. And the following chart shows that the world is making progress in this direction. In 1980 almost two thirds of the world’s population used solid fuels for their cooking. 30 years later this is down to 41%. The chart also shows that it is a problem associated with poverty: In richer Europe and North America the share is much lower than in the rest of the world; and in the high income countries of the world the use of solid fuels is entirely a thing of the past. The use of solid fuels is going down in all of the world’s regions. But the success rapidly developing South East Asia is particularly impressive: Here the share fell from 95% to 61%. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-using-solid-fuels-for-cooking"/> ## How does per capita electricity generation vary across the world? #### Per capita electricity generation varies more than 100-fold across the world Whilst access to electricity is an important metric to monitor (especially within a development context) it is insufficient in itself as a true measure of energy equity. Besides the fact that electricity is only one dimension of energy consumption (the others being transport and heating fuel), electricity access metrics provide no measure of levels of generation. Electricity access does not provide an accurate indication of electricity or energy affordability at the individual or household level. Indeed, many households may only consume the minimum threshold of electricity usage necessary to be considered 'electrified' as a result of personal finance constraints.{ref}The minimum levels of consumption necessary to be considered as having electricity access based on International Energy Agency (IEA) methodology is 250kWh per year for rural households, and 500kWh per year for urban households. IEA methodology and definitions available [online](http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/energymodel/documentation/EnergyAccess_Methodology_2016.pdf).{/ref} In the map here we see the differences in average per capita electricity generation across the world. What becomes clear is the large inequalities which exist between countries. In many low-income countries, per capita electricity generation is more than 100-fold lower than the richest countries. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-per-capita"/> ## How does per capita energy consumption vary across the world? #### Per capita energy consumption varies more than 10-fold across the world In the map we see differences in per capita energy use; this is inclusive of all dimensions of energy (electricity plus transport and heating). There are several important points to note. Firstly, there are large inequalities in energy consumption between countries. The average US citizen still consumes more than ten times the energy of the average Indian, 4-5 times that of a Brazilian, and three times more than China. The gulf between these and very low-income nations is even greater- a number of low-income nations consume less than 100 kilowatt-hour equivalents per person. Secondly, global average per capita energy consumption has been consistently increasing; between 1970 and 2014, average consumption increased by approximately 45%. This growth in per capita energy consumption does, however, vary significantly between countries and regions. Most of the growth in per capita energy consumption over the last few decades has been driven by increased consumption in transitioning middle-income (and to a lesser extent, low income countries). In the chart we see a significant increase in consumption in transitioning BRICS economies (China, India and Brazil in particular); China's per capita use has grown by nearly 250 percent since 2000; India by more than 50 percent; and Brazil by 38 percent. Whilst global energy growth is growing from developing economies, the trend for many high-income nations is a notable decline. As we see in exemplar trends from the UK and US, the growth we are currently seeing in transitioning economies ended for many high-income nations by over the 1970s and 80s. Both the US and UK peaked in terms of per capita energy consumption in the 1970s, plateauing for several decades until the early 2000s. Since then, we see a reduction in consumption; since 2000, UK usage has decreased by 20 to 25%. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-capita"/> ## What determines levels of energy access? ### Low-income households lack access to electricity and clean fuels The availability (and affordability) of electricity and clean fuels for cooking is strongly related to income. Poor energy access is strongly tied to having a low income. In the scatterplots here we see the relationship between access to electricity, and access to clean cooking fuels measured against [average income](https://owid.cloud/economic-growth) (GDP per capita). In both metrics we see a strong positive correlation: energy access is low in poorer countries, and increases as incomes increase. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-electricity-vs-gdp-per-capita"/> <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-clean-fuels-for-cooking-vs-gdp-per-capita"/> ### Rural households lag behind on energy access Access to electricity has been increasing globally, with most of this increase coming from low-to-middle income economies. However, access to electricity is not equally distributed between rural and urban demographics. In the chart we have plotted the percentage of the rural population with electricity access (on the y-axis) versus the percentage of the urban population with access (x-axis). Countries which lie below the grey line have lower access in rural populations relative to access in urban areas. Nearly all lie below this line, meaning that for most nations electricity access in urban areas is higher than in rural regions. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-rural-population-with-electricity-access-vs-share-of-total-population-with-electricity-access"/> ## Data Sources #### World Development Indicators – World Bank * Data: Access to electricity; Access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking; Electricity use per capita; Energy use per capita * Geographical coverage: Global – by country and world region * Time span: Last decades * Available at: [](http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators)[http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators](http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators)_ _ #### IEA – International Energy Agency * Data: Data on energy access and use * Geographical coverage: Global – by country * Time span: Last decades * Available at: Online at [www.iea.org](http://data.iea.org/) * _The IEA is publishing the [World Energy Outlook](http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/ )._ * __ You have to pay to access the IEA databases. But some data is available through the World Bank's World Development Indicators.__ ## Explore more of our work on Energy Explore all the metrics – energy production, electricity consumption, and breakdown of fossil fuels, renewable and nuclear energy. Get an overview of energy for any country on a single page. Download our complete dataset of energy metrics on GitHub. It's open-access and free for anyone to use. See how access to electricity and clean cooking fuels vary across the world. Explore long-term changes in energy production and consumption across the world. How much of our energy comes from fossil fuels, renewables and nuclear energy? See the breakdown of the energy mix. Explore the breakdown of the electricity mix and how this is changing. See the long-term changes in coal, oil and gas production and consumption. How quickly are countries scaling up the production of renewable technologies? Explore the data. Explore the long-term changes in nuclear energy production across the world. Explore trends in transport technologies and emissions across the world.	{ "id": 24837, "date": "2019-09-20T15:41:27", "guid": { "rendered": "https://owid.cloud/?page_id=24837" }, "link": "https://owid.cloud/energy-access", "meta": { "owid_publication_context_meta_field": [], "owid_key_performance_indicators_meta_field": { "raw": "10% of the world do not have access to electricity.\n\n40% do not have access to clean fuels for cooking.", "rendered": "<p><strong>10%</strong> of the world do not have access to electricity.</p>\n<p><strong>40%</strong> do not have access to clean fuels for cooking.</p>\n" } }, "slug": "energy-access", "tags": [], "type": "page", "title": { "rendered": "Access to Energy" }, "_links": { "self": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/pages/24837" } ], "about": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/types/page" } ], "author": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/users/17", "embeddable": true } ], "curies": [ { "href": "https://api.w.org/{rel}", "name": "wp", "templated": true } ], "replies": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=24837", "embeddable": true } ], "wp:term": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/categories?post=24837", "taxonomy": "category", "embeddable": true }, { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/tags?post=24837", "taxonomy": "post_tag", "embeddable": true } ], "collection": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/pages" } ], "wp:attachment": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/media?parent=24837" } ], "version-history": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/pages/24837/revisions", "count": 18 } ], "wp:featuredmedia": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/media/41041", "embeddable": true } ], "predecessor-version": [ { "id": 50723, "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/pages/24837/revisions/50723" } ] }, "author": 17, "parent": 0, "status": "publish", "content": { "rendered": "\n<!-- formatting-options subnavId:energy subnavCurrentId:energy-access -->\n\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-summary\">\n\t\t<h2>Summary</h2>\n\t\t\n\n<ul><li><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#access-to-electricity\">940 million (13% of the world) do not have access to electricity.</a></li><li><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#access-to-clean-fuels-for-cooking\">3 billion (40% of the world) do not have access to clean fuels for cooking. This comes at a high health cost for indoor air pollution.</a></li><li><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#how-does-per-capita-electricity-consumption-vary-across-the-world\">Per capita electricity consumption varies more than 100-fold across the world.</a></li><li><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#how-does-per-capita-energy-consumption-vary-across-the-world\">Per capita energy consumption varies more than 10-fold across the world.</a></li><li><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#low-income-households-lack-access-to-electricity-and-clean-fuels\">Energy access is strongly related to income: poorer households are more likely to lack access.</a></li></ul>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<h2>Access to electricity</h2>\n\n\n\n<h3>What share of people have access to electricity?</h3>\n\n\n\n<h4>13% of the world do not have access to electricity</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Electricity is a crucial for poverty alleviation, economic growth and improved living standards (these links are <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-and-changing-energy-sources/#energy-consumption-poverty-and-economic-growth\">discussed later</a> in the entry).{ref}Also see: Panos, E., Densing, M., Volkart, K. (2016). Access to electricity in the World Energy Council’s global energy scenarios: An outlook for developing regions until 2030. Energy Strategy Reviews, 9, 28-49. Available <a href=\"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X15000450\">online</a>.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Measuring the share of people with electricity access is therefore an important social and economic indicator. There is no universally-adopted definition of what ‘access to electricity’ means. However, most definitions are aligned to the delivery of electricity, safe cooking facilities and a required minimum level of consumption. The <em>International Energy Agency</em> (IEA) definition entails more than just the delivery to the household. It also requires households to meet a specified minimum level of electricity, which is set based on whether the household is rural or urban, and which increases with time. For rural households, this minimum threshold is 250 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year and for an urban household it is 500 kWh per year.{ref}IEA (2016). World Energy Outlook 2016 \u2013 Methodology for Energy Access Analysis. Available <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/energymodel/documentation/EnergyAccess_Methodology_2016.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">online</a>.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>At a global level, the percentage of people with access to electricity has been steadily increasing over the last few decades. In 1990, around 71% of the world’s population had access; this has increased to 87% in 2016.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This means 13% of the world did not have access to electricity in 2016.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>High-income countries \u2013 or countries defined by the UN to be ‘developed’ <a href=\"https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/files/Metadata-07-01-01.pdf\">are assumed</a> to have an electrification rate of 100% from the first year the country entered that category. Therefore, the increasing global share has primarily been driven by increased access in low and middle-income economies. In many countries, this trend has been striking: access in India, for example, increased from 43 percent to almost 85 percent. Indonesia is close to total electrification (sitting at almost 98 percent) \u2013 up from 62 percent in 1990. For countries with strong population growth, such improvements in the share of the population with access is even more impressive.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whilst the trend is upward for most countries, a number are still severely lagging. At the lowest end of the spectrum, only 8.8 percent of Chad’s population has electricity access. For some countries, significant improvements in access will remain a pressing challenge over the next few decades.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-electricity-of-population\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h3>How many people don’t have access to electricity?</h3>\n\n\n\n<h4>940 million people do not have access to electricity globally</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Global access to electricity has been steadily rising in recent decades. In 1990 <a rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-access-to-electricity?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL\" target=\"_blank\">just over 71%</a> of the world population had access; by 2016 this had risen to over 87%.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This progress also holds true when we look at the <em>total number</em> of people without electricity access. In 2015, the total number without electricity\u00a0<strong>fell below one billion</strong> for the first time in decades; very likely the first time in our history of electricity production.{ref}Although global electricity access data does not extend further back than the year 1990, I hypothesize that 2015 was the first year since the dawn of industrial electricity production that less than a billion have been without access. The global population was already over 1.4 billion by the time of <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth#shares-by-world-regions\" target=\"_blank\">the first power plant (in 1882)</a>. In fact, Asia (the world’s most populous region) alone was approaching one billion at the end of the 19th century. The rapid development of the world’s most populous regions has been focused within the most recent decades in the late 20th and early 21st century. Although the data is not available to confirm this, I would estimate that between 1882 and 1990 there has always been at least one billion people in the world without electricity access.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is shown in the chart: in 1990 more than 1.5 billion didn’t have electricity; by 2015 this had fallen to 952 million.\u00a0By 2016 it had fallen again to 940 million.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Progress has been fast. 1.26 billion got access to electricity for the first time in their lives between 2005 to 2016. Broken down to average daily change this means that on any average day in the last 11 years there were 314,770 people who got access to electricity for the first time in their lives.{ref}Number of people with access to electricity in 2005: 5,240,786,150<br>Number of people with access to electricity in 2016: 6,504,588,805<br>This is an average increase of 114,891,150 per year or 314,770 per day.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This figure is still unacceptably high \u2014 and gains in access are moving much too slow to reach our <a href=\"https://sdg-tracker.org/energy#7.1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">goal of universal access by 2030</a>. This is particularly true for Sub-Saharan Africa \u2014 despite the <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-access-to-electricity?tab=chart&country=Sub-Saharan%20Africa\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>share</em> of the population with electricity</a> rising steadily, population growth meant that the total number of people without access was on the rise until 2016. Accelerated progress will be needed to ensure this number now continues to fall.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can explore these numbers for any country or region using the “Change country” function in the bottom-left of the interactive chart. </p>\n\n\n\n<iframe style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-people-with-and-without-electricity-access\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h4>The number of people without access to electricity by region and country</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>In the chart we see the total number of people without access to electricity, grouped by world region.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here we see a regional shift in electricity access over the past few decades: in 1990, nearly half (45 percent) of people in the world without access lived in South Asia. By 2016 this had shifted significantly: the largest share now lives in Sub-Saharan Africa (which is now home to nearly two-thirds of the world population without electricity access).</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-without-electricity-by-region\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<p>This data is also available to explore by country in the map.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/people-without-electricity-country?tab=map\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h2>Access to clean fuels for cooking</h2>\n\n\n\n<h3>What share of people have access to clean fuels for cooking?</h3>\n\n\n\n<h4>40% of the world do not have access to clean fuels for cooking</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>The use of solid fuels for cooking is a primary risk factor for deaths and morbidity from <a href=\"https://owid.cloud/indoor-air-pollution\">indoor air pollution</a>. The obvious way to avoid indoor air pollution from solid fuel burning is for households to transition from traditional ways of cooking and heating towards more modern, cleaner methods. This can, for example, be in the form of transitioning towards non-solid fuels such as natural gas, ethanol or even electric technologies.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2016, only 60% of the world population had access to clean fuels for cooking. This means 4-in-10 people globally did not have access.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The map shows the share of households with access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking across the world. This share has been increasing for most countries at low-to-middle incomes, however, rates of increase vary by country and region. Access to clean fuels are lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa where only 14% of households in 2016 had access. Progress has been much more significant in South Asia and East Asia over the last decade, with 18% and 16% of additional households gaining access, respectively.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-clean-fuels-and-technologies-for-cooking\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h3>How many people do not have access to clean fuels for cooking?</h3>\n\n\n\n<h4>3 billion people globally do not have access to clean fuels for cooking</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>40% of the world did not have access to clean fuels for cooking in 2016. This equates to 3 billion people globally.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the visualizations here we see the number of people globally with and without clean cooking fuels, and a world map of the number without access. The total number of people globally without clean cooking fuels has changed very little since 2000 \u2013 only falling from 3.1 to 3.03 billion since the turn of the century.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Both charts can be explored over time, and by country using the “change country” toggle, or by clicking on a given country on the world map.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-with-without-clean-cooking-fuels\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-without-clean-cooking-fuel\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h3>What share of people use solid fuels for cooking?</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The burning of solid fuels fills the houses and huts in poorer countries with smoke that kills the world\u2019s poor by causing pneumonia, stroke, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer. The solid fuels responsible for this include wood, crop residues, dung, charcoal, and coal. The solution for this problem is straightforward: shift from solid fuels to modern energy sources.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the following chart shows that the world is making progress in this direction. In 1980 almost two thirds of the world\u2019s population used solid fuels for their cooking. 30 years later this is down to 41%. The chart also shows that it is a problem associated with poverty: In richer Europe and North America the share is much lower than in the rest of the world; and in the high income countries of the world the use of solid fuels is entirely a thing of the past.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The use of solid fuels is going down in all of the world\u2019s regions. But the success rapidly developing South East Asia is particularly impressive: Here the share fell from 95% to 61%.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-using-solid-fuels-for-cooking\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h2>How does per capita electricity generation vary across the world?</h2>\n\n\n\n<h4>Per capita electricity generation varies more than 100-fold across the world</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Whilst access to electricity is an important metric to monitor (especially within a development context) it is insufficient in itself as a true measure of energy equity. Besides the fact that electricity is only one dimension of energy consumption (the others being transport and heating fuel), electricity access metrics provide no measure of levels of generation. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Electricity access does not provide an accurate indication of electricity or energy affordability at the individual or household level. Indeed, many households may only consume the minimum threshold of electricity usage necessary to be considered ‘electrified’ as a result of personal finance constraints.{ref}The minimum levels of consumption necessary to be considered as having electricity access based on International Energy Agency (IEA) methodology is 250kWh per year for rural households, and 500kWh per year for urban households. IEA methodology and definitions available <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/energymodel/documentation/EnergyAccess_Methodology_2016.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">online</a>.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p> In the map here we see the differences in average per capita electricity generation across the world. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>What becomes clear is the large inequalities which exist between countries. In many low-income countries, per capita electricity generation is more than 100-fold lower than the richest countries.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-per-capita\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h2>How does per capita energy consumption vary across the world? </h2>\n\n\n\n<h4>Per capita energy consumption varies more than 10-fold across the world</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>In the map we see differences in per capita energy use; this is inclusive of all dimensions of energy (electricity plus transport and heating). There are several important points to note. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Firstly, there are large inequalities in energy consumption between countries. The average US citizen still consumes more than ten times the energy of the average Indian, 4-5 times that of a Brazilian, and three times more than China. The gulf between these and very low-income nations is even greater- a number of low-income nations consume less than 100 kilowatt-hour equivalents per person.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Secondly, global average per capita energy consumption has been consistently increasing; between 1970 and 2014, average consumption increased by approximately 45%.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This growth in per capita energy consumption does, however, vary significantly between countries and regions. Most of the growth in per capita energy consumption over the last few decades has been driven by increased consumption in transitioning middle-income (and to a lesser extent, low income countries). In the chart we see a significant increase in consumption in transitioning BRICS economies (China, India and Brazil in particular); China’s per capita use has grown by nearly 250 percent since 2000; India by more than 50 percent; and Brazil by 38 percent.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whilst global energy growth is growing from developing economies, the trend for many high-income nations is a notable decline. As we see in exemplar trends from the UK and US, the growth we are currently seeing in transitioning economies ended for many high-income nations by over the 1970s and 80s. Both the US and UK peaked in terms of per capita energy consumption in the 1970s, plateauing for several decades until the early 2000s. Since then, we see a reduction in consumption; since 2000, UK usage has decreased by 20 to 25%.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-capita\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h2>What determines levels of energy access?</h2>\n\n\n\n<h3>Low-income households lack access to electricity and clean fuels</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The availability (and affordability) of electricity and clean fuels for cooking is strongly related to income. Poor energy access is strongly tied to having a low income.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the scatterplots here we see the relationship between access to electricity, and access to clean cooking fuels measured against <a href=\"https://owid.cloud/economic-growth\">average income</a> (GDP per capita). In both metrics we see a strong positive correlation: energy access is low in poorer countries, and increases as incomes increase.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-electricity-vs-gdp-per-capita\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-clean-fuels-for-cooking-vs-gdp-per-capita\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h3>Rural households lag behind on energy access</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Access to electricity has been increasing globally, with most of this increase coming from low-to-middle income economies. However, access to electricity is not equally distributed between rural and urban demographics. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the chart we have plotted the percentage of the rural population with electricity access (on the y-axis) versus the percentage of the urban population with access (x-axis). Countries which lie below the grey line have lower access in rural populations relative to access in urban areas. Nearly all lie below this line, meaning that for most nations electricity access in urban areas is higher than in rural regions.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-rural-population-with-electricity-access-vs-share-of-total-population-with-electricity-access\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h2>Data Sources</h2>\n\n\n\n<h4>World Development Indicators \u2013 World Bank</h4>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><strong>Data: </strong>Access to electricity; Access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking; Electricity use per capita; Energy use per capita</li><li><strong>Geographical coverage:  </strong>Global \u2013 by country and world region</li><li><strong>Time span:</strong> Last decades</li><li><strong>Available at</strong>: <a href=\"http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators\"></a><a href=\"http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators\">http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators</a><em><br></em></li></ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"/>\n\n\n\n<h4>IEA \u2013 International Energy Agency</h4>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><strong>Data:</strong> Data on energy access and use</li><li><strong>Geographical coverage:</strong> Global \u2013 by country</li><li><strong>Time span:</strong> Last decades</li><li><strong>Available at: </strong>Online at <a href=\"http://data.iea.org/\">www.iea.org</a><strong><br></strong></li><li><em>The IEA is publishing the <a href=\"http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/ \">World Energy Outlook</a>.</em></li><li><em><em> You have to pay to access the IEA databases. But some data is available through the World Bank’s World Development Indicators.</em></em></li></ul>\n\n\n\n<h2>Explore more of our work on Energy</h2>\n\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-grid \">\n\t\t\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"404\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/data_explorer-featured-768x404.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"COVID-19 data explorer\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/data_explorer-featured-768x404.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/data_explorer-featured-400x210.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/data_explorer-featured-800x421.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/data_explorer-featured-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/data_explorer-featured.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n \n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Explore all the metrics \u2013 energy production, electricity consumption, and breakdown of fossil fuels, renewable and nuclear energy.</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/energy#country-profiles\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"404\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/country_profiles-featured-768x404.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"COVID-19 country profiles\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/country_profiles-featured-768x404.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/country_profiles-featured-400x210.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/country_profiles-featured-800x421.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/country_profiles-featured-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/country_profiles-featured.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n \n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Get an overview of energy for any country on a single page.</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://github.com/owid/energy-data\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"404\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/download_dataset-featured-768x404.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"download complete COVID-19 dataset\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/download_dataset-featured-768x404.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/download_dataset-featured-400x210.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/download_dataset-featured-800x421.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/download_dataset-featured-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/download_dataset-featured.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n \n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Download our complete dataset of energy metrics on GitHub. It’s open-access and free for anyone to use.</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"404\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-access-768x404.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-access-768x404.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-access-400x210.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-access-800x421.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-access-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-access.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n \n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>See how access to electricity and clean cooking fuels vary across the world.</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"404\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-production-768x404.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-production-768x404.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-production-400x210.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-production-800x421.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-production-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-production.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n \n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Explore long-term changes in energy production and consumption across the world.</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://owid.cloud/energy-mix\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"404\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-mix-768x404.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-mix-768x404.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-mix-400x210.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-mix-800x421.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-mix-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-mix.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n \n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>How much of our energy comes from fossil fuels, renewables and nuclear energy? See the breakdown of the energy mix.</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://owid.cloud/electricity-mix\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"404\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Electricity-Mix-768x404.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Electricity-Mix-768x404.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Electricity-Mix-400x210.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Electricity-Mix-800x421.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Electricity-Mix-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Electricity-Mix.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n \n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Explore the breakdown of the electricity mix and how this is changing.</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://owid.cloud/fossil-fuels\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"404\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Fossil-Fuels-768x404.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Fossil-Fuels-768x404.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Fossil-Fuels-400x210.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Fossil-Fuels-800x421.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Fossil-Fuels-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Fossil-Fuels.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n \n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>See the long-term changes in coal, oil and gas production and consumption.</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://owid.cloud/renewable-energy\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"404\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Renewable-Energy-768x404.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Renewable-Energy-768x404.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Renewable-Energy-400x210.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Renewable-Energy-800x421.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Renewable-Energy-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Renewable-Energy.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n \n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>How quickly are countries scaling up the production of renewable technologies? Explore the data.</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://owid.cloud/nuclear-energy\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"404\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Nuclear-Energy-768x404.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Nuclear-Energy-768x404.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Nuclear-Energy-400x210.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Nuclear-Energy-800x421.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Nuclear-Energy-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Nuclear-Energy.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n \n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Explore the long-term changes in nuclear energy production across the world.</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"http://ourworldindata.org/transport\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"404\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/09/transport-thumbnail-768x404.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/09/transport-thumbnail-768x404.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/09/transport-thumbnail-400x210.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/09/transport-thumbnail-800x421.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/09/transport-thumbnail-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/09/transport-thumbnail.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n \n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Explore trends in transport technologies and emissions across the world.</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n\t</div>", "protected": false }, "excerpt": { "rendered": "Access to electricity and clean cooking fuels are vital for a good standard of living and good health.", "protected": false }, "date_gmt": "2019-09-20T14:41:27", "modified": "2022-04-13T12:19:13", "template": "", "categories": [ 49, 48, 52, 192 ], "menu_order": 164, "ping_status": "closed", "authors_name": [ "Hannah Ritchie" ], "modified_gmt": "2022-04-13T11:19:13", "comment_status": "closed", "featured_media": 41041, "featured_media_paths": { "thumbnail": "/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-access-150x79.png", "medium_large": "/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-access-768x404.png" } }

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Access to Energy

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<ul><li><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#access-to-electricity">940 million (13% of the world) do not have access to electricity.</a></li><li><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#access-to-clean-fuels-for-cooking">3 billion (40% of the world) do not have access to clean fuels for cooking. This comes at a high health cost for indoor air pollution.</a></li><li><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#how-does-per-capita-electricity-consumption-vary-across-the-world">Per capita electricity consumption varies more than 100-fold across the world.</a></li><li><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#how-does-per-capita-energy-consumption-vary-across-the-world">Per capita energy consumption varies more than 10-fold across the world.</a></li><li><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#low-income-households-lack-access-to-electricity-and-clean-fuels">Energy access is strongly related to income: poorer households are more likely to lack access.</a></li></ul>   <p></p>    <h2>Access to electricity</h2>   <h3>What share of people have access to electricity?</h3>   <h4>13% of the world do not have access to electricity</h4>   <p>Electricity is a crucial for poverty alleviation, economic growth and improved living standards (these links are <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-and-changing-energy-sources/#energy-consumption-poverty-and-economic-growth">discussed later</a> in the entry).{ref}Also see: Panos, E., Densing, M., Volkart, K. (2016). Access to electricity in the World Energy Council's global energy scenarios: An outlook for developing regions until 2030. Energy Strategy Reviews, 9, 28-49. Available <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X15000450">online</a>.{/ref}</p>   <p>Measuring the share of people with electricity access is therefore an important social and economic indicator. There is no universally-adopted definition of what 'access to electricity' means. However, most definitions are aligned to the delivery of electricity, safe cooking facilities and a required minimum level of consumption. The <em>International Energy Agency</em> (IEA) definition entails more than just the delivery to the household. It also requires households to meet a specified minimum level of electricity, which is set based on whether the household is rural or urban, and which increases with time. For rural households, this minimum threshold is 250 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year and for an urban household it is 500 kWh per year.{ref}IEA (2016). World Energy Outlook 2016 – Methodology for Energy Access Analysis. Available <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/energymodel/documentation/EnergyAccess_Methodology_2016.pdf" target="_blank">online</a>.{/ref}</p>   <p>At a global level, the percentage of people with access to electricity has been steadily increasing over the last few decades. In 1990, around 71% of the world's population had access; this has increased to 87% in 2016.</p>   <p>This means 13% of the world did not have access to electricity in 2016.</p>   <p>High-income countries – or countries defined by the UN to be 'developed' <a href="https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/files/Metadata-07-01-01.pdf">are assumed</a> to have an electrification rate of 100% from the first year the country entered that category. Therefore, the increasing global share has primarily been driven by increased access in low and middle-income economies. In many countries, this trend has been striking: access in India, for example, increased from 43 percent to almost 85 percent. Indonesia is close to total electrification (sitting at almost 98 percent) – up from 62 percent in 1990. For countries with strong population growth, such improvements in the share of the population with access is even more impressive.</p>   <p>Whilst the trend is upward for most countries, a number are still severely lagging. At the lowest end of the spectrum, only 8.8 percent of Chad's population has electricity access. For some countries, significant improvements in access will remain a pressing challenge over the next few decades.</p>   <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-electricity-of-population" width="300" height="150"></iframe>   <h3>How many people don't have access to electricity?</h3>   <h4>940 million people do not have access to electricity globally</h4>    <p>Global access to electricity has been steadily rising in recent decades. In 1990 <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-access-to-electricity?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL" target="_blank">just over 71%</a> of the world population had access; by 2016 this had risen to over 87%.</p>   <p>This progress also holds true when we look at the <em>total number</em> of people without electricity access. In 2015, the total number without electricity <strong>fell below one billion</strong> for the first time in decades; very likely the first time in our history of electricity production.{ref}Although global electricity access data does not extend further back than the year 1990, I hypothesize that 2015 was the first year since the dawn of industrial electricity production that less than a billion have been without access. The global population was already over 1.4 billion by the time of <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth#shares-by-world-regions" target="_blank">the first power plant (in 1882)</a>. In fact, Asia (the world's most populous region) alone was approaching one billion at the end of the 19th century. The rapid development of the world's most populous regions has been focused within the most recent decades in the late 20th and early 21st century. Although the data is not available to confirm this, I would estimate that between 1882 and 1990 there has always been at least one billion people in the world without electricity access.{/ref}</p>   <p>This is shown in the chart: in 1990 more than 1.5 billion didn't have electricity; by 2015 this had fallen to 952 million. By 2016 it had fallen again to 940 million.</p>   <p>Progress has been fast. 1.26 billion got access to electricity for the first time in their lives between 2005 to 2016. Broken down to average daily change this means that on any average day in the last 11 years there were 314,770 people who got access to electricity for the first time in their lives.{ref}Number of people with access to electricity in 2005: 5,240,786,150<br>Number of people with access to electricity in 2016: 6,504,588,805<br>This is an average increase of 114,891,150 per year or 314,770 per day.{/ref}</p>   <p>This figure is still unacceptably high — and gains in access are moving much too slow to reach our <a href="https://sdg-tracker.org/energy#7.1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">goal of universal access by 2030</a>. This is particularly true for Sub-Saharan Africa — despite the <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-access-to-electricity?tab=chart&country=Sub-Saharan%20Africa" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>share</em> of the population with electricity</a> rising steadily, population growth meant that the total number of people without access was on the rise until 2016. Accelerated progress will be needed to ensure this number now continues to fall.</p>   <p>You can explore these numbers for any country or region using the "Change country" function in the bottom-left of the interactive chart. </p>   <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-people-with-and-without-electricity-access"></iframe>   <h4>The number of people without access to electricity by region and country</h4>   <p>In the chart we see the total number of people without access to electricity, grouped by world region.</p>   <p>Here we see a regional shift in electricity access over the past few decades: in 1990, nearly half (45 percent) of people in the world without access lived in South Asia. By 2016 this had shifted significantly: the largest share now lives in Sub-Saharan Africa (which is now home to nearly two-thirds of the world population without electricity access).</p>   <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-without-electricity-by-region"></iframe>   <p>This data is also available to explore by country in the map.</p>   <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/people-without-electricity-country?tab=map" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe>   <h2>Access to clean fuels for cooking</h2>   <h3>What share of people have access to clean fuels for cooking?</h3>   <h4>40% of the world do not have access to clean fuels for cooking</h4>   <p>The use of solid fuels for cooking is a primary risk factor for deaths and morbidity from <a href="https://owid.cloud/indoor-air-pollution">indoor air pollution</a>. The obvious way to avoid indoor air pollution from solid fuel burning is for households to transition from traditional ways of cooking and heating towards more modern, cleaner methods. This can, for example, be in the form of transitioning towards non-solid fuels such as natural gas, ethanol or even electric technologies.</p>   <p>In 2016, only 60% of the world population had access to clean fuels for cooking. This means 4-in-10 people globally did not have access.</p>   <p>The map shows the share of households with access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking across the world. This share has been increasing for most countries at low-to-middle incomes, however, rates of increase vary by country and region. Access to clean fuels are lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa where only 14% of households in 2016 had access. Progress has been much more significant in South Asia and East Asia over the last decade, with 18% and 16% of additional households gaining access, respectively.</p>   <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-clean-fuels-and-technologies-for-cooking" width="300" height="150"></iframe>   <h3>How many people do not have access to clean fuels for cooking?</h3>   <h4>3 billion people globally do not have access to clean fuels for cooking</h4>   <p>40% of the world did not have access to clean fuels for cooking in 2016. This equates to 3 billion people globally.</p>   <p>In the visualizations here we see the number of people globally with and without clean cooking fuels, and a world map of the number without access. The total number of people globally without clean cooking fuels has changed very little since 2000 – only falling from 3.1 to 3.03 billion since the turn of the century.</p>   <p>Both charts can be explored over time, and by country using the "change country" toggle, or by clicking on a given country on the world map.</p>   <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-with-without-clean-cooking-fuels" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe>   <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-without-clean-cooking-fuel" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe>   <h3>What share of people use solid fuels for cooking?</h3>   <p>The burning of solid fuels fills the houses and huts in poorer countries with smoke that kills the world’s poor by causing pneumonia, stroke, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer. The solid fuels responsible for this include wood, crop residues, dung, charcoal, and coal. The solution for this problem is straightforward: shift from solid fuels to modern energy sources.</p>   <p>And the following chart shows that the world is making progress in this direction. In 1980 almost two thirds of the world’s population used solid fuels for their cooking. 30 years later this is down to 41%. The chart also shows that it is a problem associated with poverty: In richer Europe and North America the share is much lower than in the rest of the world; and in the high income countries of the world the use of solid fuels is entirely a thing of the past.</p>   <p>The use of solid fuels is going down in all of the world’s regions. But the success rapidly developing South East Asia is particularly impressive: Here the share fell from 95% to 61%.</p>   <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-using-solid-fuels-for-cooking" width="300" height="150"></iframe>   <h2>How does per capita electricity generation vary across the world?</h2>   <h4>Per capita electricity generation varies more than 100-fold across the world</h4>   <p>Whilst access to electricity is an important metric to monitor (especially within a development context) it is insufficient in itself as a true measure of energy equity. Besides the fact that electricity is only one dimension of energy consumption (the others being transport and heating fuel), electricity access metrics provide no measure of levels of generation. </p>   <p>Electricity access does not provide an accurate indication of electricity or energy affordability at the individual or household level. Indeed, many households may only consume the minimum threshold of electricity usage necessary to be considered 'electrified' as a result of personal finance constraints.{ref}The minimum levels of consumption necessary to be considered as having electricity access based on International Energy Agency (IEA) methodology is 250kWh per year for rural households, and 500kWh per year for urban households. IEA methodology and definitions available <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/energymodel/documentation/EnergyAccess_Methodology_2016.pdf" target="_blank">online</a>.{/ref}</p>   <p> In the map here we see the differences in average per capita electricity generation across the world. </p>   <p>What becomes clear is the large inequalities which exist between countries. In many low-income countries, per capita electricity generation is more than 100-fold lower than the richest countries.</p>   <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-per-capita"></iframe>   <h2>How does per capita energy consumption vary across the world? </h2>   <h4>Per capita energy consumption varies more than 10-fold across the world</h4>   <p>In the map we see differences in per capita energy use; this is inclusive of all dimensions of energy (electricity plus transport and heating). There are several important points to note. </p>   <p>Firstly, there are large inequalities in energy consumption between countries. The average US citizen still consumes more than ten times the energy of the average Indian, 4-5 times that of a Brazilian, and three times more than China. The gulf between these and very low-income nations is even greater- a number of low-income nations consume less than 100 kilowatt-hour equivalents per person.</p>   <p>Secondly, global average per capita energy consumption has been consistently increasing; between 1970 and 2014, average consumption increased by approximately 45%.</p>   <p>This growth in per capita energy consumption does, however, vary significantly between countries and regions. Most of the growth in per capita energy consumption over the last few decades has been driven by increased consumption in transitioning middle-income (and to a lesser extent, low income countries). In the chart we see a significant increase in consumption in transitioning BRICS economies (China, India and Brazil in particular); China's per capita use has grown by nearly 250 percent since 2000; India by more than 50 percent; and Brazil by 38 percent.</p>   <p>Whilst global energy growth is growing from developing economies, the trend for many high-income nations is a notable decline. As we see in exemplar trends from the UK and US, the growth we are currently seeing in transitioning economies ended for many high-income nations by over the 1970s and 80s. Both the US and UK peaked in terms of per capita energy consumption in the 1970s, plateauing for several decades until the early 2000s. Since then, we see a reduction in consumption; since 2000, UK usage has decreased by 20 to 25%.</p>   <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-capita" width="300" height="150"></iframe>   <h2>What determines levels of energy access?</h2>   <h3>Low-income households lack access to electricity and clean fuels</h3>   <p>The availability (and affordability) of electricity and clean fuels for cooking is strongly related to income. Poor energy access is strongly tied to having a low income.</p>   <p>In the scatterplots here we see the relationship between access to electricity, and access to clean cooking fuels measured against <a href="https://owid.cloud/economic-growth">average income</a> (GDP per capita). In both metrics we see a strong positive correlation: energy access is low in poorer countries, and increases as incomes increase.</p>   <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-electricity-vs-gdp-per-capita" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe>   <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-clean-fuels-for-cooking-vs-gdp-per-capita"></iframe>   <h3>Rural households lag behind on energy access</h3>   <p>Access to electricity has been increasing globally, with most of this increase coming from low-to-middle income economies. However, access to electricity is not equally distributed between rural and urban demographics. </p>   <p>In the chart we have plotted the percentage of the rural population with electricity access (on the y-axis) versus the percentage of the urban population with access (x-axis). Countries which lie below the grey line have lower access in rural populations relative to access in urban areas. Nearly all lie below this line, meaning that for most nations electricity access in urban areas is higher than in rural regions.</p>   <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-rural-population-with-electricity-access-vs-share-of-total-population-with-electricity-access" width="300" height="150"></iframe>   <h2>Data Sources</h2>   <h4>World Development Indicators – World Bank</h4>   <ul><li><strong>Data: </strong>Access to electricity; Access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking; Electricity use per capita; Energy use per capita</li><li><strong>Geographical coverage:  </strong>Global – by country and world region</li><li><strong>Time span:</strong> Last decades</li><li><strong>Available at</strong>: <a href="http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators"></a><a href="http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators">http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators</a><em><br></em></li></ul>   <hr class="wp-block-separator"/>   <h4>IEA – International Energy Agency</h4>   <ul><li><strong>Data:</strong> Data on energy access and use</li><li><strong>Geographical coverage:</strong> Global – by country</li><li><strong>Time span:</strong> Last decades</li><li><strong>Available at: </strong>Online at <a href="http://data.iea.org/">www.iea.org</a><strong><br></strong></li><li><em>The IEA is publishing the <a href="http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/ ">World Energy Outlook</a>.</em></li><li><em><em> You have to pay to access the IEA databases. But some data is available through the World Bank's World Development Indicators.</em></em></li></ul>   <h2>Explore more of our work on Energy</h2>      <p>Explore all the metrics – energy production, electricity consumption, and breakdown of fossil fuels, renewable and nuclear energy.</p>     <p>Get an overview of energy for any country on a single page.</p>     <p>Download our complete dataset of energy metrics on GitHub. It's open-access and free for anyone to use.</p>     <p>See how access to electricity and clean cooking fuels vary across the world.</p>     <p>Explore long-term changes in energy production and consumption across the world.</p>     <p>How much of our energy comes from fossil fuels, renewables and nuclear energy? See the breakdown of the energy mix.</p>     <p>Explore the breakdown of the electricity mix and how this is changing.</p>     <p>See the long-term changes in coal, oil and gas production and consumption.</p>     <p>How quickly are countries scaling up the production of renewable technologies? Explore the data.</p>     <p>Explore the long-term changes in nuclear energy production across the world.</p>     <p>Explore trends in transport technologies and emissions across the world.</p>

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    "slug": "energy-access",
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                        "slug": "access-to-electricity",
                        "text": "940 million (13% of the world) do not have access to electricity."
                    },
                    {
                        "slug": "access-to-clean-fuels-for-cooking",
                        "text": "3 billion (40% of the world) do not have access to clean fuels for cooking. This comes at a high health cost for indoor air pollution."
                    },
                    {
                        "slug": "how-does-per-capita-electricity-consumption-vary-across-the-world",
                        "text": "Per capita electricity consumption varies more than 100-fold across the world."
                    },
                    {
                        "slug": "how-does-per-capita-energy-consumption-vary-across-the-world",
                        "text": "Per capita energy consumption varies more than 10-fold across the world."
                    },
                    {
                        "slug": "low-income-households-lack-access-to-electricity-and-clean-fuels",
                        "text": "Energy access is strongly related to income: poorer households are more likely to lack access."
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                        "text": "Access to electricity",
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                        "text": "What share of people have access to electricity?",
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                        "text": "13% of the world do not have access to electricity",
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                        "text": "Electricity is a crucial for poverty alleviation, economic growth and improved living standards (these links are ",
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                        "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-and-changing-energy-sources/#energy-consumption-poverty-and-economic-growth",
                        "children": [
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                                "text": "discussed later",
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                        ],
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                        "text": " in the entry).{ref}Also see: Panos, E., Densing, M., Volkart, K. (2016). Access to electricity in the World Energy Council's global energy scenarios: An outlook for developing regions until 2030.\u00a0Energy Strategy Reviews, 9, 28-49. Available ",
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                        "url": "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X15000450",
                        "children": [
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                                "text": "online",
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                        "text": ".{/ref}",
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                        "text": "Measuring the share of people with\u00a0electricity access is therefore an important social and economic indicator. There is no universally-adopted\u00a0definition of what 'access to electricity' means. However, most definitions are aligned to the delivery of electricity, safe cooking facilities and a required minimum level of consumption. The ",
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                        "children": [
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                                "text": "International Energy Agency",
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                        "text": " (IEA) definition\u00a0entails\u00a0more than just the delivery to the household. It also requires households to meet a specified minimum level of electricity, which is set based on whether the household is rural or urban, and which increases with time. For rural households, this minimum threshold is 250 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year and for an urban household it is 500 kWh per year.{ref}IEA (2016).\u00a0World Energy Outlook 2016 \u2013 Methodology for Energy Access Analysis. Available ",
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                        "url": "http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/energymodel/documentation/EnergyAccess_Methodology_2016.pdf",
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                                "text": "online",
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                        "text": ".{/ref}",
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                        "text": "At a global level, the percentage of people with access to electricity has been steadily increasing over the last few decades. In 1990, around 71%\u00a0of the world's population had access; this has increased to 87% in 2016.",
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                        "text": "This means 13% of the world did not have access to electricity in 2016.",
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                        "text": "High-income countries \u2013 or countries defined by the UN to be 'developed' ",
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                    },
                    {
                        "url": "https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/files/Metadata-07-01-01.pdf",
                        "children": [
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                                "text": "are assumed",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
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                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
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                        "text": " to have an electrification rate of 100% from the first year the country entered that category. Therefore, the increasing global share has primarily been driven by increased access in low and middle-income economies. In many countries, this trend has been striking: access in India, for example, increased from 43 percent to almost 85 percent. Indonesia\u00a0is close to total electrification (sitting at almost 98 percent) \u2013 up from 62 percent in 1990. For countries with strong population growth, such improvements in the share of the population with access is even more impressive.",
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                        "text": "Whilst the trend is upward for most countries, a number are still severely lagging. At the lowest end of the spectrum, only 8.8 percent of Chad's population has electricity access. For some countries, significant improvements in access will remain a pressing challenge over the next few decades.",
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                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-electricity-of-population",
                "type": "chart",
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                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "How many people don't have access to electricity?",
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                "text": [
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                        "text": "940 million people do not have access to electricity globally",
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                        "text": "Global access to electricity has been steadily rising in recent decades. In 1990 ",
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                        "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-access-to-electricity?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL",
                        "children": [
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                                "text": "just over 71%",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
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                        ],
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                        "text": " of the world population had access; by 2016 this had risen to over 87%.",
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                        "text": "This progress also holds true when we look at the ",
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                    {
                        "children": [
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                                "text": "total number",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
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                    {
                        "text": " of people without electricity access. In 2015, the total number without electricity\u00a0",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
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                    {
                        "children": [
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                                "text": "fell below one billion",
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                    {
                        "text": " for the first time in decades; very likely the first time in our history of electricity production.{ref}Although global electricity access data does not extend further back than the year 1990, I hypothesize that 2015 was the first year since the dawn of industrial electricity production that less than a billion have been without access. The global population was already over 1.4 billion by the time of ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth#shares-by-world-regions",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "the first power plant (in 1882)",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
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                        "text": ". In fact, Asia (the world's most populous region) alone was approaching one billion at the end of the 19th century. The rapid development of the world's most populous regions has been focused within the most recent decades in the late 20th and early 21st century. Although the data is not available to confirm this, I would estimate that between 1882 and 1990 there has always been at least one billion people in the world without electricity access.{/ref}",
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                        "text": "This is shown in the chart: in 1990 more than 1.5 billion didn't have electricity; by 2015 this had fallen to 952 million.\u00a0By 2016 it had fallen again to 940 million.",
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                        "text": "Progress has been fast. 1.26 billion got access to electricity for the first time in their lives between 2005 to 2016. Broken down to average daily change this means that on any average day in the last 11 years there were 314,770 people who got access to electricity for the first time in their lives.{ref}Number of people with access to electricity in 2005: 5,240,786,150",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
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                        "text": "Number of people with access to electricity in 2016: 6,504,588,805",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
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                        "spanType": "span-newline"
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                        "text": "This is an average increase of 114,891,150 per year or 314,770 per day.{/ref}",
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                        "text": "This figure is still unacceptably high\u00a0\u2014 and gains in access are moving much too slow to reach our ",
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                    {
                        "url": "https://sdg-tracker.org/energy#7.1",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "goal of universal access by 2030",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
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                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": ". This is particularly true for Sub-Saharan Africa\u00a0\u2014 despite the\u00a0",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-access-to-electricity?tab=chart&country=Sub-Saharan%20Africa",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "share",
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                            {
                                "text": " of the population with electricity",
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                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": " rising steadily, population growth meant that the total number of people without access was on the rise until 2016. Accelerated progress will be needed to ensure this number now continues to fall.",
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                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
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                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "You can explore these numbers for any country or region using the \"Change country\" function in the bottom-left of the interactive chart.\u00a0",
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                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-people-with-and-without-electricity-access",
                "type": "chart",
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "The number of people without access to electricity by region and country",
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                "type": "heading",
                "level": 4,
                "parseErrors": []
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                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "In the chart we see the total number of people without access to electricity, grouped by world region.",
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                        "text": "Here we see a regional shift in electricity access over the past few decades: in 1990, nearly half (45 percent) of people in the world without access lived in South Asia. By 2016 this had shifted significantly: the largest share now lives in Sub-Saharan Africa (which is now home to nearly two-thirds of the world population without electricity access).",
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            {
                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-without-electricity-by-region",
                "type": "chart",
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                "type": "text",
                "value": [
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                        "text": "This data is also available to explore by country in the map.",
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            {
                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/people-without-electricity-country?tab=map",
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            {
                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "Access to clean fuels for cooking",
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                ],
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                "level": 2,
                "parseErrors": []
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                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "What share of people have access to clean fuels for cooking?",
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                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "40% of the world do not have access to clean fuels for cooking",
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                    {
                        "text": "The use of solid fuels for cooking is a primary risk factor for deaths and morbidity from ",
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                    },
                    {
                        "url": "https://owid.cloud/indoor-air-pollution",
                        "children": [
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                                "text": "indoor air pollution",
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                        "text": ". The obvious way to avoid indoor air pollution from solid fuel burning is for households to transition from traditional ways of cooking and heating towards more modern, cleaner methods. This can, for example, be in the form of transitioning towards non-solid fuels such as natural gas, ethanol or even electric technologies.",
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                        "text": "In 2016, only 60% of the world population had access to clean fuels for cooking. This means 4-in-10 people globally did not have access.",
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                        "text": "The map shows the share of households with access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking across the world. This share has been increasing for most countries at low-to-middle incomes, however, rates of increase vary by country and region. Access to clean fuels are lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa where only 14% of households in 2016 had access. Progress has been much more significant in South Asia and East Asia over the last decade, with 18% and 16% of additional households gaining access, respectively.",
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                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-clean-fuels-and-technologies-for-cooking",
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                "text": [
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                        "text": "How many people do not have access to clean fuels for cooking?",
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                "text": [
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                        "text": "3 billion people globally do not have access to clean fuels for cooking",
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                        "text": "40% of the world did not have access to clean fuels for cooking in 2016. This equates to 3 billion people globally.",
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                        "text": "This growth in per capita energy consumption does, however, vary significantly between countries and regions. Most of the growth in per capita energy consumption over the last few decades has been driven by increased consumption in transitioning middle-income (and to a lesser extent, low income countries). In the chart we see a significant increase in consumption\u00a0in transitioning BRICS economies (China, India and Brazil in particular); China's per capita use has grown by nearly 250 percent since 2000; India by more than 50 percent; and Brazil by 38 percent.",
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2019-09-20 14:41:27

2024-02-16 14:22:40

1UstiwtN6kOSn3jv9fg_7WwjamPyepzz6rmvfE6_rGZE

[
    "Hannah Ritchie"
]

Access to electricity and clean cooking fuels are vital for a good standard of living and good health.

2019-09-20 15:41:27

2022-04-13 11:19:13

https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Energy-access.png

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## Access to electricity ### What share of people have access to electricity? #### 13% of the world do not have access to electricity Electricity is a crucial for poverty alleviation, economic growth and improved living standards (these links are [discussed later](https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-and-changing-energy-sources/#energy-consumption-poverty-and-economic-growth) in the entry).{ref}Also see: Panos, E., Densing, M., Volkart, K. (2016). Access to electricity in the World Energy Council's global energy scenarios: An outlook for developing regions until 2030. Energy Strategy Reviews, 9, 28-49. Available [online](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X15000450).{/ref} Measuring the share of people with electricity access is therefore an important social and economic indicator. There is no universally-adopted definition of what 'access to electricity' means. However, most definitions are aligned to the delivery of electricity, safe cooking facilities and a required minimum level of consumption. The _International Energy Agency_ (IEA) definition entails more than just the delivery to the household. It also requires households to meet a specified minimum level of electricity, which is set based on whether the household is rural or urban, and which increases with time. For rural households, this minimum threshold is 250 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year and for an urban household it is 500 kWh per year.{ref}IEA (2016). World Energy Outlook 2016 – Methodology for Energy Access Analysis. Available [online](http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/energymodel/documentation/EnergyAccess_Methodology_2016.pdf).{/ref} At a global level, the percentage of people with access to electricity has been steadily increasing over the last few decades. In 1990, around 71% of the world's population had access; this has increased to 87% in 2016. This means 13% of the world did not have access to electricity in 2016. High-income countries – or countries defined by the UN to be 'developed' [are assumed](https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/files/Metadata-07-01-01.pdf) to have an electrification rate of 100% from the first year the country entered that category. Therefore, the increasing global share has primarily been driven by increased access in low and middle-income economies. In many countries, this trend has been striking: access in India, for example, increased from 43 percent to almost 85 percent. Indonesia is close to total electrification (sitting at almost 98 percent) – up from 62 percent in 1990. For countries with strong population growth, such improvements in the share of the population with access is even more impressive. Whilst the trend is upward for most countries, a number are still severely lagging. At the lowest end of the spectrum, only 8.8 percent of Chad's population has electricity access. For some countries, significant improvements in access will remain a pressing challenge over the next few decades. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-electricity-of-population"/> ### How many people don't have access to electricity? #### 940 million people do not have access to electricity globally Global access to electricity has been steadily rising in recent decades. In 1990 [just over 71%](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-access-to-electricity?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL) of the world population had access; by 2016 this had risen to over 87%. This progress also holds true when we look at the _total number_ of people without electricity access. In 2015, the total number without electricity **fell below one billion** for the first time in decades; very likely the first time in our history of electricity production.{ref}Although global electricity access data does not extend further back than the year 1990, I hypothesize that 2015 was the first year since the dawn of industrial electricity production that less than a billion have been without access. The global population was already over 1.4 billion by the time of [the first power plant (in 1882)](https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth#shares-by-world-regions). In fact, Asia (the world's most populous region) alone was approaching one billion at the end of the 19th century. The rapid development of the world's most populous regions has been focused within the most recent decades in the late 20th and early 21st century. Although the data is not available to confirm this, I would estimate that between 1882 and 1990 there has always been at least one billion people in the world without electricity access.{/ref} This is shown in the chart: in 1990 more than 1.5 billion didn't have electricity; by 2015 this had fallen to 952 million. By 2016 it had fallen again to 940 million. Progress has been fast. 1.26 billion got access to electricity for the first time in their lives between 2005 to 2016. Broken down to average daily change this means that on any average day in the last 11 years there were 314,770 people who got access to electricity for the first time in their lives.{ref}Number of people with access to electricity in 2005: 5,240,786,150 Number of people with access to electricity in 2016: 6,504,588,805 This is an average increase of 114,891,150 per year or 314,770 per day.{/ref} This figure is still unacceptably high — and gains in access are moving much too slow to reach our [goal of universal access by 2030](https://sdg-tracker.org/energy#7.1). This is particularly true for Sub-Saharan Africa — despite the [_share_ of the population with electricity](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-access-to-electricity?tab=chart&country=Sub-Saharan%20Africa) rising steadily, population growth meant that the total number of people without access was on the rise until 2016. Accelerated progress will be needed to ensure this number now continues to fall. You can explore these numbers for any country or region using the "Change country" function in the bottom-left of the interactive chart. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-people-with-and-without-electricity-access"/> #### The number of people without access to electricity by region and country In the chart we see the total number of people without access to electricity, grouped by world region. Here we see a regional shift in electricity access over the past few decades: in 1990, nearly half (45 percent) of people in the world without access lived in South Asia. By 2016 this had shifted significantly: the largest share now lives in Sub-Saharan Africa (which is now home to nearly two-thirds of the world population without electricity access). <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-without-electricity-by-region"/> This data is also available to explore by country in the map. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/people-without-electricity-country?tab=map"/> ## Access to clean fuels for cooking ### What share of people have access to clean fuels for cooking? #### 40% of the world do not have access to clean fuels for cooking The use of solid fuels for cooking is a primary risk factor for deaths and morbidity from [indoor air pollution](https://owid.cloud/indoor-air-pollution). The obvious way to avoid indoor air pollution from solid fuel burning is for households to transition from traditional ways of cooking and heating towards more modern, cleaner methods. This can, for example, be in the form of transitioning towards non-solid fuels such as natural gas, ethanol or even electric technologies. In 2016, only 60% of the world population had access to clean fuels for cooking. This means 4-in-10 people globally did not have access. The map shows the share of households with access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking across the world. This share has been increasing for most countries at low-to-middle incomes, however, rates of increase vary by country and region. Access to clean fuels are lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa where only 14% of households in 2016 had access. Progress has been much more significant in South Asia and East Asia over the last decade, with 18% and 16% of additional households gaining access, respectively. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-clean-fuels-and-technologies-for-cooking"/> ### How many people do not have access to clean fuels for cooking? #### 3 billion people globally do not have access to clean fuels for cooking 40% of the world did not have access to clean fuels for cooking in 2016. This equates to 3 billion people globally. In the visualizations here we see the number of people globally with and without clean cooking fuels, and a world map of the number without access. The total number of people globally without clean cooking fuels has changed very little since 2000 – only falling from 3.1 to 3.03 billion since the turn of the century. Both charts can be explored over time, and by country using the "change country" toggle, or by clicking on a given country on the world map. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-with-without-clean-cooking-fuels"/> <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-without-clean-cooking-fuel"/> ### What share of people use solid fuels for cooking? The burning of solid fuels fills the houses and huts in poorer countries with smoke that kills the world’s poor by causing pneumonia, stroke, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer. The solid fuels responsible for this include wood, crop residues, dung, charcoal, and coal. The solution for this problem is straightforward: shift from solid fuels to modern energy sources. And the following chart shows that the world is making progress in this direction. In 1980 almost two thirds of the world’s population used solid fuels for their cooking. 30 years later this is down to 41%. The chart also shows that it is a problem associated with poverty: In richer Europe and North America the share is much lower than in the rest of the world; and in the high income countries of the world the use of solid fuels is entirely a thing of the past. The use of solid fuels is going down in all of the world’s regions. But the success rapidly developing South East Asia is particularly impressive: Here the share fell from 95% to 61%. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-using-solid-fuels-for-cooking"/> ## How does per capita electricity generation vary across the world? #### Per capita electricity generation varies more than 100-fold across the world Whilst access to electricity is an important metric to monitor (especially within a development context) it is insufficient in itself as a true measure of energy equity. Besides the fact that electricity is only one dimension of energy consumption (the others being transport and heating fuel), electricity access metrics provide no measure of levels of generation. Electricity access does not provide an accurate indication of electricity or energy affordability at the individual or household level. Indeed, many households may only consume the minimum threshold of electricity usage necessary to be considered 'electrified' as a result of personal finance constraints.{ref}The minimum levels of consumption necessary to be considered as having electricity access based on International Energy Agency (IEA) methodology is 250kWh per year for rural households, and 500kWh per year for urban households. IEA methodology and definitions available [online](http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/energymodel/documentation/EnergyAccess_Methodology_2016.pdf).{/ref} In the map here we see the differences in average per capita electricity generation across the world. What becomes clear is the large inequalities which exist between countries. In many low-income countries, per capita electricity generation is more than 100-fold lower than the richest countries. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-per-capita"/> ## How does per capita energy consumption vary across the world? #### Per capita energy consumption varies more than 10-fold across the world In the map we see differences in per capita energy use; this is inclusive of all dimensions of energy (electricity plus transport and heating). There are several important points to note. Firstly, there are large inequalities in energy consumption between countries. The average US citizen still consumes more than ten times the energy of the average Indian, 4-5 times that of a Brazilian, and three times more than China. The gulf between these and very low-income nations is even greater- a number of low-income nations consume less than 100 kilowatt-hour equivalents per person. Secondly, global average per capita energy consumption has been consistently increasing; between 1970 and 2014, average consumption increased by approximately 45%. This growth in per capita energy consumption does, however, vary significantly between countries and regions. Most of the growth in per capita energy consumption over the last few decades has been driven by increased consumption in transitioning middle-income (and to a lesser extent, low income countries). In the chart we see a significant increase in consumption in transitioning BRICS economies (China, India and Brazil in particular); China's per capita use has grown by nearly 250 percent since 2000; India by more than 50 percent; and Brazil by 38 percent. Whilst global energy growth is growing from developing economies, the trend for many high-income nations is a notable decline. As we see in exemplar trends from the UK and US, the growth we are currently seeing in transitioning economies ended for many high-income nations by over the 1970s and 80s. Both the US and UK peaked in terms of per capita energy consumption in the 1970s, plateauing for several decades until the early 2000s. Since then, we see a reduction in consumption; since 2000, UK usage has decreased by 20 to 25%. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-capita"/> ## What determines levels of energy access? ### Low-income households lack access to electricity and clean fuels The availability (and affordability) of electricity and clean fuels for cooking is strongly related to income. Poor energy access is strongly tied to having a low income. In the scatterplots here we see the relationship between access to electricity, and access to clean cooking fuels measured against [average income](https://owid.cloud/economic-growth) (GDP per capita). In both metrics we see a strong positive correlation: energy access is low in poorer countries, and increases as incomes increase. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-electricity-vs-gdp-per-capita"/> <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-clean-fuels-for-cooking-vs-gdp-per-capita"/> ### Rural households lag behind on energy access Access to electricity has been increasing globally, with most of this increase coming from low-to-middle income economies. However, access to electricity is not equally distributed between rural and urban demographics. In the chart we have plotted the percentage of the rural population with electricity access (on the y-axis) versus the percentage of the urban population with access (x-axis). Countries which lie below the grey line have lower access in rural populations relative to access in urban areas. Nearly all lie below this line, meaning that for most nations electricity access in urban areas is higher than in rural regions. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-rural-population-with-electricity-access-vs-share-of-total-population-with-electricity-access"/> ## Data Sources #### World Development Indicators – World Bank * **Data: **Access to electricity; Access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking; Electricity use per capita; Energy use per capita * **Geographical coverage: **Global – by country and world region * **Time span:** Last decades * **Available at**: [](http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators)[http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators](http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators)_ _ #### IEA – International Energy Agency * **Data:** Data on energy access and use * **Geographical coverage:** Global – by country * **Time span:** Last decades * **Available at: **Online at [www.iea.org](http://data.iea.org/)** ** * _The IEA is publishing the [World Energy Outlook](http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/ )._ * __ You have to pay to access the IEA databases. But some data is available through the World Bank's World Development Indicators.__ ## Explore more of our work on Energy Explore all the metrics – energy production, electricity consumption, and breakdown of fossil fuels, renewable and nuclear energy. Get an overview of energy for any country on a single page. Download our complete dataset of energy metrics on GitHub. It's open-access and free for anyone to use. See how access to electricity and clean cooking fuels vary across the world. Explore long-term changes in energy production and consumption across the world. How much of our energy comes from fossil fuels, renewables and nuclear energy? See the breakdown of the energy mix. Explore the breakdown of the electricity mix and how this is changing. See the long-term changes in coal, oil and gas production and consumption. How quickly are countries scaling up the production of renewable technologies? Explore the data. Explore the long-term changes in nuclear energy production across the world. Explore trends in transport technologies and emissions across the world.

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        "rendered": "\n<!-- formatting-options subnavId:energy subnavCurrentId:energy-access -->\n\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-summary\">\n\t\t<h2>Summary</h2>\n\t\t\n\n<ul><li><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#access-to-electricity\">940 million (13% of the world) do not have access to electricity.</a></li><li><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#access-to-clean-fuels-for-cooking\">3 billion (40% of the world) do not have access to clean fuels for cooking. This comes at a high health cost for indoor air pollution.</a></li><li><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#how-does-per-capita-electricity-consumption-vary-across-the-world\">Per capita electricity consumption varies more than 100-fold across the world.</a></li><li><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#how-does-per-capita-energy-consumption-vary-across-the-world\">Per capita energy consumption varies more than 10-fold across the world.</a></li><li><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#low-income-households-lack-access-to-electricity-and-clean-fuels\">Energy access is strongly related to income: poorer households are more likely to lack access.</a></li></ul>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<h2>Access to electricity</h2>\n\n\n\n<h3>What share of people have access to electricity?</h3>\n\n\n\n<h4>13% of the world do not have access to electricity</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Electricity is a crucial for poverty alleviation, economic growth and improved living standards (these links are <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-and-changing-energy-sources/#energy-consumption-poverty-and-economic-growth\">discussed later</a> in the entry).{ref}Also see: Panos, E., Densing, M., Volkart, K. (2016). Access to electricity in the World Energy Council&#8217;s global energy scenarios: An outlook for developing regions until 2030.&nbsp;Energy Strategy Reviews, 9, 28-49. Available <a href=\"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X15000450\">online</a>.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Measuring the share of people with&nbsp;electricity access is therefore an important social and economic indicator. There is no universally-adopted&nbsp;definition of what &#8216;access to electricity&#8217; means. However, most definitions are aligned to the delivery of electricity, safe cooking facilities and a required minimum level of consumption. The <em>International Energy Agency</em> (IEA) definition&nbsp;entails&nbsp;more than just the delivery to the household. It also requires households to meet a specified minimum level of electricity, which is set based on whether the household is rural or urban, and which increases with time. For rural households, this minimum threshold is 250 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year and for an urban household it is 500 kWh per year.{ref}IEA (2016).&nbsp;World Energy Outlook 2016 \u2013 Methodology for Energy Access Analysis. Available <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/energymodel/documentation/EnergyAccess_Methodology_2016.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">online</a>.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>At a global level, the percentage of people with access to electricity has been steadily increasing over the last few decades. In 1990, around 71%&nbsp;of the world&#8217;s population had access; this has increased to 87% in 2016.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This means 13% of the world did not have access to electricity in 2016.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>High-income countries \u2013 or countries defined by the UN to be &#8216;developed&#8217; <a href=\"https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/files/Metadata-07-01-01.pdf\">are assumed</a> to have an electrification rate of 100% from the first year the country entered that category. Therefore, the increasing global share has primarily been driven by increased access in low and middle-income economies. In many countries, this trend has been striking: access in India, for example, increased from 43 percent to almost 85 percent. Indonesia&nbsp;is close to total electrification (sitting at almost 98 percent) \u2013 up from 62 percent in 1990. For countries with strong population growth, such improvements in the share of the population with access is even more impressive.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whilst the trend is upward for most countries, a number are still severely lagging. At the lowest end of the spectrum, only 8.8 percent of Chad&#8217;s population has electricity access. For some countries, significant improvements in access will remain a pressing challenge over the next few decades.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-electricity-of-population\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h3>How many people don&#8217;t have access to electricity?</h3>\n\n\n\n<h4>940 million people do not have access to electricity globally</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Global access to electricity has been steadily rising in recent decades. In 1990 <a rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-access-to-electricity?tab=chart&amp;country=OWID_WRL\" target=\"_blank\">just over 71%</a> of the world population had access; by 2016 this had risen to over 87%.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This progress also holds true when we look at the <em>total number</em> of people without electricity access. In 2015, the total number without electricity\u00a0<strong>fell below one billion</strong> for the first time in decades; very likely the first time in our history of electricity production.{ref}Although global electricity access data does not extend further back than the year 1990, I hypothesize that 2015 was the first year since the dawn of industrial electricity production that less than a billion have been without access. The global population was already over 1.4 billion by the time of <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth#shares-by-world-regions\" target=\"_blank\">the first power plant (in 1882)</a>. In fact, Asia (the world&#8217;s most populous region) alone was approaching one billion at the end of the 19th century. The rapid development of the world&#8217;s most populous regions has been focused within the most recent decades in the late 20th and early 21st century. Although the data is not available to confirm this, I would estimate that between 1882 and 1990 there has always been at least one billion people in the world without electricity access.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is shown in the chart: in 1990 more than 1.5 billion didn&#8217;t have electricity; by 2015 this had fallen to 952 million.\u00a0By 2016 it had fallen again to 940 million.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Progress has been fast. 1.26 billion got access to electricity for the first time in their lives between 2005 to 2016. Broken down to average daily change this means that on any average day in the last 11 years there were 314,770 people who got access to electricity for the first time in their lives.{ref}Number of people with access to electricity in 2005: 5,240,786,150<br>Number of people with access to electricity in 2016: 6,504,588,805<br>This is an average increase of 114,891,150 per year or 314,770 per day.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This figure is still unacceptably high&nbsp;\u2014 and gains in access are moving much too slow to reach our <a href=\"https://sdg-tracker.org/energy#7.1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">goal of universal access by 2030</a>. This is particularly true for Sub-Saharan Africa&nbsp;\u2014 despite the&nbsp;<a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-access-to-electricity?tab=chart&amp;country=Sub-Saharan%20Africa\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>share</em> of the population with electricity</a> rising steadily, population growth meant that the total number of people without access was on the rise until 2016. Accelerated progress will be needed to ensure this number now continues to fall.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can explore these numbers for any country or region using the &#8220;Change country&#8221; function in the bottom-left of the interactive chart.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-people-with-and-without-electricity-access\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h4>The number of people without access to electricity by region and country</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>In the chart we see the total number of people without access to electricity, grouped by world region.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here we see a regional shift in electricity access over the past few decades: in 1990, nearly half (45 percent) of people in the world without access lived in South Asia. By 2016 this had shifted significantly: the largest share now lives in Sub-Saharan Africa (which is now home to nearly two-thirds of the world population without electricity access).</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-without-electricity-by-region\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<p>This data is also available to explore by country in the map.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/people-without-electricity-country?tab=map\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h2>Access to clean fuels for cooking</h2>\n\n\n\n<h3>What share of people have access to clean fuels for cooking?</h3>\n\n\n\n<h4>40% of the world do not have access to clean fuels for cooking</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>The use of solid fuels for cooking is a primary risk factor for deaths and morbidity from <a href=\"https://owid.cloud/indoor-air-pollution\">indoor air pollution</a>. The obvious way to avoid indoor air pollution from solid fuel burning is for households to transition from traditional ways of cooking and heating towards more modern, cleaner methods. This can, for example, be in the form of transitioning towards non-solid fuels such as natural gas, ethanol or even electric technologies.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2016, only 60% of the world population had access to clean fuels for cooking. This means 4-in-10 people globally did not have access.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The map shows the share of households with access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking across the world. This share has been increasing for most countries at low-to-middle incomes, however, rates of increase vary by country and region. Access to clean fuels are lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa where only 14% of households in 2016 had access. Progress has been much more significant in South Asia and East Asia over the last decade, with 18% and 16% of additional households gaining access, respectively.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-clean-fuels-and-technologies-for-cooking\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h3>How many people do not have access to clean fuels for cooking?</h3>\n\n\n\n<h4>3 billion people globally do not have access to clean fuels for cooking</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>40% of the world did not have access to clean fuels for cooking in 2016. This equates to 3 billion people globally.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the visualizations here we see the number of people globally with and without clean cooking fuels, and a world map of the number without access. The total number of people globally without clean cooking fuels has changed very little since 2000 \u2013 only falling from 3.1 to 3.03 billion since the turn of the century.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Both charts can be explored over time, and by country using the &#8220;change country&#8221; toggle, or by clicking on a given country on the world map.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-with-without-clean-cooking-fuels\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-without-clean-cooking-fuel\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h3>What share of people use solid fuels for cooking?</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The burning of solid fuels fills the houses and huts in poorer countries with smoke that kills the world\u2019s poor by causing pneumonia, stroke, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer. The solid fuels responsible for this include wood, crop residues, dung, charcoal, and coal. The solution for this problem is straightforward: shift from solid fuels to modern energy sources.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the following chart shows that the world is making progress in this direction. In 1980 almost two thirds of the world\u2019s population used solid fuels for their cooking. 30 years later this is down to 41%. The chart also shows that it is a problem associated with poverty: In richer Europe and North America the share is much lower than in the rest of the world; and in the high income countries of the world the use of solid fuels is entirely a thing of the past.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The use of solid fuels is going down in all of the world\u2019s regions. But the success rapidly developing South East Asia is particularly impressive: Here the share fell from 95% to 61%.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-using-solid-fuels-for-cooking\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h2>How does per capita electricity generation vary across the world?</h2>\n\n\n\n<h4>Per capita electricity generation varies more than 100-fold across the world</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Whilst access to electricity is an important metric to monitor (especially within a development context) it is insufficient in itself as a true measure of energy equity. Besides the fact that electricity is only one dimension of energy consumption (the others being transport and heating fuel), electricity access metrics provide no measure of levels of generation. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Electricity access does not provide an accurate indication of electricity or energy affordability at the individual or household level. Indeed, many households may only consume the minimum threshold of electricity usage necessary to be considered &#8216;electrified&#8217; as a result of personal finance constraints.{ref}The minimum levels of consumption necessary to be considered&nbsp;as having electricity access based on International Energy Agency (IEA) methodology is 250kWh per year for rural households, and 500kWh per year for urban households. IEA methodology and definitions available <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/energymodel/documentation/EnergyAccess_Methodology_2016.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">online</a>.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p> In the map here we see the differences in average per capita electricity generation across the world. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>What becomes clear is the large inequalities which exist between countries. In many low-income countries, per capita electricity generation is more than 100-fold lower than the richest countries.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-per-capita\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h2>How does per capita energy consumption vary across the world? </h2>\n\n\n\n<h4>Per capita energy consumption varies more than 10-fold across the world</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>In the map we see differences in per capita energy use; this is inclusive of all dimensions of energy (electricity plus transport and heating). There are several important points to note. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Firstly, there are large inequalities in energy consumption between countries. The average US citizen still consumes more than ten times the energy of the average Indian, 4-5 times that of a Brazilian, and three times more than China. The gulf between these and very low-income nations is even greater- a number of&nbsp;low-income nations consume less than 100 kilowatt-hour equivalents per person.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Secondly, global average per capita energy consumption has been consistently increasing; between 1970 and 2014, average consumption increased by approximately 45%.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This growth in per capita energy consumption does, however, vary significantly between countries and regions. Most of the growth in per capita energy consumption over the last few decades has been driven by increased consumption in transitioning middle-income (and to a lesser extent, low income countries). In the chart we see a significant increase in consumption&nbsp;in transitioning BRICS economies (China, India and Brazil in particular); China&#8217;s per capita use has grown by nearly 250 percent since 2000; India by more than 50 percent; and Brazil by 38 percent.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whilst global energy growth is growing from developing economies, the trend for many high-income nations is a notable decline. As we see in exemplar trends from the UK and US, the growth we are currently seeing in transitioning economies ended for many high-income nations by over the 1970s and 80s. Both the US and UK peaked in terms of per capita energy consumption in the 1970s, plateauing for several decades until the early 2000s. Since then, we see a reduction in consumption; since 2000, UK usage has decreased by 20 to 25%.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-capita\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h2>What determines levels of energy access?</h2>\n\n\n\n<h3>Low-income households lack access to electricity and clean fuels</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The availability (and affordability) of electricity and clean fuels for cooking is strongly related to income. Poor energy access is strongly tied to having a low income.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the scatterplots here we see the relationship between access to electricity, and access to clean cooking fuels measured against <a href=\"https://owid.cloud/economic-growth\">average income</a> (GDP per capita). In both metrics we see a strong positive correlation: energy access is low in poorer countries, and increases as incomes increase.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-electricity-vs-gdp-per-capita\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/access-to-clean-fuels-for-cooking-vs-gdp-per-capita\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h3>Rural households lag behind on energy access</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Access to electricity has been increasing globally, with most of this increase coming from low-to-middle income economies. However, access to electricity is not equally distributed between rural and urban demographics. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the chart we have plotted the percentage&nbsp;of the rural population with electricity access (on the y-axis) versus the percentage of the urban population with access (x-axis). Countries which lie below the grey line have lower access in rural populations relative to access in urban areas. Nearly all lie below this line, meaning that for most nations electricity access in urban areas is higher than in rural regions.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-rural-population-with-electricity-access-vs-share-of-total-population-with-electricity-access\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h2>Data Sources</h2>\n\n\n\n<h4>World Development Indicators \u2013 World Bank</h4>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><strong>Data:&nbsp;</strong>Access to electricity; Access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking; Electricity use per capita; Energy use per capita</li><li><strong>Geographical coverage:&nbsp; </strong>Global \u2013 by country and world region</li><li><strong>Time span:</strong> Last decades</li><li><strong>Available at</strong>: <a href=\"http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators\"></a><a href=\"http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators\">http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators</a><em><br></em></li></ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"/>\n\n\n\n<h4>IEA \u2013 International Energy Agency</h4>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><strong>Data:</strong>&nbsp;Data on energy access and use</li><li><strong>Geographical coverage:</strong> Global \u2013 by country</li><li><strong>Time span:</strong>&nbsp;Last decades</li><li><strong>Available at: </strong>Online at <a href=\"http://data.iea.org/\">www.iea.org</a><strong><br></strong></li><li><em>The IEA is publishing the <a href=\"http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/ \">World Energy Outlook</a>.</em></li><li><em><em>&nbsp;You have to pay to access the IEA databases. But some data is available through the World Bank&#8217;s World Development Indicators.</em></em></li></ul>\n\n\n\n<h2>Explore more of our work on Energy</h2>\n\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-grid \">\n\t\t\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"404\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/data_explorer-featured-768x404.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"COVID-19 data explorer\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/data_explorer-featured-768x404.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/data_explorer-featured-400x210.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/data_explorer-featured-800x421.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/data_explorer-featured-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/data_explorer-featured.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              \n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Explore all the metrics \u2013 energy production, electricity consumption, and breakdown of fossil fuels, renewable and nuclear energy.</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/energy#country-profiles\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"404\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/country_profiles-featured-768x404.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"COVID-19 country profiles\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/country_profiles-featured-768x404.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/country_profiles-featured-400x210.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/country_profiles-featured-800x421.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/country_profiles-featured-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/country_profiles-featured.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              \n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Get an overview of energy for any country on a single page.</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://github.com/owid/energy-data\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"404\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/download_dataset-featured-768x404.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"download complete COVID-19 dataset\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/download_dataset-featured-768x404.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/download_dataset-featured-400x210.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/download_dataset-featured-800x421.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/download_dataset-featured-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/01/download_dataset-featured.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              \n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Download our complete dataset of energy metrics on GitHub.  It&#8217;s open-access and free for anyone to use.</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"404\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-access-768x404.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-access-768x404.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-access-400x210.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-access-800x421.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-access-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-access.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              \n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>See how access to electricity and clean cooking fuels vary across the world.</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"404\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-production-768x404.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-production-768x404.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-production-400x210.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-production-800x421.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-production-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-production.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              \n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Explore long-term changes in energy production and consumption across the world.</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://owid.cloud/energy-mix\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"404\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-mix-768x404.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-mix-768x404.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-mix-400x210.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-mix-800x421.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-mix-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-mix.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              \n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>How much of our energy comes from fossil fuels, renewables and nuclear energy? See the breakdown of the energy mix.</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://owid.cloud/electricity-mix\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"404\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Electricity-Mix-768x404.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Electricity-Mix-768x404.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Electricity-Mix-400x210.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Electricity-Mix-800x421.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Electricity-Mix-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Electricity-Mix.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              \n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Explore the breakdown of the electricity mix and how this is changing.</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://owid.cloud/fossil-fuels\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"404\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Fossil-Fuels-768x404.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Fossil-Fuels-768x404.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Fossil-Fuels-400x210.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Fossil-Fuels-800x421.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Fossil-Fuels-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Fossil-Fuels.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              \n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>See the long-term changes in coal, oil and gas production and consumption.</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://owid.cloud/renewable-energy\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"404\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Renewable-Energy-768x404.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Renewable-Energy-768x404.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Renewable-Energy-400x210.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Renewable-Energy-800x421.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Renewable-Energy-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Renewable-Energy.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              \n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>How quickly are countries scaling up the production of renewable technologies? Explore the data.</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://owid.cloud/nuclear-energy\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"404\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Nuclear-Energy-768x404.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Nuclear-Energy-768x404.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Nuclear-Energy-400x210.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Nuclear-Energy-800x421.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Nuclear-Energy-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/Nuclear-Energy.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              \n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Explore the long-term changes in nuclear energy production across the world.</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"http://ourworldindata.org/transport\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"404\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/09/transport-thumbnail-768x404.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/09/transport-thumbnail-768x404.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/09/transport-thumbnail-400x210.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/09/transport-thumbnail-800x421.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/09/transport-thumbnail-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/09/transport-thumbnail.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              \n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Explore trends in transport technologies and emissions across the world.</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n\t</div>",
        "protected": false
    },
    "excerpt": {
        "rendered": "Access to electricity and clean cooking fuels are vital for a good standard of living and good health.",
        "protected": false
    },
    "date_gmt": "2019-09-20T14:41:27",
    "modified": "2022-04-13T12:19:13",
    "template": "",
    "categories": [
        49,
        48,
        52,
        192
    ],
    "menu_order": 164,
    "ping_status": "closed",
    "authors_name": [
        "Hannah Ritchie"
    ],
    "modified_gmt": "2022-04-13T11:19:13",
    "comment_status": "closed",
    "featured_media": 41041,
    "featured_media_paths": {
        "thumbnail": "/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-access-150x79.png",
        "medium_large": "/app/uploads/2021/02/Energy-access-768x404.png"
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}

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