Access to energy is one of the big global issues that has
hovered around the fringes of international policy discussions
such as the Millennium Development Goals or climate policy, but
which has been getting more attention in recent years. In my
frequent lectures on climate policy I point out to people that
1.3 billion people worldwide lack any access to electricity and
an 2.6 billion more cook with wood, charcoal, tree leaves, crop
residues and animal waste (an additional 400 million cook with
coal). The "success" scenarios of climate advocates hoping to
power the world with carbon-free energy almost always leave a
billion or more people in the dark and several billion cooking
with dirty fuels. Sometimes, magic is invoked to suggest that
"electricity can be brought to everyone" without appreciably
increasing carbon emissions. Of course, if we could bring
electricity to the 1.3 billion without any access with no effect
on emissions, then we could probably do it for 6 billion others.
There is a devil in the de