Energy poverty continues to pose a global development challenge. Around the world, 1.4 billion people lack access to electricity, and over 2.9 billion people continue to rely on traditional biomass fuels for their cooking and heating needs. For people in these communities, the absence of affordable, reliable energy has significant consequences for human health, welfare, and economic development.

Women and girls are particularly affected, as they are usually responsible for collecting firewood and cooking; smoke inhalation from using traditional stoves and open fires is a major cause of respiratory diseases.   The World Health Organization estimates 1.9 million deaths annually are directly linked to indoor air pollution.

Given the scope of the challenge, energy access is gaining high-level attention, nationally and internationally.  Countries around the world have recognized that expanding access to modern, reliable and sustainable energy services is essential to meeting national development goals.  This, together with reductions in the cost of technologies and the emergence of innovative business models, provides a new opportunity to address energy poverty.

For almost 30 years, the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) has helped client countries develop solutions to the energy access challenge.  This assistance has included support for rural electrification projects and household energy interventions, including wood-fuel management, improved cookstoves, and promotion of clean fuels.

ESMAP's work on Energy Access includes the following:

• Rural Electrification Strategies / Africa Electrification Initiative: The key objective here is to create and sustain a network of practitioners within Sub-Saharan Africa with electrification know-how and experience.

• Energy Small and Medium Enterprise Development: To create and sustain a network of energy practitioners to support development of SMEs as users and providers of modern energy services for slum upgrading programs.

• Gender and Energy Development Capacity Building: To create and sustain a SWAT team of energy practitioners to support gender sensitive approaches to energy sector development.

Web Stories

• Small Power Producers ‘light up’ Tanzanian Villages
• 65 Million in Africa Could Access Solar Lighting by 2015 New Report
• Lighting Africa Spreads to Ethiopia, Mali, Senegal, and Tanzania
• WB/IMF Annual Meetings: ESMAP Hailed for Low Carbon Energy Plans and Its Energy Access Program
• ESMAP Joins UN’s Global Alliance for Clean Cook stoves
• An ESMAP Funded Program Helps Rwandese Break Out of Poverty Says Irish Times
• Unveiled Monitoring System to Allow Nepalese Gauge Energy Benefits
• Gender and Energy Capacity Building Workshop for South Asia Dhaka, Bangladesh
• Lighting Africa: Winners picked as best off-grid lighting products in Sub-Saharan Africa
• New Web Site for Africa Electrification Initiative (AEI), Funded by ESMAP, Now Available
• A Beneficiary of World Bank/IFC/ESMAP’s Lighting Africa Initiative Wins UN Prize
• Highlights: ESMAP’s Gender and Energy Development Strategies Program (GEDS)
• Energy Access For The Urban Poor: Strategies For Promoting Productive Uses Of Modern Energy
• New ESMAP Program Provides Gender Based Interventions for Equitable Development

Publications

• ESMAP Energy Access Brochure
• Improving Energy Access to the Urban Poor in Developing Countries
• Jointly Published | Energy and Mining Sector Board Discussion Paper No. 23 | Household Energy Access for Cooking and Heating | Lessons Learned and the Way Forward
• Wood-Based Biomass Energy Development for Sub-Saharan Africa
• Expanding Women's Roles in Africa's Modern Off-Grid Lighting Market| Lighting Africa
• The Off-Grid Lighting Market in Sub-Saharan Africa: Market Research Synthesis Report, 2011
• Measuring the Benefits of Increased Electricity Access in Developing Countries: A New Slant on Slopes