We are all aware of the fundamental role that energy access plays as a driver for development; it plays a vital role in delivering health, education, food security and economic growth, to name but a few. Energy is a unique driver, powering development and speeding up the fight against poverty.

Energy drives development

The unbelievable truth is that more than a fifth of people in the world have no access to electricity. And yet energy can be central to our efforts to provide aid that works. Take health, for instance. Chest diseases are a leading cause of death among women and children in developing countries. How do they die? Through the smoke they inhale from cooking on open fires inside homes. How is this possible? Simply because poor people cannot afford electric stoves!

Energy has multiple knock-on effects on development. Without it, development stalls. No school can educate its children properly without electricity; no hospital can function and provide proper care without power. And small businesses will find it very hard to thrive unless they have a reliable source of power. So I’m very glad that the development community is placing greater emphasis on energy as a development issue.

Universal access to modern energy for all by 2030

Tomorrow, I will participate in the official European launch of UN’s International Year of Sustainable Energy for All in Brussels. Through this global initiative, under the skilled leadership of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, we are seeking to bring the benefits of clean and affordable energy to poor regions, and to connect millions of people to energy by 2050.

This is a challenging goal as providing energy for all is even more complicated than fixing education or health. This is due to the many factors that need to be put in place at the same time such as: substantial resources, know-how, robust legal framework and involvement of private sector. The International Energy Agency estimates that investment of ca. $50 billion per year needed to provide universal energy access to the world’s poor by 2030. For now the world invest only around $10 billion. On the other hand, I believe we can reach this threshold as it only represents around 3% of projected global energy investment.

The EU is leading a way

I wholeheartedly support the vision of Ban Ki-moon, and the EU has been leading in this field for years. In Latin America we launched the Euro-Solar project to benefit 300,000 people whose communities are not connected to an electricity grid. While renewable energy sources such as sun or wind are freely available locally, the technology required to turn them into usable power is often too expensive for these poor communities. So the EU has installed solar panels or wind turbines to deliver 100% renewable energy – and the impact has been nothing short of huge.

Until Euro-Solar came along, the inhabitants of Sancayuni (Peru) could not count on any kind of energy supply. Today they have a source of clean and sustainable energy, access to new technologies, dedicated training and continuous support. The result is that the new users can now enjoy an ideal way source of power that is both sustainable and adapted to their culture (you can read more about this in the Guardian’s article).

Energy at the heart of EU development policy

I take our mission to light up the developing world very seriously. Not only have I put energy at the very heart of the EU’s future development policy, I also plan to make substantial investments. Together with our partners from developing countries we have launched the Energy Facility, which has set out some ambitious aims. For instance, we want to provide modern and sustainable energy services to at least an additional 100 million Africans by 2020.

Let’s do it

The UN has put the power of energy under the spotlight. It is up to us now to take advantage of this. We must join forces with the industry, academics and partner countries to foster access to sustainable energy for all by 2030. In doing so we will help millions of people out of poverty, facilitate sustainable and inclusive growth for development, create new jobs and businesses and contribute to the fight against climate change. In this kind of scenario, everyone’s a winner.

The EU will have many initiatives to make access to energy for all a reality and I will keep you informed about our plans and achievements.

Number of views: 2144