A Vicious and Unsustainable Cycle

August 18, 2002 – Vol.7 No.21

A VICIOUS AND UNSUSTAINABLE CYCLE.

This from a press release from the International Energy Agency: Without adequate supplies of affordable energy, it is virtually impossible to carry out productive economic activity or improve health and education. As a result, poor people remain poor. And from Robert Priddle, Director of the IEA: There can be no economic development without secure affordable energy.

In a new document - Energy and Poverty - the agency points out that in the world today 1.6 billion have no access to electricity, 2.4 billion rely on primitive biomass fuels - wood, agricultural waste and dung - for cooking and heating, in 30 years 1.4 billion will still have no electricity and in thirty years another 200 million, 2.6 billion will rely on biomass fuels. Aside from environmental problems and stress on biomass resources - deforestation for instance - the burning of primitive biomass fuels increases air pollution and related health problems.

In short, major changes in policy and major work need to be done by governments, utility companies and aid agencies to reverse the vicious and unsustainable cycle of energy and poverty.

The document is a chapter in the World Energy Outlook 2002 due to be released late in September. The chapter is available now at http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/ (click WEO Publications).