Energy poverty alleviation and climate change mitigation: Is there a trade off?

Abstract

Energy poverty alleviation has become an important political issue in the most recent years. Several initiatives and policies have been proposed to deal with poor access to modern sources of energy in many developing countries. Given the large number of people lacking basic energy services, an important question is whether providing universal access to modern energy could significantly increase energy demand and associated CO 2 emissions. This paper provides one of the few formal assessments of this problem by means of a simple but robust model of current and future energy consumption. The model allows mapping energy consumption globally for different classes of energy use, quantifying current and future imbalances in the distribution of energy consumption. Our results indicate that an encompassing energy poverty eradication policy to be met by 2030 would increase global final energy consumption by about 7% (roughly 20 EJ). The same quantity of energy could be saved by reducing by 15% energy consumption of individuals with standards above current European levels. The additional energy infrastructure needed to eradicate energy poverty would produce 44-183 GtCO 2 over the 21st century and contribute at most 0.13°C of additional warming.

Energy futures modelling for African countries: LEAP model application

“…They found that final energy demand per capita will stand at around 10 Gj in 2030. Chakravarty et al (2013) used the IEA's World Energy Outlook (IEA 2014) projections method to assess individual energy consumption by 2030. They found, for Africa, an aggregate final household energy consumption of 9.5 exajoule (EJ) in a business-as-usual (BAU) case in 2030.…”

Can green policies be trusted and will they lead to practical results? Evidence from the U.S. electric power sector

“…The final model after all those steps, is written down here as Equation (2). CO2t = β1Ct + β2Rt + β3Ct(-1)+ β4Ct(-2)+ β5CO2t(-1) + et (2) where CO2t represents the CO2 emissions from the electricity sector in the year t, Ct and Rt represent the amount of coal and renewable energies utilization by the electricity sector respectively, Ct(-1) and Ct(-2) are the first and second lags of Ct respectively and CO2t(-1) represents the first lag of CO2t. β1 to β5 are the coefficients of the variables of Equation (2) respectively.…”

“…These findings, however, contradict the previous outcomes of other studies. Chakravarty and Tavoni [2] have tried to shed light on energy consumption and its impacts on pollutant emissions mitigation in the horizon of 2030. Using a statistical model, the authors have mapped global energy consumption and have come to the conclusion that meeting the energy poverty eradication policy by 2030, the global temperature would raise by 0.13 °C.…”

The Roles of Institutions in Fighting Against Poverty

“…The price of oil is the most sensitive to the poor, while climate change affects mostly the livelihood of farmers and fishermen. The need for energy poverty alleviation for the next 20 years should be balanced with reducing 7% energy consumption of individuals, but still, increase 0.13 o C global temperature (Chakravarty & Tavoni, 2013). Related to the live of poor farmers, recent research have been addressed to agriculture and rural development, such as the work of Bellon, et al, (2005) and Farrow, Larrea, Hyman, & Lema(2005).…”