What Is Still Necessary for Supporting the SDG7 in the Most Vulnerable Contexts?

Abstract

The common agreement of the United Nation members pushes the 2030 Agenda ahead to alleviate poverty and ensure wellbeing for all, recognizing energy as a crucial pathway to achieving this goal under three core dimensions: human development, sustainable economic growth, and environmental sustainability. Affordable and clean energy is represented by the Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7). This great scope represents a multifaceted challenge for all countries, especially for the most disadvantaged environments such as small islands and rural areas from developing countries. Both small islands and rural areas experience a scarcity of goods and services such as energy and are isolated from markets, have lack of human resources, difficulties in deploying economies of scale, and other issues that affect their development. Along the same line, their energy security is limited by their dependence on imported fuels, increasing electricity prices or making it infeasible to access electricity. This research builds the state of the art of off-grid energy systems for both contexts based on an extensive review of literature. The evidence shows that moving sustainable energy systems forward requires getting more people involved, the application of several business models, prevalent technological innovations, and the application of technical quality procedures. This perspective would really help to address the vulnerabilities of fragile locations. Here, auctions, the Energy Service Company, community, and Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) models and renewable energy projects based on mature technology present a great opportunity for a sustainable future, powering a nexus among energy, environment, and society.

Past and prospective electricity scenarios in Madagascar: The role of government energy policies

“…This is mainly due to population growth and the intensive development of urban areas (urban sprawl of main cities), leading to an increase in the number of subscribers. Beyond the increase in the number of subscribers, this increase can be explained by the evolution of technological conditions, electronic devices and household usage frequencies [37,38]. Indeed, additionally, within this increase, 1.21 times was due to the intensity effect, which is much lower than that due to the activity effect of 2.95 times.…”

“…• Ensuring access to electricity for all means increasing the number of consumers and therefore electricity consumption [37,38] • An economic boom could potentially be accompanied by an increase in energy intensity [2,3] • An increase in the standard of living of the population could provide an incentive to grow energy production: As developing countries (including the least-developed countries) achieve a better standard of living for the population and the same technological conditions are maintained, energy consumption per capita is expected to increase [22] As a result, the challenges for the electricity sector in least-developed countries are to increase power generation, ensure the reliability of supply, avoid carbonization, and ensure system sustainability [38][39][40].…”

A review on the sustainability of solar home system for rural electrification

“…It is important that promoters of SHSs are fully informed about the potential consequences of using these systems, and literature has often been an essential tool in extracting insights of practical relevance from SHS experiences, both positive and negative [4]. Methods of SHS research typically belong to one of three families; surveys concerning statistical analysis of primary data gathered from SHS users and stakeholders [5,6], case studies blending quantitative and qualitative methods to comment on the experience of SHSs in a particular country or set of circumstances, often in a comparative context and over a longer period of time than a survey paper [7,8] or literature reviews that synthesise existing publications to answer specific questions or make comments on broad observations [9,10,11,12]. Mixedmethods papers are also common [13,14] and it is occasionally difficult to distinguish between 'surveys' and 'case studies' which both handle primary data.…”

Behavior Patterns, Energy Consumption and Comfort during COVID-19 Lockdown Related to Home Features, Socioeconomic Factors and Energy Poverty in Madrid

“…The lack of these adequate services results in adverse health and wellbeing consequences [15]. However, this definition differs from others that include certain nuances or gaps that should be noted, such as how to measure energy poverty [16], if it is universal [17] or if it should be applicable differently in developed countries [18] compared to countries under development [19,20], or what is meant by meeting basic human needs, and what are the possibilities of access to energy, including the real capacities for choosing the energy source, based on different criteria [21].…”

“…In less developed countries, the lack of choice of these energy sources, and the general scarcity of energy resources [22], leads to the environmental pollution of homes, due to the high exposure to volatile particles and other suspended compounds that favor the proliferation of diseases in their population, or the worsening of existing ones [23] and a challenge for investors and political decision-makers in these regions [17,24]. The influence of climate on the possible response of households in order to maintain comfort conditions is decisive in this regard [25].…”