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

- We estimate the global distribution of energy use at the individual level using income distribution data and national energy statistics.
- We project the individual energy use distribution to 2030 using IEA World Energy Outlook projections.
- About 3.5 billion people will be energy poor (less than 10GJ/year) under business as usual.
- An energy poverty alleviation program can provide for basic energy needs of these people while raising energy consumption by only 7%.
- The additional emissions will be 44-183 GtCO2 over the 21st century with a maximum warming contribution of 0.13˚C only.

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 CO2 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 GtCO2 over the 21st century and contribute at most 0.13 °C of additional warming.