Local knowledge and energy poverty

Cross-posted at the Breakthrough Generation Blog.

I just attended a presentation by Marlene Grundstrom, who works with the Stockholm Environment Institute on energy access and energy poverty.

Often left out of both discussions of climate change and global poverty, lack of access to clean, affordable energy turns out to be a key driver of both, and a considerable source of suffering and mortality in less-developed countries. To illustrate this, Ms. Grundstrom noted that indoor smoke inhalation kills more people every year (around 1.4 million people) than malaria does. Also, while the mortality incidence from AIDS and malaria are projected to decrease in coming years, deaths from indoor smoke inhalation are expected to rise.

One of her main points was that projects to expand energy access are more successful when they rely on local institutions and local knowledge. When a community has ownership over a project and can continue implementing it even after the donor or aid organization departs, the project has a higher chance of achieving its goals.

Ms. Grundstrom noted a case where women in Ethiopia rejected clean cookstoves in favor of traditional coal-burning stoves, because food cooked with clean cookstoves tasted differently. Here we see local knowledge as the dominant force in dealing with energy poverty, as opposed to thermodynamic or epidemiological concerns.

This idea reminded me of a couple things. One was the Catholic Social Teaching Principle of Subsidiarity. As Pope John Paul II summarized in his celebration of the centennial of Rerum Novarum,

A community of a higher order should not interfere with the life of a community of a lower order, taking over its functions.

Catholic Social Teaching in general recognizes the role that state and national governments have to play in providing public goods (infrastructure, access to resources, health care, etc.), but also notes that where possible, a community should own and operate the institutions and laws that govern its collective destiny.

I was also reminded of the work of Dan Kammen, a professor of mine at UC Berkeley and current Chief Technical Specialist of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency at the World Bank, whose work on "mundane science" (PDF) jumped to mind.

In energy and development research, it appears as a disproportionate focus on advanced combustion systems, commercial fuels, and large centralized power facilities, even though more than 3 billion people rely on wood, charcoal, and other biomass fuels for the bulk of their energy needs.

Kammen's chief point is that the engineering focus on "cutting edge" research tends to overwhelm any efforts at addressing energy poverty, where solutions may be less envelope-pushing but just as, if not more, socially relevant. The bias against mundane science, as he calls it, is an impediment to real humanitarian and development action.

Why do I cite these two ideas? Because energy access does seem to receive a disproportionately small amount of attention in energy/climate discussion (see: this blog). However, it really is both a cause and a symptom of problems people are already hard at work dealing with around the world (addressing poverty/development in general and developing clean fuels and renewable technologies). One can imagine and observe other motivating principles from different sciences and faiths. Scientific, humanitarian, economic, and religious motivations can all point towards the goal of reducing energy poverty and expanding access to clean energy.

1.5 billion people worldwide lack any access to electricity*, and therefore rely on traditional biomass and dung for the primary energy source. A movement to drive down the cost of clean energy, so that industrial nations can replace their incumbent carbon infrastructure with renewables, is inextricably linked to closing the global energy gap and expanding energy access to the world's poor. Delivering the energy poor the means to control their own destiny through expanded access to clean and affordable electricity must be an explicit element in efforts towards decarbonization.

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*According to the UN, "electricity access" means 40Wh/day (4 hours of access to a 40W light bulb per day), which tells me that that 1.5 billion figure actually understates the problem.

Energy poverty

Currently watching: "Syriana" (2005).

Bryan Woodman: What are they thinking? They're thinking that it's running out. It's running out, and 90% of what's left is in the Middle East. Look at the progression: Versailles, Suez, 1973, Gulf War 1, Gulf War 2. This is a fight to the death. So what are they thinking? 'Great!' They're thinking 'keep playing, keep buying yourself new toys, keep spending $50,000 a night on your hotel room, but don't invest in your infrastructure, don't build a real economy.' So that when you finally wake up, they will have sucked you dry, and you will have squandered the greatest natural resource in history.

Much of the goings-on in this still-prescient film concern the poverty in the Middle East, which, the film implicitly claims, fosters religious zealotry, extremism and cultural animosity towards the West. This is just one very specific kind of energy poverty, the kind where the US spends $1 billion daily on Middle Eastern oil, and that money doesn't go to building governments and societies, but goes to the petro-dictators for their own consumption. While the West frets over future, and legitimate, dangers of rising sea levels and prolonged droughts due to global warming, citizens of these petro-dictatorships are already suffering the full list of symptoms of the global carbon addiction.

But that's not the only type of energy poverty. Teryn Norris, president of Americans for Energy Leadership, recently reported:

Nearly 1.6 billion of our fellow human beings have no access to electricity, and around 2.4 billion people -- over one third of global population -- meet their basic cooking and heating needs by burning biomass, such as wood, crop waste, and dung. "Without access to modern, commercial energy, poor countries can be trapped in a vicious circle of poverty, social instability, and underdevelopment," concludes the International Energy Agency.

This type of unacceptable poverty exists in countries with and without the cursed luxury of global oil deposits. While rich countries in the West (and the East) can afford to pay a little more for cleaner energy, poor nations must resort to only the most primitive energy sources for their energy needs. This is a problem that will not be fixed solely by individual countries pricing carbon and deploying more clean energy infrastructure. There must also be a sustained global effort in buying down the cost of clean energy, so that it does not become another luxury of the rich world when we run out of oil.

The benefits of clean energy technology are numerous. It can foster economic development in poor nations and provide alternatives to dirty, inefficient biomass sources for heating and cooking. But not yet. The ability of cleantech to help lift billions of people out of poverty, and to put an end to the clout of petro-dictators, must be a part of the conversation