About 675 million people live without electricity worldwide, the vast majority of them in sub-Saharan Africa, a report published on Tuesday notes.
The world is not on track to meet the sustainable development goal adopted by UN member countries in 2015 to ensure clean, affordable energy for all by 2030, according to the report, which was published by several organisations, including the World Health Organisation and the World Bank.
The world is facing “a recent slowdown in the global pace of electrification,” Guangzhe Chen, vice president of the World Bank, said in a statement.
And although the number of people living without electricity has almost halved over the past decade, 675 million people were still without it in 2021. About 80% of them live in sub-Saharan Africa, where the lack of access to electricity remained almost identical to the situation in 2010.
While the transition to clean energy is progressing faster than many expect, much remains to be done to provide sustainable, secure and affordable access to modern energy services to the billions of people who are without them, the International Energy Agency's Executive Director, Fatih Birol, stressed in the joint statement.
Progress has been made on certain points, such as increasing the rate of use of renewable energy in the electricity sector, but it is insufficient to achieve the UN objective.
