SDG 7: Ensuring Access to Affordable, Reliable, Sustainable & Modern Energy for All – Can We?
By
William Kamkwamba
Back in 2001, a day in Masitala, (a rural hamlet in Malawi) ended when the sun set. But 14-year-old William Kamkwamba, would much rather study than sleep. There was just one constraint – How would he study in the absence of light?
Kamkwanba, who had dropped out of school then, saw picture of a windmill and set about making one from scrap PVC pipes, rusty bicycle and car parts and blue gum trees. His windmill began powering lights in his room.
Today, Kamkwamba is a senior in high school at the African Leadership Academy, Johannesburg. His windmills, still functioning have grown in numbers and now provide clean water for the village, micro-irrigation in the fields, mobile phone services and internet. Kids from his village now aim for education. They no longer have to study under the sooty flame of kerosene lamps.
Kamkwamba’s story repeats itself across countries and continents. It succinctly captures how lives can be transformed just by ensuring access to electricity. Sustainable Development Goal 7 aims as just the same for everyone.
The Seventh Sustainability Goal
The experiences and learnings from implementing the Millennium Development Goals for tackling poverty took shape into 17 interconnected goals, called the Sustainable Development Goals at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development at Rio de Janeiro (Rio +20, 2012). SDG 7 aimed at ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all is an essential part of these 17 goals. It has 5 targets under it:
7.1 By 2030, ensuring universal access to affordable, reliable, and modern energy services
7.2 Increasing substantially the share of clean energy in the global energy mix by 2030
7.3 Doubling the global rate of increase in energy efficiency by 2030
7.4.a By 2030, enhancing cooperation between countries to facilitate access to clean energy research and technologies, including clean energy, energy efficiency, and advanced and cleaner fossil fuel technologies, and promoting investment in energy infrastructure and clean energy technologies
7.4.b By 2030, expanding infrastructure and upgrading technology for implementing modern and sustainable energy services for everyone in developing countries, particularly LDCs and SIDS
The Paris Climate Accords (COP 21, 2015) and Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015) provide common standards to these targets, help in evaluating our current standing and efforts required to achieve them. A set of indicators have been developed to assess the progress. These include:
- Proportion of population with access to electricity
- Proportion of population mostly with primary reliance on clean fuels and technology
- Renewable and clean energy share in the total final energy consumption
- Energy intensity which is measured in terms of primary energy and GDP
- International economic help to developing countries in support of clean energy R&D in renewable energy production, including in hybrid systems
- Investments in building energy efficiency as a percentage of GDP and the amount of FDI in financial transfer for infrastructure and technology
So, where are we?
Thanks to the specificity of the indicators, measuring the progress has become easier. Quoting directly from the “Report to Secretary General: Progress towards sustainable development goals (2019)”, it is clear that progress has definitely been positive, but far more needs to be done.
- The global electrification rate rose from about 83 per cent in 2010 to 87 per cent in 2015, with the increase accelerating to 89 per cent in 2017. Unfortunately, some 840 million people around the world still don’t have access to electricity.
- The global share of the population with ready access to clean cooking fuels and technologies became 61 per cent in 2017 from 57 per cent in 2010. Despite this, close to 3 billion people still depend primarily on inefficient & polluting cooking systems.
- The clean energy share of total energy consumption slowly increased from 16.6 per cent in 2010 to 17.5 per cent six years later, though much faster change is required to meet climate goals. Though the absolute level of clean energy consumption has increased by more than 18 per cent since 2010, only since 2012(which is not enough to meet the goals) has the growth of clean energy outpaced the growth of total energy consumption.
- Globally, the ratio of energy used per unit of GDP, improved from 5.9 in 2010 to 5.1 in six years, a rate of improvement of 2.3 per cent, which is still not enough to reach the 2.7 per cent annual rate needed to reach target 3 of SDG 7.
- International economic help to developing countries in support of renewable energy reached $18.6 billion in 2016, doubling from $9.9 billion in 2010.
And what about India?
India accounts for one sixth of world’s population and a significant share of people without access to clean and sustainable energy. Indian contribution for SDG 7 thus becomes essential for the global targets to be met. In the proceeding sections, we break down Indian progress on this front – the governmental policies and its implementation, role of private sector and success stories from efforts of common people. The aim is to understand what could be done in future.
Policies and implementation by govt.
India’s installed capacity of power generation grew by a CAGR of 8.61% over the last decade to cater to the steady industrial as well as consumer per capita growth. However, the fact that over 70% of this energy today still comes from coal and the consequent emissions necessitates a serious sustainable energy generation strategy going forward. The main challenges here being the need to facilitate this shift with minimal disruption of the economy while maintaining financial viability and inclusivity.
To this end the government of India has a multipronged policy approach involving various ministries through several centrally sponsored schemes. Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana, Saubhagya and Ujala schemes under the Ministry of Power, Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana and LPG Subsidy under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural gas try to achieve the goal of energy for all through traditional resources. The National Solar Mission under the Ministry of Renewable energy is the main schemes which aims to provide renewable energy.
While all the schemes will have role to play in achieving the SDG targets, the National Solar Mission is perhaps the one whose impact will be the most direct. In fact, the mission was approved consequent to the announcement of the National Action Plan on Climate Change in June 2008. The mission has a target of generating 20 GW of energy by 2022 at a price parity with coal generated energy. While this may seem ambitious, it may be worthwhile to note that this is one of the rare missions which surpassed the targets and achieved the initial goal of generating 20 GW of solar energy by 2018 instead of 2022. Despite the promise shown by some of the schemes thus far, it is essential to maintain focus on achieving the SDG in its holistic sense and not on performance of select qualitative parameters. It remains to be seen how the coordination between different ministries would pan out in achieving the SDG targets.
Role of Businesses and Business Opportunities
Businesses can play a transformative role in energy sustainability. Energy auditing and changing the practices helps the businesses as well through revenue groth, cost reduction and brand enhancement. The five main actions to be take are:
- Increase the energy efficiency of operations.
- Increase the use of renewable energy to power operations.
- Provide for energy efficiency through products and services.
- Identify ways to beneficially reuse waste streams.
- Educate stakeholders on how to achieve energy efficiency
Some of the success stories with respect to renewable energy and energy efficieny in corporations are give below:
Bajaj Auto
Bajaj Auto: Using solar energy to dry the sludge has reduced the weight by 75%, leading to a reduction in disposal cost in Pantnagar plant. 31.32% of electricity sourced from renewable sources, Kaizens have helped reduce power consumption by 401,100 units/year in 2018 compared to 2016. Green Building features incorporated in R&D centre like a transparent roof for harnessing daylight, use of wind ventilators for human comfort and use of energy-efficient lighting.
Back in 2013, Bajaj also launched Qute, which aimed at having high fuel efficiency(35 km/l) and low carbon dioxide emissions. Though the launch wasn’t as popular, it was undoubtedly a step in the right direction.
P&G Global
P&G aims to reduce source 100%of its energy from renewable sources by 2030. They have set up a wind farm in Texas and biogas plant in Georgia as small steps towards this end. Apart from this they have improved their energy efficiency by 22% . This they have done by operating with zero losses and defects and investing in new technologies to improve efficiency.
Reliance Industries
Promoting of uPVC windows through the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE). These windows have potential to avoid heat gain/ loss as against conventional windows. Today uPVC is included as a construction material under the Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC). The company is helping develop a window star rating system similar to that of appliances.
Apart from these success stories, the shift towards renewable energy resources is creating several opportunities for social entrepreneurs to step in with innovative solutions. One interesting example of the same is as follows:
The Liter of Light initiative which involves an open-source design: a low-cost light tube(a simple plastic bottle with water and bleach filled in it) that refracts solar light to provide daytime interior lighting for dwellings with thin roofs. Such houses are easily found in the rural areas where there is no electricity and once correctly installed; such solar bottles can last up to 5 years. This initiative has been instrumental in demonstrating the simplicity and effectiveness of renewable energy as well as the importance of recycling plastic. Costing less than 2USD per bottle and slashing 3000 tons of CO2 a year, this project has taken off in many countries ranging from Argentina, Kenya, India, Bangladesh, Egypt, Dominican Republic, Kenya, France etc.
Where are we headed?
The good news is that SDG 7 remains within reach. Advances in technologies cost declines, innovations, new business models, growing number of best practices and an overall increase in awareness among people, thanks to the numerous protests happening all around the world, are making energy transformation possible in many countries ad bringing this goal within reach.
- To move ahead as one unit, politicians need to acknowledge SDG7 as a need of the hour and cooperate internationally with higher levels of public and private investment in a sustainable energy future.
- Lagging regions are picking up pace, with off-grid electrification contributing to faster access to electricity, especially in rural areas. Central Asia has reached 86% and Sub Saharan Africa has reached 46% electricity access rates. Absolute access deficit has also begun to fall. This gap has to be closed nationally, regionally and globally to leave no one behind.
- Affordability has remained one of the critical concerns for about 30% of population, and in countries with universal access, 57% of people have had the same issue. Financing requirements are estimated at US$ 1206.4 billion per year for all aspects. Investments are strictly required in this sector.
- For cooking fuels, the necessary political attention has not been received as it should have. High entry costs, low consumer awareness, financial gaps for producers, slow progress in innovation are some of the factors that need to be rectified immediately to reach the goals.
- Higher efforts need to be put in for other aspects like heating, cooling, transportation etc which together account for 80% of the global energy consumption and yet have seen minimal renewable energy implementation.
- One option is to tail the electricity sector. As electricity increases decarbonising, transportation and other energy uses can piggyback on it and thus increasingly switch into electric vehicles.
- Once all these are taken care of, other issues need to be focussed on: like grid integration and the consequences of using batteries in electric vehicles. Batteries involve harmful chemicals and can affect the other SDGs negatively.
- Innovation systems, including R&D, deployment and diffusion need to be enhanced by investing in data collection systems and data analysis.
- Emphasise on how transition to clean energy creates jobs, improves women’s health and well-being and enables economic empowerment.
Sustainability Reports
References
Aayog, N. (2018). Sustainable development goals India. New Delhi: Mapping of Central Sector Schemes and Ministries.
Govt of India. (2010, January 11). Resolution. Retrieved from Ministry of New and Renewable Energy : https://mnre.gov.in/resolutionimplementation, M. o. (2019). Energy Statistics . Delhi: CSO,Govt of India.
Open. (n.d.). Liter of Light. Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liter_of_Light
Sinha, S. (2013, September 29). The Quadricycle Diaries. Retrieved from Business Today: https://www.businesstoday.in/magazine/cover-story/rajiv-bajaj-bajaj-group-plan-and-future/story/198329.html
UN. (2019). High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development.
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