Essay

Energy and ICT for educational inclusion in Latin America

Although Latin America has experienced a successful decade of reduction in poverty and inequality, it continues to be the most unequal region in the world1. The persistence of high levels of social injustice is not accidental: its profound structural causes are rooted in unfair political, economic and social institutional frameworks, which have been shaped throughout …

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Will private-sector finance support off-grid energy?

Providing the world’s poor with modern energy services represents an investment challenge. The United Nations Sustainable Energy For All (SE4All) initiative estimates that energy access in developing countries requires investments of US$ 45 billion annually by 2030 to step up to this challenge1. This means that the US$ 9 billion per year currently invested in …

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Smart villages for smart voters

The right to vote is generally considered a fundamental right of each citizen, underpinning all other basic rights – to food, education and security. And the world’s most enthusiastic voters live in India’s 650,000 villages. At the heart of India’s democratic system have been regular elections that now see the participation of more than 100 …

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Energy provision and food security in off-grid villages

In spite of much technological progress, many countries as well as communities within countries suffer from food insecurity; one in seven people in the developing world remains food insecure. Food security involves concurrent attention to availability, which is a function of production; access, which is a function of purchasing power; and absorption, which is a …

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Is biomass a sustainable energy solution for off-grid villages in developing countries?

Summary Much is said about moving to a biobased economy (BBE) for the production of food, feed, fuels, materials and products1 particularly in reaching the Sustainable Development Goals and delivering on the Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation, published in 2016 and 2015, respectively. The question considered here is whether the better provision of biomass …

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Leapfrogging to sustainable power

As the global population is still rising – albeit at a decreasing rate – we can expect an additional billion or more people in the next 10 years and yet another billion by 20401. Simple mathematical calculations would suggest that the number of off-grid global poor will nearly double within a decade. And the world …

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Energy innovation for smart villages

Two critically important and linked challenges face the global community in the 21st century: the persistence of widespread energy poverty and the resulting loss of economic opportunity; and intensifying human-driven climate disruption. These crises are inexorably linked through the energy technology systems that have so far provided the vast majority of our energy: fossil fuels. …

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Energy for development – the concept

Worldwide, 1.3 billion people remain without access to electricity and 2.7 billion are still cooking on harmful and inefficient stoves1. Many live in remote rural village communities, and until they have access to energy services, little progress can be made to develop and improve their lives2. As United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has stated, “energy …

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