Electricity connects people to opportunities such as the internet. The internet has multiple economic and social benefits and is increasingly the gateway to opportunities such as jobs and education. The number of new users has tripled in the past 10 years, but its adoption has slowed due to the lack of access to electricity.

Access to electricity is expanding in cities where they are adopting smart energy grids and building sensor-driven transport systems. In rural areas, electrification is progressing slowly.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, this is especially true, where the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates almost 1 billion will have electricity by 2040, but 530 million who live in the countryside will not.

There is a huge disparity in living standards and economic opportunities between cities and countryside. The world’s 600 largest cities generated $30 trillion GDP in 2007, more than half the global total. They are predicted to generate $64 trillion GDP (60% of total) in 2025.

There are two approaches to dealing with the disparities between cities and rural areas. The cheapest is what happens if nothing is done to address the problem: people move to cities for better economic opportunities. The second solution is rapidly establishing renewable energy and battery storage in rural areas.

Renewable energy is now more feasible given the advances in technology. They also make better use of scarce resources. The use of advanced batteries in electricity grids improves efficiency and allows energy managers to take electricity to remote and underserved areas.

An example of where this can be deployed is India. India could become one of the most energy-insecure countries with 300 million without electricity. However, given renewable energy technologies, it could expand electricity to about 80 million and 110 million in a small period of time.

China is already using digital technologies for ultra-high-voltage (UHV) transmission systems to transport its energy to parts of the country that use the most energy, but have no energy sources.

A South African company uses a combination of a solar charger and battery storage units in remote areas to allow consumers to be able to power mobile phones, computers, radios and lighting.

It would be great to see the development of large-scale renewable solutions continue. This would lead to the sun becoming the world’s largest source of power by 2050. As a result, those in the developing world would be using carbon-free energy.

Given that the per-watt price of photovoltaic cells dropped by 85% since 2000, the McKinsey Global Institute predicts energy storage production will be valued at $100 billion per year by 2025.

– Paula Acevedo

Sources: Stanford Social innovation Review, United Nations
Photo: Pixabay