Energy and the MDGs

The close linkages between energy, production and productivity are fundamental to reducing poverty and promoting human development as set out in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Within this context, renewable energy systems - in particular, decentralized small-scale systems that can be scaled up to match energy demands as they rise with growth in economic activities - are an important element of extending and sustaining rural development.

Although the MDGs do not explicitly refer to energy services, the availability of energy is essential to achieve several of the MDGs :

• To halve extreme poverty: Access to energy services facilitates economic development - livelihood activities beyond daylight hours, local small enterprises and small-scale industry that create employment, and access to modern communication technologies.

• To reduce hunger and improve access to safe drinking water: Energy services can improve access to pumped drinking water, boiling drinking water, and provide a basis for increased farming productivity.

• To reduce child and maternal mortality, and to reduce diseases: Energy is a key component of a functioning health system, contributing, for example, to lighting maternity wards, refrigerating vaccines and other medicines, sterilizing equipment, and providing transport to health clinics.

• To achieve universal primary education and to promote gender equality and empowerment of women: Energy services can reduce the time spent by women and children (especially girls) on basic survival activities (such as grinding, fetching water); electrical lighting permits home study, increases security, and enables the use of educational media and communication.

To ensure environmental sustainability: Improved energy efficiency and use of cleaner alternatives can help to achieve sustainable use of natural resources, as well as reduce emissions. This will protect the local and global environment.