Energy
Mapped: The 1.2 Billion People Without Access to Electricity
For anyone reading this article, the benefits of electricity need not be explained.
Access to electricity is now an afterthought in most parts of the world, so it may come as a surprise to learn that 16% of the world’s population — an estimated 1.2 billion people — are still living without this basic necessity. Lack of access to electricity, or “energy poverty”, is the ultimate economic hindrance as it prevents people from participating in the modern economy.
Where are people still living in the dark, and how are these energy challenges being addressed? Let’s dive in.
Where the Grid Reaches, and Beyond
At this point in time, a majority of countries have 100% electricity access rates, and many more have rates above 95%. This includes most of the world’s high-population countries, such as China, Brazil, and the United States.
India is fast approaching that benchmark for access. The massive country has made great strides in a short amount of time, jumping from a 70% to 93% access rate in a single decade.
Meanwhile, North Korea is an obvious outlier in East Asia. The Hermit Kingdom’s lack of electrification isn’t just conspicuous in the data — it’s even visible from space. The border between the two Koreas is clearly visible where the dark expanse of North Korea runs up against the glow of South Korea’s urban areas.
It’s been estimated that more than half of North Korea’s people are living in energy poverty.
Africa’s Access to Electricity
In 1995, a mere 20% of sub-Saharan Africa’s population had access to power. While today’s figure is above 40%, that still means roughly 600 million people in the region are living without access to electricity.
Not surprisingly, energy poverty disproportionately impacts rural Africans. Nearly all of the countries with the lowest levels of electricity access have rural-majority populations:
| Global Rank | Country | Electricity Access | Rural Population |
|---|---|---|---|
| #197 | 🇧🇮 Burundi | 9% | 87% |
| #196 | 🇹🇩 Chad | 11% | 77% |
| #195 | 🇲🇼 Malawi | 13% | 83% |
| #194 | 🇨🇩 D.R.C. | 19% | 56% |
| #193 | 🇳🇪 Niger | 20% | 84% |
| #192 | 🇱🇷 Liberia | 21% | 49% |
| #191 | 🇺🇬 Uganda | 22% | 77% |
| #190 | 🇸🇱 Sierra Leone | 23% | 58% |
| #189 | 🇲🇬 Madagascar | 24% | 63% |
| #188 | 🇧🇫 Burkina Faso | 25% | 71% |
Nonexistent and unreliable electricity isn’t just an issue confined to rural Africa. Even Nigeria — Africa’s largest economy — has an electrification rate of just 54%.
Where there is an electrical grid, instability is also causing problems. A recent survey found that a majority of Nigerian tech firms face 30 or more power outages per month, and more than half ranked electricity as a “major” or “severe” constraint to doing business.
This is pattern that is repeated in a number of countries in Africa:
Mini-Grids, Big Impact
It has taken an average of 25 years for countries to move from 20% to 80% access, so history suggests that it may be a number of years before sub-Saharan Africa fully catches up with other parts of the world. That said, Vietnam was able to close that gap in only nine years.
Traditional utility companies continue to make inroads in the region, but it might be a smaller-scale solution that brings electricity to people in harder-to-reach rural villages.
Between 2009 and 2015, solar PV module prices fell by 80%, ushering in a new era of affordability. Solar powered mini-grids don’t just have the potential to bring electricity to new markets, it can also replace the diesel-powered generators commonly used in Africa.
For the 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who are still unable to fully participate in the modern world, these innovations can’t come soon enough.
Energy
Visualizing the World’s Largest Hydroelectric Dams
Hydroelectric dams generate 40% of the world’s renewable energy, the largest of any type. View this infographic to learn more.
Visualizing the World’s Largest Hydroelectric Dams
This was originally posted on Elements. Sign up to the free mailing list to get beautiful visualizations on natural resource megatrends in your email every week.
Did you know that hydroelectricity is the world’s biggest source of renewable energy? According to recent figures from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), it represents 40% of total capacity, ahead of solar (28%) and wind (27%).
This type of energy is generated by hydroelectric power stations, which are essentially large dams that use the water flow to spin a turbine. They can also serve secondary functions such as flow monitoring and flood control.
To help you learn more about hydropower, we’ve visualized the five largest hydroelectric dams in the world, ranked by their maximum output.
Overview of the Data
The following table lists key information about the five dams shown in this graphic, as of 2021. Installed capacity is the maximum amount of power that a plant can generate under full load.
| Country | Dam | River | Installed Capacity (gigawatts) | Dimensions (meters) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🇨🇳 China | Three Gorges Dam | Yangtze River | 22.5 | 181 x 2,335 |
| 🇧🇷 Brazil / 🇵🇾 Paraguay | Itaipu Dam | Parana River | 14.0 | 196 x 7,919 |
| 🇨🇳 China | Xiluodu Dam | Jinsha River | 13.9 | 286 x 700 |
| 🇧🇷 Brazil | Belo Monte Dam | Xingu River | 11.2 | 90 X 3,545 |
| 🇻🇪 Venezuela | Guri Dam | Caroni River | 10.2 | 162 x 7,426 |
At the top of the list is China’s Three Gorges Dam, which opened in 2003. It has an installed capacity of 22.5 gigawatts (GW), which is close to double the second-place Itaipu Dam.
In terms of annual output, the Itaipu Dam actually produces about the same amount of electricity. This is because the Parana River has a low seasonal variance, meaning the flow rate changes very little throughout the year. On the other hand, the Yangtze River has a significant drop in flow for several months of the year.
For a point of comparison, here is the installed capacity of the world’s three largest solar power plants, also as of 2021:
- Bhadla Solar Park, India: 2.2 GW
- Hainan Solar Park, China: 2.2 GW
- Pavagada Solar Park, India: 2.1 GW
Compared to our largest dams, solar plants have a much lower installed capacity. However, in terms of cost (cents per kilowatt-hour), the two are actually quite even.
Closer Look: Three Gorges Dam
The Three Gorges Dam is an engineering marvel, costing over $32 billion to construct. To wrap your head around its massive scale, consider the following facts:
- The Three Gorges Reservoir (which feeds the dam) contains 39 trillion kg of water (42 billion tons)
- In terms of area, the reservoir spans 400 square miles (1,045 square km)
- The mass of this reservoir is large enough to slow the Earth’s rotation by 0.06 microseconds
Of course, any man-made structure this large is bound to have a profound impact on the environment. In a 2010 study, it was found that the dam has triggered over 3,000 earthquakes and landslides since 2003.
The Consequences of Hydroelectric Dams
While hydropower can be cost-effective, there are some legitimate concerns about its long-term sustainability.
For starters, hydroelectric dams require large upstream reservoirs to ensure a consistent supply of water. Flooding new areas of land can disrupt wildlife, degrade water quality, and even cause natural disasters like earthquakes.
Dams can also disrupt the natural flow of rivers. Other studies have found that millions of people living downstream from large dams suffer from food insecurity and flooding.
Whereas the benefits have generally been delivered to urban centers or industrial-scale agricultural developments, river-dependent populations located downstream of dams have experienced a difficult upheaval of their livelihoods.
– Richter, B.D. et al. (2010)
Perhaps the greatest risk to hydropower is climate change itself. For example, due to the rising frequency of droughts, hydroelectric dams in places like California are becoming significantly less economical.
Energy
What are the Benefits of Fusion Energy?
One of the most promising technologies, fusion, has attracted the attention of governments and private companies.
What are The Benefits of Fusion Energy?
As the world moves towards net-zero emissions, sustainable and affordable power sources are urgently needed by humanity.
One of the most promising technologies, fusion, has attracted the attention of governments and private companies like Chevron and Google. In fact, Bloomberg Intelligence has estimated that the fusion market may eventually be valued at $40 trillion.
In this infographic sponsored by General Fusion, we discuss the benefits of fusion as a clean energy source.
The Ultimate Source of Energy
Fusion powers the sun and the stars, where the immense force of gravity compresses and heats hydrogen plasma, fusing it into helium and releasing enormous amounts of energy. Here on Earth, scientists use isotopes of hydrogen—deuterium and tritium—to power fusion plants.
Fusion energy offers a wide range of benefits, such as:
1. Ample resources:
Both atoms necessary for nuclear fusion are abundant on Earth: deuterium is found in seawater, while tritium can be produced from lithium.
2. Sustainable
Energy-dense generation like fusion minimizes land use needs and can replace aging infrastructure like old power plants.
3. Clean
There are no CO₂ or other harmful atmospheric emissions from the fusion process.
4. Scalable
With limited expected regulatory burden or export controls, fusion scales effectively with a small land footprint that can be located close to cities.
5. Safety advantage
Unlike atomic fission, fusion does not create any long-lived radioactive nuclear waste. Its radiation profile is similar to widely used medical and industrial applications like cyclotrons for cancer treatment.
6. Reliable
Fusion energy is on-demand and independent from the weather, making it an excellent option in a dependable portfolio for power generation.
Commercializing Fusion Energy
More than 130 countries have now set or are considering a target of reducing emissions to net-zero by 2050. Meanwhile, global energy demand is expected to increase by 47% in the next 30 years.
While renewables like wind and solar are intermittent and need a baseload source of clean energy to supplement them, fusion, when commercially implemented, could deliver clean, abundant, reliable, and cost-competitive energy.
General Fusion seeks to transform the world’s energy supply with the most practical path to commercial fusion energy. Click here to learn more.
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