Energy access means having reliable, affordable access to electricity and clean cooking fuel in your home. It sounds simple, but over 670 million people worldwide still lack electricity, and roughly 2.1 billion depend on polluting fuels like firewood, charcoal, and animal dung to cook their meals. The concept goes beyond just having a power line nearby. It encompasses whether that power is consistent enough to use, affordable enough to pay for, and sufficient to meaningfully improve daily life.
How Energy Access Is Defined
There is no single, universally adopted definition of energy access, but most international organizations agree on two core components: electricity and clean cooking. The International Energy Agency defines it as a household having reliable and affordable access to both clean cooking facilities and electricity, starting with enough power for a basic set of needs and growing over time to match regional averages.
For electricity, the minimum threshold covers enough power to run several lightbulbs, charge a phone, and operate a radio, with potential for a fan or television. Small solar lanterns and phone chargers alone don’t count. They help, but they fall below the baseline for what qualifies as electricity access. The idea is that true access should support a household’s ability to function and grow, not just provide a single point of light.
For cooking, access means primarily using modern fuels and technologies: natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), electricity, biogas, or ethanol. Improved biomass cookstoves can qualify if they meet strict emission standards. The World Health Organization classifies fuel and stove combinations as “clean” only if they keep indoor particulate matter and carbon monoxide below specific air quality thresholds. On a five-tier rating system for cookstoves, only those reaching the top tiers (Tier 4 or 5 for particulate emissions and Tier 5 for carbon monoxide) are considered clean enough to protect health. Traditional three-stone fires, widely used across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, fall at the bottom of this scale.
Where the World Stands Today
Almost 92% of the global population now has access to electricity, which represents enormous progress over the past two decades. But the remaining gap is concentrated in the hardest-to-reach communities. Over 666 million people were still without electricity in 2023, the vast majority in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South and Southeast Asia. In many rural African communities, grid connections remain decades away at current rates of expansion.
The clean cooking gap is even wider. Around 2.1 billion people still rely on polluting fuels and technologies. Progress on cooking has been far slower than on electricity, partly because replacing a cooking tradition is more complex than installing a power line. It involves fuel supply chains, stove affordability, cultural preferences, and ongoing fuel costs that can be harder to subsidize than a grid connection.
Why It Matters for Health
The health consequences of cooking with solid fuels are severe. Household air pollution from burning wood, charcoal, crop residues, and kerosene caused an estimated 2.9 million premature deaths in 2021 alone, including over 309,000 children under five. Nearly half of all lower respiratory infection deaths in young children are linked to inhaling soot from household cooking. Women and children bear the heaviest burden because they spend the most time near cookstoves and are typically responsible for gathering fuel.
The damage goes beyond lungs. Long-term exposure to indoor smoke increases the risk of stroke, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer. There is also evidence connecting it to low birth weight, tuberculosis, and cataracts. Kerosene, still used for cooking and lighting in many homes, is the leading cause of childhood poisoning from accidental ingestion. Burns and injuries from open flames during cooking and heating are common in homes that lack safer alternatives.
Even the act of collecting fuel carries risks. Women and children who spend hours gathering firewood face musculoskeletal injuries, lost time for education and income, and in less secure areas, a heightened risk of violence.
The Economic Connection
Energy access and economic growth are tightly linked. Investment in power grid infrastructure has a significant positive effect on regional economic development, and the long-term economic returns tend to be larger than the short-term ones. Regions with strong existing industries and high energy demand benefit the most, because reliable electricity allows businesses to operate longer hours, preserve goods through refrigeration, and adopt machinery that increases output.
At the household level, electricity enables small enterprises: shops that can stay open after dark, barbers who can use electric clippers, tailors who can run sewing machines, farmers who can pump water for irrigation. Without it, economic activity is constrained to daylight hours and manual labor. Children study by candlelight or not at all. Health clinics cannot refrigerate vaccines or power basic diagnostic equipment. The absence of energy access creates a ceiling on what communities can achieve.
The Global Goal: SDG 7
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7 calls for universal access to affordable, reliable, and modern energy services by 2030. Its targets also include substantially increasing the share of renewable energy in the global mix and doubling the rate of improvement in energy efficiency. Progress is tracked through two key indicators: the proportion of the population with electricity access and the proportion relying primarily on clean fuels and technology.
Additional targets focus on expanding international cooperation, increasing financial flows to developing countries for clean energy research, and upgrading energy infrastructure in the least developed countries, small island nations, and landlocked developing countries. The 2030 deadline is now extremely close, and current trajectories suggest the world will fall short on both electricity and clean cooking access unless the pace of investment and deployment accelerates significantly.
How Gaps Are Being Closed
For communities far from existing power grids, solar mini-grids and standalone solar home systems have emerged as practical alternatives to waiting for grid expansion. A solar mini-grid is a small, localized power network, often built around solar panels and battery storage, that can serve a village or small town independently. These systems can be deployed faster and at lower cost per household than extending a national grid across difficult terrain.
Real-world performance varies. A study of a 375-kilowatt solar mini-grid in a remote Ethiopian town found that accurate assessment of local energy demand and weather conditions was critical to keeping the system reliable. When demand grows faster than expected or cloudy seasons reduce generation, systems can fall short. Designing for future growth, not just current need, is one of the central engineering challenges.
On the cooking side, efforts focus on making LPG more affordable and accessible in rural areas, distributing improved cookstoves that dramatically reduce smoke emissions, and promoting electric cooking where grid or solar power is available. Each approach has trade-offs. LPG requires a fuel supply chain that reaches remote areas. Improved biomass stoves reduce pollution but don’t eliminate it. Electric cooking requires reliable, affordable electricity, which circles back to the broader access challenge. No single solution fits everywhere, and the most effective programs tend to match technology to local conditions, fuel availability, and household budgets.