Concepts

Energy Access

Also Known As Energy Poverty

Policy Concept

Citation Formats

General Reference

Energy Atlas. "Energy Access." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-energy.interactiveatlas.org/concepts/energy-access.

APA Style

Energy Atlas. (n.d.). Energy Access. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-energy.interactiveatlas.org/concepts/energy-access

BibTeX

@misc{energyatlas-energy-access,
  author = {Energy Atlas},
  title = {Energy Access},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-energy.interactiveatlas.org/concepts/energy-access},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Energy access measures whether a household or a country's population is connected to modern energy services at all, most commonly tracked through electricity connection and through access to clean, non-solid cooking fuel rather than wood, charcoal or dung burned indoors. The United Nations Secretary-General launched the Sustainable Energy for All initiative in 2011 to put universal energy access on the international agenda, and the goal was later folded into Sustainable Development Goal 7, which targets universal access to affordable, reliable, modern energy by 2030. As of 2022, an estimated 759 million people still lacked consistent access to electricity and about 2.6 billion people still relied on dangerous, inefficient cooking arrangements, concentrated overwhelmingly in Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia.

Facts

Disputed

Formulated Year

2011 1

Energy access as a development concept has no single coiner and was discussed in development economics literature for decades before the term was formalized as a tracked global metric. The UN Secretary-General's Sustainable Energy for All initiative, launched in 2011 and later folded into Sustainable Development Goal 7's 2030 universal-access target, is the widely cited turning point that made energy access a named global policy goal.

Concept Domain

Energy policy 1

Cross-Tradition Connections