United Nations Radio

Over two million people die annually simply because they cannot access modern energy. Cooking with coals for example, is causing respiratory problems and lung cancer, just one of many challenges faced by three billion people in developing countries. But with global efforts focused on reducing energy consumption to save the planet, how do we balance this with expanding energy access to save those who live here. Marsha Branch finds out from Minoru Takada, Head of the UN's Sustainable Energy Program.

woman cooking

TAKADA: The option that you have includes putting chimneys so smoke is going out of the house. Another way is completely replacing those traditional fuels with more modern fuels such as gas or sometimes electricity options. Then you don't have to be exposed to harmful smokes.

BRANCH: Expand on the link between energy access and achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

TAKADA: Yes. In many countries, if you do not have say electricity, that's one of the modern energies, that you would not be able to use communications. You would not be able to have a light and then all those things are going to compromise your development situation, in that, if you don't have a light, that means that you cannot study effectively at night, then that is affecting the performance of children in schools. Or if you do not have, sort of electricity access at the health clinic, then the health clinic will not have equipment to store medicines which are definitely needed to actually provide primary health care to the populations. Or if you do not have electricity, then you can't actually have the kind of productive activities that enables small-scale rural enterprises to be able to harness their potential.

BRANCH: There's been talk about having energy expansion included on the Copenhagen agenda. I've got two questions for you. Going into Copenhagen in December, there are already big fears that we're not going to be able to come to an agreement that everyone is happy with. How are you going to throw something else into an already packed agenda? Number one. And number two, how do you go into a climate summit that is looking at how they are going to cope with reducing emissions and convince them that they need to make more energy accessible.

TAKADA: First of all, regardless of how much the politicians will be able to absorb as the agenda for Copenhagen, we have to remind everybody, including those people who are negotiating that this particular agenda of providing clean, modern energy to everybody must be at the level of basic human rights.

In terms of linking energy access and the climate change agenda, what we have seen so far is that providing instantly, access to electricity as well as modern fuels to about two billion people who do not have those services does not cause a significant increase in the Green House Gas emissions. A, is that because the amount of energy that we are talking about at household level is relatively small. That's one. B, is that the technological options that we have are quite diverse, including efficient, renewable solutions. And indeed when we actually try to deploy those technological options, it's not adding at all to Green House Gas emissions. In fact in many cases, it even reduced the emissions from the household sectors.

PRESENTER:  That was Minoru Takada, Head of the UN's Sustainable Energy Program in that report by UN Radio's Marsha Branch.

duration:  2'52"