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Access to Energy
HomeEnergyEnergy access
by Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser
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 Energy
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Contents
Summary
 940 million (13% of the world) do not have access to electricity.
 3 billion (40% of the world) do not have access to clean fuels for cooking. This comes
at a high health cost for indoor air pollution.
 Per capita electricity consumption varies more than 100-fold across the world.
 Per capita energy consumption varies more than 10-fold across the world.
 Energy access is strongly related to income: poorer households are more likely to lack
access.

Access to electricity
IN THIS SECTION
  What share of people have access to electricity?
 How many people don’t have access to electricity?

What share of people have access to electricity?

13% of the world do not have access to electricity

Electricity is a crucial for poverty alleviation, economic growth and improved living
standards (these links are discussed later in the entry).1

Measuring the share of people with electricity access is therefore an important social and
economic indicator. There is no universally-adopted definition of what ‘access to electricity’
means. However, most definitions are aligned to the delivery of electricity, safe cooking
facilities and a required minimum level of consumption. The International Energy
Agency (IEA) definition entails more than just the delivery to the household. It also requires
households to meet a specified minimum level of electricity, which is set based on whether
the household is rural or urban, and which increases with time. For rural households, this
minimum threshold is 250 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year and for an urban household it is
500 kWh per year.2

At a global level, the percentage of people with access to electricity has been steadily
increasing over the last few decades. In 1990, around 71% of the world’s population had
access; this has increased to 87% in 2016.

This means 13% of the world did not have access to electricity in 2016.

High-income countries – or countries defined by the UN to be ‘developed’ are assumed to

have an electrification rate of 100% from the first year the country entered that category.
Therefore, the increasing global share has primarily been driven by increased access in low
and middle-income economies. In many countries, this trend has been striking: access in
India, for example, increased from 43 percent to almost 85 percent. Indonesia is close to total
electrification (sitting at almost 98 percent) – up from 62 percent in 1990. For countries with
strong population growth, such improvements in the share of the population with access is
even more impressive.

Whilst the trend is upward for most countries, a number are still severely lagging. At the
lowest end of the spectrum, only 8.8 percent of Chad’s population has electricity access. For
some countries, significant improvements in access will remain a pressing challenge over the
next few decades.

Electricity access, 2020

Share of the population with access to electricity. The definition used in international statistics adoptsa very 
low cutoff for what it means to ‘have access to electricity’. It is defined as having anelectricity source that ca
n provide very basic lighting, and charge a phone or power a radio for 4hours per day.
No data0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%100%
World
OurWorldInData.org/energy • CC BY
Source: World Bank

1990
2020

 CHART
 MAP
 TABLE
 SOURCES
  DOWNLOAD


How many people don’t have access to electricity?

940 million people do not have access to electricity globally

Global access to electricity has been steadily rising in recent decades. In 1990 just over
71% of the world population had access; by 2016 this had risen to over 87%.

This progress also holds true when we look at the total number of people without electricity
access. In 2015, the total number without electricity fell below one billion for the first time in
decades; very likely the first time in our history of electricity production.3

This is shown in the chart: in 1990 more than 1.5 billion didn’t have electricity; by 2015 this
had fallen to 952 million. By 2016 it had fallen again to 940 million.

Progress has been fast. 1.26 billion got access to electricity for the first time in their lives
between 2005 to 2016. Broken down to average daily change this means that on any average
day in the last 11 years there were 314,770 people who got access to electricity for the first
time in their lives.4

This figure is still unacceptably high — and gains in access are moving much too slow to
reach our goal of universal access by 2030. This is particularly true for Sub-Saharan
Africa — despite the share of the population with electricity rising steadily, population
growth meant that the total number of people without access was on the rise until 2016.
Accelerated progress will be needed to ensure this number now continues to fall.

You can explore these numbers for any country or region using the “Change country”
function in the bottom-left of the interactive chart. 
The number of people without access to electricity by region and country

In the chart we see the total number of people without access to electricity, grouped by world
region.

Here we see a regional shift in electricity access over the past few decades: in 1990, nearly
half (45 percent) of people in the world without access lived in South Asia. By 2016 this had
shifted significantly: the largest share now lives in Sub-Saharan Africa (which is now home
to nearly two-thirds of the world population without electricity access).

This data is also available to explore by country in the map.

Access to clean fuels for cooking
IN THIS SECTION

 What share of people have access to clean fuels for cooking?

 How many people do not have access to clean fuels for cooking?
 What share of people use solid fuels for cooking?

What share of people have access to clean fuels for cooking?

40% of the world do not have access to clean fuels for cooking

The use of solid fuels for cooking is a primary risk factor for deaths and morbidity
from indoor air pollution. The obvious way to avoid indoor air pollution from solid fuel
burning is for households to transition from traditional ways of cooking and heating towards
more modern, cleaner methods. This can, for example, be in the form of transitioning towards
non-solid fuels such as natural gas, ethanol or even electric technologies.

In 2016, only 60% of the world population had access to clean fuels for cooking. This means
4-in-10 people globally did not have access.

The map shows the share of households with access to clean fuels and technologies for
cooking across the world. This share has been increasing for most countries at low-to-middle
incomes, however, rates of increase vary by country and region. Access to clean fuels are
lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa where only 14% of households in 2016 had access. Progress
has been much more significant in South Asia and East Asia over the last decade, with 18%
and 16% of additional households gaining access, respectively.

How many people do not have access to clean fuels for cooking?
3 billion people globally do not have access to clean fuels for cooking

40% of the world did not have access to clean fuels for cooking in 2016. This equates to 3
billion people globally.

In the visualizations here we see the number of people globally with and without clean
cooking fuels, and a world map of the number without access. The total number of people
globally without clean cooking fuels has changed very little since 2000 – only falling from
3.1 to 3.03 billion since the turn of the century.

Both charts can be explored over time, and by country using the “change country” toggle, or
by clicking on a given country on the world map.
What share of people use solid fuels for cooking?

The burning of solid fuels fills the houses and huts in poorer countries with smoke that kills
the world’s poor by causing pneumonia, stroke, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary
disease, and lung cancer. The solid fuels responsible for this include wood, crop residues,
dung, charcoal, and coal. The solution for this problem is straightforward: shift from solid
fuels to modern energy sources.

And the following chart shows that the world is making progress in this direction. In 1980
almost two thirds of the world’s population used solid fuels for their cooking. 30 years later
this is down to 41%. The chart also shows that it is a problem associated with poverty: In
richer Europe and North America the share is much lower than in the rest of the world; and in
the high income countries of the world the use of solid fuels is entirely a thing of the past.
The use of solid fuels is going down in all of the world’s regions. But the success rapidly
developing South East Asia is particularly impressive: Here the share fell from 95% to 61%.

How does per capita electricity generation vary across the

world?
Per capita electricity generation varies more than 100-fold across the world

Whilst access to electricity is an important metric to monitor (especially within a

development context) it is insufficient in itself as a true measure of energy equity. Besides the
fact that electricity is only one dimension of energy consumption (the others being transport
and heating fuel), electricity access metrics provide no measure of levels of generation.
Electricity access does not provide an accurate indication of electricity or energy affordability
at the individual or household level. Indeed, many households may only consume the
minimum threshold of electricity usage necessary to be considered ‘electrified’ as a result of
personal finance constraints.5

In the map here we see the differences in average per capita electricity generation across the
world.

What becomes clear is the large inequalities which exist between countries. In many low-
income countries, per capita electricity generation is more than 100-fold lower than the
richest countries.

How does per capita energy consumption vary across the

world? 
Per capita energy consumption varies more than 10-fold across the world

In the map we see differences in per capita energy use; this is inclusive of all dimensions of
energy (electricity plus transport and heating). There are several important points to note.

Firstly, there are large inequalities in energy consumption between countries. The average US
citizen still consumes more than ten times the energy of the average Indian, 4-5 times that of
a Brazilian, and three times more than China. The gulf between these and very low-income
nations is even greater- a number of low-income nations consume less than 100 kilowatt-hour
equivalents per person.

Secondly, global average per capita energy consumption has been consistently increasing;
between 1970 and 2014, average consumption increased by approximately 45%.

This growth in per capita energy consumption does, however, vary significantly between
countries and regions. Most of the growth in per capita energy consumption over the last few
decades has been driven by increased consumption in transitioning middle-income (and to a
lesser extent, low income countries). In the chart we see a significant increase in
consumption in transitioning BRICS economies (China, India and Brazil in particular);
China’s per capita use has grown by nearly 250 percent since 2000; India by more than 50
percent; and Brazil by 38 percent.

Whilst global energy growth is growing from developing economies, the trend for many
high-income nations is a notable decline. As we see in exemplar trends from the UK and US,
the growth we are currently seeing in transitioning economies ended for many high-income
nations by over the 1970s and 80s. Both the US and UK peaked in terms of per capita energy
consumption in the 1970s, plateauing for several decades until the early 2000s. Since then,
we see a reduction in consumption; since 2000, UK usage has decreased by 20 to 25%.
What determines levels of energy access?
IN THIS SECTION

 Low-income households lack access to electricity and clean fuels

 Rural households lag behind on energy access

Low-income households lack access to electricity and clean fuels

The availability (and affordability) of electricity and clean fuels for cooking is strongly
related to income. Poor energy access is strongly tied to having a low income.

In the scatterplots here we see the relationship between access to electricity, and access to
clean cooking fuels measured against average income (GDP per capita). In both metrics we
see a strong positive correlation: energy access is low in poorer countries, and increases as
incomes increase.
Rural households lag behind on energy access

Access to electricity has been increasing globally, with most of this increase coming from
low-to-middle income economies. However, access to electricity is not equally distributed
between rural and urban demographics.

In the chart we have plotted the percentage of the rural population with electricity access (on
the y-axis) versus the percentage of the urban population with access (x-axis). Countries
which lie below the grey line have lower access in rural populations relative to access in
urban areas. Nearly all lie below this line, meaning that for most nations electricity access in
urban areas is higher than in rural regions.
Data Sources
World Development Indicators – World Bank

 Data: Access to electricity; Access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking;

Electricity use per capita; Energy use per capita
 Geographical coverage:  Global – by country and world region
 Time span: Last decades
 Available at: http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators

IEA – International Energy Agency

 Data: Data on energy access and use

 Geographical coverage: Global – by country
  Time span: Last decades
 Available at: Online at www.iea.org
 The IEA is publishing the  World Energy Outlook.
   You have to pay to access the IEA databases. But some data is available through the
World Bank’s World Development Indicators.

Explore more of our work on Energy

Explore all the metrics – energy production, electricity consumption, and breakdown of fossil
fuels, renewable and nuclear energy.

Get an overview of energy for any country on a single page.

Download our complete dataset of energy metrics on GitHub. It’s open-access and free for
anyone to use.

See how access to electricity and clean cooking fuels vary across the world.
Explore long-term changes in energy production and consumption across the world.

How much of our energy comes from fossil fuels, renewables and nuclear energy? See the
breakdown of the energy mix.
Explore the breakdown of the electricity mix and how this is changing.

See the long-term changes in coal, oil and gas production and consumption.
How quickly are countries scaling up the production of renewable technologies? Explore the
data.

Explore the long-term changes in nuclear energy production across the world.
Explore trends in transport technologies and emissions across the world.

Endnotes

1. Also see: Panos, E., Densing, M., Volkart, K. (2016). Access to electricity in the
World Energy Council’s global energy scenarios: An outlook for developing
regions until 2030. Energy Strategy Reviews, 9, 28-49. Available online.
2. IEA (2016). World Energy Outlook 2016 – Methodology for Energy Access
Analysis. Available online.
3. Although global electricity access data does not extend further back than the year
1990, I hypothesize that 2015 was the first year since the dawn of industrial
electricity production that less than a billion have been without access. The global
population was already over 1.4 billion by the time of the first power plant (in
1882). In fact, Asia (the world’s most populous region) alone was approaching one
billion at the end of the 19th century. The rapid development of the world’s most
populous regions has been focused within the most recent decades in the late 20th
and early 21st century. Although the data is not available to confirm this, I would
estimate that between 1882 and 1990 there has always been at least one billion
people in the world without electricity access.
4. Number of people with access to electricity in 2005: 5,240,786,150
Number of people with access to electricity in 2016: 6,504,588,805
This is an average increase of 114,891,150 per year or 314,770 per day.
5. The minimum levels of consumption necessary to be considered as having
electricity access based on International Energy Agency (IEA) methodology is
250kWh per year for rural households, and 500kWh per year for urban households.
IEA methodology and definitions available online.

Cite this work

Our articles and data visualizations rely on work from many different people and
organizations. When citing this entry, please also cite the underlying data sources. This entry
can be cited as:

Hannah Ritchie, Max Roser and Pablo Rosado (2022) - "Energy".

Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from:
'https://ourworldindata.org/energy' [Online Resource]

BibTeX citation

@article{owidenergy,
author = {Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser and Pablo
Rosado},
title = {Energy},
journal = {Our World in Data},
year = {2022},
note = {https://ourworldindata.org/energy}

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