The UN’s plan for universal access to energy

Today 1.2 billion people around the world have no access to electricity, but a UN plan aims to fix that — with clean and affordable energy — by 2030. A new interview with Sustainable Energy for All CEO Rachel Kyte shares how meeting the three targets of universal energy access, doubling of renewable energy, and doubling of the rate of energy efficiency can help the world to meet our global goals for poverty, education, and more. Meeting our energy access goals, argues Kyte, can help the more than 600 million people in Africa without reliable energy access to meet their full potential —

“We now look at those over 600 million people (without access to energy) not as charity or development but as a market of people who want to meet their aspirations and their needs, and that’s a market that can be met by many of the new businesses, and the most innovative businesses are actually coming out of the African continent.”