Oslo: United Nations’ Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called on Monday for universal access to electricity by 2030.
The UN general secretary said a lack of energy in various parts of the world threatens economic growth and job creation.
He also urged governments and the private sector to pursue “a clean energy revolution”, so that the use of renewable energy sources could be doubled in 20 years.
“Such actions could help to revitalize the global economy (and) combat climate change,” he said at an energy conference in Oslo, hosted by the Norwegian government and the International Energy Agency (IEA).
In a report released on Monday, the Paris-based energy watchdog said 20 percent of the world’s population has no access to electricity, 95 percent of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa or poorer parts of Asia.
Also, some 2.7 billion people are without clean cooking facilities, causing 1.5 million deaths annually from respiratory diseases, it said.
Ban Ki-moon told the conference participants that he knows what it is like to live without electricity. He grew up without it during the Korean War in the early 1950s. “I studied by candlelight,” he said.
The IEA report said investments to expand energy access had to be increased fivefold to $48 billion annually for electricity to be available for all by the target year.
The agency’s chief economist, Fatih Birol, said providing electricity to everybody would have a minor impact on climate change because carbon dioxide emissions would increase by only 0.7 percent.
Around 360 delegates from 70 countries are in attendance at the meeting.
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