The Power of Design: Product Innovation in Sustainable Energy Technologies

1.6 Energy Challenges at the Base of the Economic Pyramid

Whereas the main challenge in Western and emerging economies is to reduce energy and adapt to sustainable energy conversions, a great part of humankind struggles with a maybe even bigger problem, because it lacks access to modern energy services. Globally 1.5 billion people have no access to electricity; of them, 80% live in rural areas (UNDP/WHO, 2009). The majority of these people live in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (Figure 1.6.1), where the penetration grade of the electricity grid is low. The development of successful energy solutions for this part of world population is a challenge because of their poverty, often described by the term base of the pyramid (BoP) (Prahalad and Hammon, 2002; Prahalad and Hart, 2002) and identified as the 4 billion people living on an income of US $3.00 or less per day and the more than 1 billion people living on less than US $1.00 a day (World Bank, 2005), This BoP part of the world's population struggles with poverty and is characterized by a lack of access to basic needs as education, health care, and infrastructure, such as clean water supply and clean, safe, and reliable energy.

Figure 1.6.1 Share of the population without access to electricity (UNDP/WHO, 2009)

As mentioned in this chapter, 1.5 billion people don't have access to electricity but, even once connected to the ...