There are about two billion people in the world who live in various degrees of poverty, including lack of access to reliable, affordable and environmentally acceptable modern energy services. They are primarily the rural populations of developing countries. The poorest two billion people in the world use only 0.2 toe of energy per capita annually, whereas the billion richest people use 5 toe, or nearly 25 times as much. Taking another measure of inequality, the richest 20% use 75% of all electricity, while the poorest 20% use less than 3%. The poorest have historically used the least energy; however, they will be the most vulnerable to and affected by the impacts of climate change. The statistics invite unfair perceptions. As a first principle, therefore, reaching out for poverty alleviation should mean lifting up, not leveling down. Lack of energy services and poverty are closely related and also closely related are poverty and impacts of climate change. Therefore, no initiative can work in isolation and integrated thinking is a must in order to achieve sustainable Energy Poverty Alleviation.
In the backdrop of above discussion, WEC has decided to move from “Advocacy to Action” with Energy Poverty initiative. Through this initiative WEC proposes to create partnerships to catalyse replicable, scalable and socially sustainable programmes
