Global Electricity Demand Set To Rise Strongly This Year And Next

The global energy access gap worsens as population growth outpaces new connections: 685 million people living without electricity access in 2022, and 2.1 billion people continue to rely on damaging cooking fuels globally, according to a new report.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), the World Bank, and the World Health Organization (WHO), released the report recently.

It also finds that the world remains off course to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 for energy by 2030. SDG 7 is to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy.

The 2024 edition of Tracking SDG 7: The Energy Progress Report warns that current efforts are not enough to achieve SDG 7 on time. There has been some progress on specific elements of the SDG 7 agenda – for example, the increased rate of renewables deployment in the power sector – but progress is insufficient to reach the targets outlined in the SDGs.

The latest report confirms that the number of people without access to electricity increased for the first time in over a decade, as the population grew— mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa—at a higher rate than that of new electricity connections, leaving 685 million people without electricity in 2022, 10 million more than in 2021.