The Green Power Gap

Today, there are 3.8 billion people living with insufficient access to electricity, significantly limiting their ability to achieve the levels of well-being and opportunity seen throughout the developed world. This population is considered ‘energy poor’ and the 8,700 terawatt-hours (TWh) “Green Power Gap” explored in this report represents the clean energy capacity that must be built across 72 countries by 2050 if we hope to achieve both our global development and climate goals.

In addition to estimating the amount of clean power that these countries – more than half of which are in Africa and nearly a quarter in Asia – must deploy to create a future of energy abundance, the report explores the “Green Window of Opportunity.”

If the world addresses the Green Power Gap, leapfrogging the traditional fossil-fuel-based pathways that advanced and emerging countries followed, we can unlock energy abundance and opportunity for 3.8 billion people while keeping the world on track to meet its climate goals.  Within this context, this report explores four potential clean energy pathways for countries to move from energy poverty to prosperity, based on existing power assets and the availability of renewable energy resources.