Technologies, Renewables & Household Energy

Cooking with wood, dung, coal and other solid fuels on open fires or simple stoves is a daily reality for more than half of the world's population.

This leads to high levels of indoor air pollution, a major risk factor for pneumonia among children and chronic respiratory disease among adults. Globally, pneumonia remains the single most important child killer and is responsible for two million deaths a year.

Progress in access to modern cooking fuels since 1990 has been negligible. To halve, by 2015, the number of people without access to such fuels, 485 000 people will need to gain access to modern energy services every day for the next 10 years. Health and productivity gains can more than pay for lifting people out of energy poverty.

Taking household energy solutions to scale will overcome a major barrier to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Improved household energy practices promote education, empower women, save the lives of children and their mothers and benefit our forests and our climate.

Renewable energy technologies could play a major role in providing clean and improved energy services to the much of the population in the developing world, while also providing additional social and economic benefits. Despite the benefits that renewables offer to countries in these region, the levels of dissemination have not, in general, been significant.