This edited volume looks at energy poverty, an issue whose pivotal role in the fight for human development is only now being recognised by policymakers. Nearly one quarter of humanity still lacks access to electricity. Close to one third rely on traditional fuels like firewood and cow dung for cooking, at great cost to their health and welfare. While most prevalent in parts of Africa and Asia, energy poverty is a global problem which concerns us all. This book, which brings together economists, policymakers, entrepreneurs, and other practitioners from all over the world, is dedicated to a single goal: finding a solution to this haunting problem. It is part history, part economics, part political analysis, part business case review, and part field handbook.

Part One focuses on defining and measuring the problem and benchmarking progress in solving it, an obvious prerequisite to any successful energy-access policy. Part Two reviews past and current energy access programs, with an eye towards finding out what worked and what didn't and what can be replicated elsewhere. These case reviews are told as seen on the ground - China's experience by top Chinese officials and Africa's by African regulators and scholars. Based in part on those cases, the book's last, more forward-looking section aims to present practitioners with a tool kit, a menu of options to speed up their efforts. The energy access agenda is gaining traction at a time of rising concerns about climate change and resource constraints. This book shows that bringing modern energy to those who lack it not just a moral imperative, but will likely benefit the world as a whole without harming the environment or unduly stretching finite resources.

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Antoine Halff is a senior official of the International Energy Agency, the head of its oil unit, and the editor of its authoritative monthly publication, the Oil Market Report. He has spent the last 20 years of his career focusing on energy issues in a series of positions spanning the worlds of government, finance, consulting, higher education, and the media, including New York bureau chief of famed newsletter Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, director of global energy for political-risk consultancy Eurasia Group, deputy head of research at Newedge, one of the world's top brokerages, and lead economist with the US Department of Energy's research arm, the Energy Information Administration. He has also taught courses on the Geopolitics of Energy and related topics at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. He was born and educated in Paris and has lived and worked in Paris, Seoul, New York, and Washington, DC. Benjamin K. Sovacool is Director of the Danish Center for Energy Technology at AU-Herning and a Professor of Business and Social Sciences at Aarhus University. He is also Associate Professor of Law at Vermont Law School and Director of the Energy Security and Justice Program at their Institute for Energy and the Environment, as well as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Energy Research and Social Science. He works as a researcher and consultant on renewable energy and energy efficiency, the politics of large-scale energy infrastructure, designing public policy to improve energy security and access to electricity, and building adaptive capacity to the consequences of climate change. He is a Contributing Author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) forthcoming Fifth Assessment (AR5). He has consulted for the Asian Development Bank, United Nations Development Program, and United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. Jon Rozhon is Senior Researcher at the Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI) and President of Oak Leaf Energy Training. He is Editor-in-Chief of the CERI journal, Geopolitics of Energy and author of numerous studies in areas as diverse as electric power, energy investment, and natural gas vehicles. He was Lecturer in English at the Gifu University for Foreign Languages for 15 years and has spent the past six years at CERI. In 2010, he started Oak Leaf Energy Training, which has provided training for over 100 corporations and government agencies. He holds an MA in English from Lakehead University and an MBA from McGill.