Empowering the poor through access to energy — ADB promotes new approaches for scaling up access to energy for the poor

Access to modern, cleaner energy is essential to human development. Yet the majority of the world’s energy poor are living in Asia and the Pacific: more than 700 million people still have no access to electricity and almost 2 billion people still burn wood, dung, and crop waste to cook and to heat their homes.

ADB aims to maximize energy for all, especially the rural poor, and founded The Energy for All Initiative to strengthen its investments and increase its project portfolio in energy access. The initiative develops and mainstreams approaches for scaling up access to affordable, modern and clean energy among the region’s poor. This includes household access to electricity from renewable energy technologies such as micro-hydro, solar, biomass, and small wind power, as well as access to clean cooking fuel, such as LPG or biogas from livestock manure.

Within the initiative, ADB launched the Energy for All Partnership, a regional platform for cooperation, knowledge and technical exchange and project developing bringing together key stakeholders from private sector, financial institutions, governments, bilateral, multilateral and non-governmental development partners. The partnership aims to provide access to safe, clean, affordable modern energy to an additional 100 million people in the region by 2015.