8.3 Strategic elements for transition pathways
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8.3.2 Buildings and households
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8.3.2.4 Renewable energy and rural settlements in developing countries
Rural households in developing countries relying on fuelwood, noncommercial crop residues and animal dung for their basic energy needs, and with zero or only limited access to modern energy services, are a constraint to eradicating poverty and improving health, education and social and economic development (Section 9.3.1). In several sub-Saharan Africa and other developing countries, traditional biomass accounts for more than 75% of total primary energy. The inefficiency of the whole supply chain, together with indoor air pollution problems, affect a large proportion of the population, particularly the many women who still rely on gathering fuelwood for their basic cooking and heating needs. Solutions to fuelwood scavenging include developing local forest plantations to be harvested sustainably, and improved natural forest management, though these are not always easy to accomplish due to land ownership, cost and social issues (CILSS, 2004).
Around one-quarter of the 2.7 billion people who rely on biomass (and another 0.3 billion on coal) now use improved cook stoves (UNDP and WHO, 2009). This amounts to 166 million households, around 70% being in China. Lighting demands met by relatively costly kerosene lamps, torches and candles, are being slowly replaced by RE electricity technologies that can deliver cost-effective high-quality lighting. For example, around 1 million solar lanterns (REN21, 2010) have been installed worldwide along with over 1.5 million solar PV home systems (also used for radio, television, refrigeration, communications and mobile phone charging). Solar PV-powered water pumps, micro-hydro schemes and mini-grids, small bioenergy gasifiers and biogas plants are all being widely deployed, but reliable statistics are not available to indicate rates of deployment with any accuracy (REN21, 2010).
