‘For city economies to prosper, poor need clean power’

TEPIC, Mexico: Giving the poorest people in the world´s fast-growing cities access to affordable, clean energy supplies, while wiping out the use of hazardous solid fuels is essential for urban economies to grow on a warming planet, researchers said.

Some half a billion people in urban areas still cook with traditional fuels like wood, said a report from the Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI). It urged cities to boost access to solar power and other clean energy sources, and make buildings and domestic appliances more efficient.

“You cannot be a modern, prosperous city in the 21st century unless the energy access challenge is addressed,” Michael Westphal from the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Providing energy services for the under-served really will enhance the environment and the economy for the whole city. It’s only when everyone in the city has dependable energy that the city will thrive,” said the report co-author.

Rising migration to already polluted cities means they cannot afford to rely on fossil fuel-based systems developed in rich countries, and should concentrate on clean, cheap energy sources that produce less greenhouse gases, said the report.

Up to 97 percent of people in cities in Latin America and East and South Asia had access to electricity in 2012. But in sub-Saharan Africa, the rate was less than 60 percent, with services often inefficient and unreliable, said the WRI report.

Around 95 million of the 131 million people in urban areas who do not have electricity are in sub-Saharan Africa, it added. In 2010, as many as 550,000 people died prematurely from indoor pollution due to fuels such as wood and coal, underlining why cities should provide better access to electricity and gas, and promote efficient cookstoves, the report said. —Thomson Reuters Foundation