Grids are the key internal link to solving poverty

Few people understand the role energy access plays in poverty alleviation better than Robert Freling, the long-time executive director of the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF), who has spent his career expanding access to electricity across the world.

For Freling, bringing electricity to remote and impoverished communities is more than providing a pathway to modernity — it’s a matter of basic human rights.

“Nobody can really adequately address global poverty unless and until they take on energy poverty as well,” he recently told Global Citizen.

“I’ve seen all too often how lack of access to modern energy absolutely cripples attempts, in developing countries, to improve health care, education, and economic opportunity,” he added.

Worldwide, 840 million people lack access to electricity, according to the World Bank, and it is projected that 650 million people, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, will still lack access to electricity in 2030.

“To connect the poorest and hardest to reach households, off-grid solutions, including solar lighting, solar home systems, and increasingly mini grids, will be crucial [to ending poverty],” the World Banks says.

But as efforts to expand energy access accelerate, groups working on the issue also have to contend with the looming climate crisis. Efforts to equip communities with electricity can’t lead to more greenhouse gas emissions that exacerbate climate change. Instead, they have to “leapfrog” old, dirty forms of energy and go all-in on renewable forms of energy.

The use of solar energy has proven to be effective as a method of alleviating poverty in the past. In China, solar energy has provided power to more than 800,000 families living in poverty, and in one county, solar installations provided families with an additional annual income of over $400, according to Nature.

Since 1997, Freling has been the executive director of SELF, which works to provide access to solar energy in developing communities where the only source of light and electricity is likely to come from fossil-fuel burning kerosene lamps or diesel generators. The organization has worked in more than 25 countries across Asia, South America, and the Caribbean, and has been recently focusing on sub-Saharan Africa as well, Freling said.

SELF is one of a number of organizations using solar energy to alleviate poverty and empower communities. Let There Be Light International works to provide solar lights in off-grid communities in sub-Saharan Africa. In Puerto Rico, an organization called Casa Pueblo installed solar panels in 150 locations after Hurricane Maria, which ensured they still had electricity after a recent earthquake. Native Americans in the US, such as Henry Red Cloud of Red Cloud Renewable, are turning to solar energy to provide power and energy independence to their communities.

These efforts often address multiple development issues at once, including health care. SELF, for example, has electrified more than 150 medical clinics throughout the world, Freling said, including having recently worked with the United Nations Foundation to electrify 62 clinics in Ghana and Uganda.

“I’ve seen how rural health clinics struggle to provide adequate health care in rural villages around the world,” Freling said. “There’s no way to deliver babies at night, there’s no way to turn on a light, there’s no way to store vaccines and medicines because there’s no power for refrigeration.”

In the village of Bukyerimba, Uganda, SELF installed a solar-powered water pump that will spare women and girls in the village from having to take long trips to the bush to find water sources, which increases their risk of exposure to sexual violence.

“We like to do things that really can create new models for people, and find new innovative ways of connecting the dots between access to modern energy and other development objectives,” Freling said. “Even though we work, maybe, at the micro-level, in a village or a small group of villages, we really want to create models that others can replicate, and to scale