What is energy poverty?
Energy poverty means not having reliable, affordable modern energy: no electricity at home, or no clean way to cook. The UN goal on energy (Sustainable Development Goal 7) tracks both. The two gaps are different sizes. Most people have some electricity now, but far fewer cook with clean fuels like gas, electricity or LPG. The rest burn wood, charcoal, dung, crop waste or kerosene, often indoors.
- 655 million people had no electricity in 2024, and 563 million of them lived in sub-Saharan Africa. Global access reached 92%. (UN DESA, Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report 2026)1
- About 2.0 billion people still lacked clean cooking in 2024, and 75% of the world had access. At current rates, 1.8 billion will still lack it in 2030. (Tracking SDG7 2026)2
- The gap is widest in the countryside. In towns and cities, 89% of people had clean cooking in 2024, and 1.5 billion of the 2.0 billion people without it lived in rural areas. (Tracking SDG7 2026)
Where it is worst
Sub-Saharan Africa has 563 million of the people without electricity, about 86% of the world total, and 970 million without clean cooking (2024; Tracking SDG7 2026). Only 22% of people in the region had clean cooking in 2024 (UN SDG Report 2026, Goal 7).
Zimbabwe and the UK outlined in blue. Hover or tap a country for its value. Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators, EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS (data year 2024). Boundaries: Natural Earth.
Zimbabwe
In Zimbabwe, 62% of people had electricity in 2024 and 37% had clean cooking (World Bank, World Bank). That puts it 184th of 215 countries for electricity and 149th of 192 for clean cooking. In the UK both figures are 100%. Zimbabwe generated about 617 kWh of electricity per person (2024), against about 4,110 kWh in the UK (2024)3 (Ember and Our World in Data).
Bottom 10
Zimbabwe and the UK in blue, with rank out of 215 countries ("=" means tied). 122 countries are at 100%, including the UK, so there is no meaningful top 10. Regional and income-group aggregates excluded. Source: World Bank WDI EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS (2024).
Bottom 10
Zimbabwe and the UK in blue, with rank out of 192 countries ("=" means tied). 44 countries are at 100%, including the UK, so there is no meaningful top 10. Regional and income-group aggregates excluded. Source: World Bank WDI EG.CFT.ACCS.ZS (2024).
Top 10
Bottom 10
Zimbabwe and the UK in blue, with rank out of 193 countries ("=" means tied). Lesotho shows 0 kWh in OWID for 2023 and 2024, which is a data gap, so its 2022 value is used. Niue (0) is left out. Regional and income-group aggregates excluded. Source: Ember (2026) and other sources, with major processing by Our World in Data (data year 2024).
Why it is a health problem
Smoke from cooking
Cooking on open fires or simple stoves with polluting fuels fills homes with smoke. WHO puts the toll at around 2.9 million deaths in 2021, including over 309,000 children under 5, and 95 million years of healthy life lost (DALYs). Women and children, who spend most time near the fire, are most exposed. (WHO household air pollution fact sheet)
Clinics without power
Close to 1 billion people in low- and lower-middle-income countries are served by health facilities with unreliable electricity or none. About 15% of facilities in sub-Saharan Africa and 12% in South Asia have no electricity at all, and only about half of hospitals in sub-Saharan Africa have reliable power. (WHO, Electricity in health-care facilities)
Vaccines without cold storage
Many vaccines must be kept cold from factory to patient. Without dependable electricity, clinics can't run fridges for vaccines and other medicines, or power lights, oxygen and basic equipment. WHO lists cold storage among the core services that depend on power. (WHO, Electricity in health-care facilities)
In discussion: Mike Rowe and Toby Rice
Episode #508 of Mike Rowe’s The Way I Heard It features Toby Rice, CEO of EQT, the largest US natural gas producer. It is one industry perspective on energy demand and access. Watch on YouTube: “What Happens When AI Needs More Power Than We Have? | Toby Rice #508”.
- Rice expects AI and data centres, LNG exports and energy security to drive roughly a 20–40% rise in US gas demand. On his account, that means building far more generation, pipelines and LNG plants.
- He argues that giving everyone a decent level of energy would mean roughly tripling world energy production, and he links more energy to lifting billions out of poverty. That is his own framing.
- In the discussion, Rowe puts the number relying on wood and dung at about three billion. The verified figure is about 2.0 billion people without clean cooking in 2024 (Tracking SDG7 2026).
- Rice describes Energy Corps, a nonprofit he started with his wife. It vets energy access projects, such as cleaner cooking with propane, for businesses to support. Its “50-50-50” goal is 50 MWh of energy per person and $50,000 GDP per head within 50 years. He calls cooking-smoke deaths “completely unacceptable and completely preventable”. His figure of about 3 million a year broadly matches WHO’s 2.9 million (2021).
- He says a recent rise in the number of people without electricity prompted the project. International trackers date the start of that rise to 2022.
This summary is based on a third-party, machine-generated transcript of the podcast audio (PodScripts), not official captions. Views are the speakers’ own, and Rice’s figures about his own organisation are self-reported.
Notes
- The IEA, using its own method, puts the number without electricity at about 730 million (IEA commentary, 2025). This page uses the UN custodian figure from Tracking SDG7.
- WHO's fact sheet still says around 2.1 billion people cook with polluting fuels, using older data (WHO, Dec 2025).
- The UK's 2025 figure is 4,203 kWh per person. This page uses 2024 so every country is compared on the same year (Ember and Our World in Data).
- The counter covers deaths linked to smoke from polluting household fuels. No verified global figure exists for deaths caused by health facilities lacking power, so none is shown.
Sources
- IEA, IRENA, UNSD, World Bank, WHO: Tracking SDG7, The Energy Progress Report 2026 (data year 2024), and the UN DESA release, June 2026
- UN Sustainable Development Goals Report 2026, Goal 7 (data year 2024)
- WHO fact sheet: Household air pollution and health, updated December 2025 (data year 2021)
- WHO fact sheet: Electricity in health-care facilities, with WHO, World Bank, SEforALL and IRENA, Energizing health (2023)
- World Bank WDI: EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS and EG.CFT.ACCS.ZS (data year 2024), downloaded from api.worldbank.org
- Our World in Data: per capita electricity generation, Ember (2026) and other sources (data year 2024)