Access to clean, affordable and reliable energy services for all.
A global overview
A well-established energy system supports all sectors: from businesses, medicine and education to agriculture, infrastructure, communications and high-technology.
Access to electricity in poorer countries has begun to accelerate, energy efficiency continues to improve, and renewable energy is making impressive gains. Nevertheless, more focused attention is
needed to improve access to clean and safe cooking fuels and technologies for 2.8 billion people.
A global perspective on energy from the UN Sustainability Development goals
The world is making progress towards Goal 7, with encouraging signs that energy is becoming more sustainable and widely available. Access to electricity in poorer countries has begun to accelerate, energy efficiency continues to improve, and renewable energy is making impressive gains in the electricity sector.
Nevertheless, more focused attention is needed to improve access to clean and safe cooking fuels and technologies for 3 billion people, to expand the use of renewable energy beyond the electricity sector, and to increase electrification in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Energy Progress Report provides global dashboard to register progress on energy access, energy efficiency and renewable energy. It assesses the progress made by each country on these three pillars and provides a snapshot of how far we are from achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals targets.
How is digital tech relevant to energy?
Areas of tension
These are the issues, negative impacts and concerns collectively raised by the attendees from our pilot workshops.
For the digital tech workforce
- Tech workers are not typically trained on how to the measure energy use arising from the existence of the tech they create.
- Tech workers may be unaware of Jevon’s paradox, and may focus efforts solely on code optimisation and efficiency thereby missing bigger questions around tech use.
- Tech workers wanting to make their applications more energy efficient don’t have access to enough tried and tested methods and tools to do this consistently.
For the global population
- Digital technology is responsible for creating between 2.1% and 3.9% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, most of which comes from generating electricity for the industry to use.
- Lack of awareness about the amount of electricity consumed by tech in richer countries can lead to invisible, wasteful uses eg creating and storing excessive amounts of digital data and assets.
- As tech complexity grows so does it’s energy requirements eg cryptocurrencies, online gaming and AI all use significant amounts of energy.
- Some digital use is non-productive and wasteful eg some social media, viral videos or online adverts pushing consumerism. These services consume energy that could be used by local communities to meet basic needs instead.
- Consumers are encouraged to buy new digital devices frequently by the industry despite the vast energy used to create them. This can arise from planned obselence, lack of backwards compatible development or from careless development of power / processing hungry tools.
How can we nudge these tensions for the better?
Grounds for hope
These are visions and ideas for change collectively raised by the attendees from our pilot workshops.
For the digital tech workforce
- Mindful data collection and storage.
- All tech workers will understand how their design decisions will influence energy/material use in tech.
For the global population
- Ensure energy use for tech is minimised.
- Companies subsidise renewables projects for homes and communities to reduce their energy costs and their dependence on fossil fuels.
Keen to learn more?
If you’d like to explore these issues yourself, either as an individual or with your work colleagues, why not run your own workshop?
Our workshop methodology is open source and available for anyone to use for free. Alternatively you can hire trusted professionals to facilitate the process on your behalf.