Escaping the Energy Poverty Trap

When and How Governments Power the Lives of the Poor

Michaël Aklin, Patrick Bayer, S.P. Harish, Johannes Urpelainen

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780262349314
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In today's industrialized world, almost everything we do consumes energy. While industrialized countries enjoy all the amenities of modern energy, more than a billion people in the developing world still lack energy access. Why is energy poverty persistent in some countries and not in others? Offering the first comprehensive political science account of energy poverty, Escaping the Energy Poverty Trap explores why governments have or have not been able to lead in providing modern energy to their least advantaged citizens.

Focusing on access to modern cooking fuels and household electrification, the authors develop a new political-economic theory that introduces government interest, institutional capacity, and local accountability as key determinants of energy access. They draw on case studies from India, East Asia, Africa, and Latin America to offer the optimistic conclusion that governments can improve institutional capacity and local accountability through appropriate policy design. Energy poverty is a policy problem, the authors assert, and engaging with it as such offers new opportunities not only for ensuring equal energy access, but also for political, economic, and environmental development.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Understanding Energy Poverty in the World
• 3 The Political Economy of Energy Poverty
• 4 Persistent Energy Poverty in India
• 5 Country Case Studies: Determinants of Success
• 6 Country Case Studies: When Success Eludes
• 7 Conclusion
• References
• Index