Goal 7: Affordable & Clean Energy
Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.
Universal access to modern energy
By 2030, ensure universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services.
Increase global percentage of renewable energy
By 2030, increase substantially the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix.
Double the improvement in energy efficiency
By 2030, double the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency.
Promote access to research, technology and investments in clean energy
By 2030, enhance international cooperation to facilitate access to clean energy research and technology, including renewable energy, energy efficiency and advanced and cleaner fossil-fuel technology, and promote investment in energy infrastructure and clean energy technology.
Expand and upgrade energy services for developing countries
By 2030, expand infrastructure and upgrade technology for supplying modern and sustainable energy services for all in developing countries, in particular least developed countries, small island developing States and landlocked developing countries, in accordance with their respective programmes of support.
Current Situation
In 2018, close to 600 million people globally lacked access to modern electricity. Around 3 billion people today still rely on the burning of organic matter for cooking and heating. Rural African communities represent the most affected regions with access to modern electricity as low as 11% in some countries.
Universal access to clean, reliable and affordable energy affects the progress of other SDGs, with access to energy linked to mortality rates in Sub-Saharan Africa. Perhaps most importantly, universal access to clean energy by 2030 is a key mediating factor in facilitating the growth of developing nations, while at the same time averting the worst climate outcomes introduced by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in 2018.
600 Mio
people gloablly lacked access to modern electricity in 2018
3 Bn
people still rely on the burning of organic matter for heating & cooking
Impact Opportunity
The progress made in reducing global incidence of “energy-poverty” in recent decades has been accompanied by significant increases in CO2 emissions with global energy consumption growing an average of 1.5% in the 2010s. The global share of renewable energy production in this time increased 7.91% but has only been able to off-set the decline in nuclear energy over the past decade.
Renewable energy technologies have been rapidly decreasing in cost since the early 2000s and onshore wind and solar PV power are now often less expensive than fossil-fuel options. This cost reduction in renewable energy is a significantly hopeful development in the progress of SDG 7 with sub-Saharan Africa being geographically poised to adopt up to 100% renewable energy.
Renewable energy technologies have been rapidly decreasing in cost since the early 2000s.
Progress
Research Paper
The Promise of Causal Reasoning in Reliable Decision Support for Wind Turbines
By Joyjit Chatterjee and Nina Dethlefs
The Fragile Earth 2020 paper “The Promise of Causal Reasoning in Reliable Decision Support for Wind Turbines” finds that deep learning based on causal reasoning can help identify hidden causal associations, which may have been otherwise disregarded as noise.
Resources
Shared Datasets
Data on global energy consumption by source, energy production and trade, energy transitions and renewable energy investments.
Data on energy consumption and per capita energy consumption of a few countries.
Detailed statistics on renewable energy capacity, power generation and renewable energy balances.
Global data on energy generation and consumption, energy intensity, CO2 emissions as well as import and export statistics.
Datasets on primary energy production and consumption, CO2 from fossil fuels, greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy and electricity.
Developed by Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM), a sustainable development think-tank, this dataset measures electricity access in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Ongoing Research
The Energy Progress Report provides an international global dashboard to register progress on the targets of Sustainable Development Goal 7. It assesses the progress made by each country on these targets.
The Global Carbon Project is a Global Research Project of Future Earth and a research partner of the World Climate Research Programme. The scientific goal of the Global Carbon Project is to develop a complete picture of the global carbon cycle.
Publications
Goal Partners
World Resources Institute
WRI is a global research organization that works closely with leaders to turn big ideas into action to sustain natural resources—the foundation of economic opportunity and human well-being.
PowerGen
PowerGen seeks to provide high-quality and cost-effective renewable energy solutions in sub-Saharan Africa by delivering microgrids and industrial solar projects across the continent.
Sustainable Energy for All
SEforALL is an international organization working to drive further, faster action toward achievement of SDG 7 by identifying critical pathways to success using data and evidence.
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