Originally posted in the Stanford Social Innovation Review:

More than a billion people worldwide live without access to basic electricity: One in every six people on Earth doesn’t have enough energy at home for indoor lighting or even to charge a mobile phone. But as appalling as that figure is, it has misled policy-makers, nonprofits, and funders about the true extent of global energy poverty. This misunderstanding has come with profound consequences, from squandering human capital and crippling emerging economies to short-circuiting discussions about how to solve energy poverty once and for all.

The real number of people living with energy poverty is more than three billion—that is how many people live in countries that lack the high-energy systems that fuel job creation, global competitiveness, and prosperity in the rest of the world.

Read the full article here.