The energy progress report 2025

Lighting Up the World: A Look at Global Electricity Access Progress

There’s genuinely encouraging news on the global energy front! For the first time in recent years, new electricity connections have actually outpaced population growth, pushing global electricity access to an impressive 92% worldwide. This significant milestone means that in 2023, the number of people living without electricity dropped to 666 million, a welcome decrease of 19 million from 2022.

This positive shift is highlighted in the latest Tracking SDG 7: The Energy Progress Report. While the progress is certainly cause for optimism, the report also clearly underscores a critical need: we must find innovative financing and implement targeted solutions for the planet’s most remote and low-income populations if we’re to truly accelerate towards achieving SDG 7 – universal energy access – by 2030.

Unpacking the Key Findings

The report reveals some crucial insights into where the challenges and successes lie:

• Sub-Saharan Africa remains the epicenter of the energy access gap, now accounting for a staggering 85% of the global population without electricity. This is a significant jump from 50% in 2010, highlighting the immense task ahead for the region.
• Even with a substantial effort to add 35 million new connections in Sub-Saharan Africa, population growth meant only a net reduction of 5 million people without access. This illustrates the monumental scale of the challenge in keeping pace with demographic shifts.
• Here’s a bright spot: decentralized renewable energy solutions are truly making a difference. They’ve already benefited over 561 million people globally and provided a remarkable 55% of all new connections in Sub-Saharan Africa. This underscores the power of localized, clean energy solutions.
• The divide between urban and rural areas persists, with 84% of those still without electricity living in rural communities. This points to the need for tailored strategies to reach these harder-to-connect areas.

While this progress is indeed encouraging, the current growth rates simply aren’t enough to hit the ambitious target of universal access by 2030. That’s why initiatives like Mission 300, a joint effort by The World Bank Group and African Development Bank Group, are so vital. Their aim? To provide electricity access to 300 million people by 2030, directly tackling the largest remaining gaps.

It’s clear we’re on the right track, but the journey to light up every corner of the world still requires immense focus, collaboration, and a commitment to innovative solutions.

source:

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