Note: This is an imagined future story, written as if a projected milestone has occurred. It is based on current trends and evidence, not confirmed events.
For the first time in recorded history, every person on Earth who wants access to electricity has it. The announcement, confirmed this week by the International Energy Agency, the World Bank, and the United Nations Statistics Division, marks the completion of a decades-long push to close the global electricity gap — a gap that still left 660 million people in the dark as recently as 2030 C.E.
The milestone at a glance
- Universal electricity access: The share of the global population with electricity access has reached effectively 100%, up from roughly 90% in the early 2020s C.E.
- Sub-Saharan Africa: The region that accounted for the largest share of the unelectrified population in 2019 C.E. is now home to some of the fastest-growing distributed solar grids on Earth.
- Clean cooking: Universal electricity access has arrived, but 1.9 billion people were still without clean cooking access as of 2030 C.E. — that challenge remains unfinished.
How the world got here
Progress on electricity access was stubbornly slow for most of the 2010s C.E. The 2013 C.E. Global Tracking Framework — the first major joint report from the IEA, IRENA, UNSD, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization — warned that a business-as-usual approach would not meet the 2030 C.E. targets. Each annual edition of Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report that followed repeated that warning.
The number of people without electricity did fall — from 1.2 billion in 2010 C.E. to 759 million in 2019 C.E. But the pace was uneven. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the number of unelectrified people actually grew during that decade, even as connections were being made, because population growth outpaced grid expansion. The 2023 C.E. edition of the report projected 660 million people would still lack electricity in 2030 C.E. without further action.
Further action came.
What changed in the 2030s
The shift was driven by three intersecting forces. First, the cost of solar panels and battery storage continued to collapse through the late 2020s C.E., making off-grid and mini-grid systems economically viable in remote and low-income communities where extending the central grid had never made financial sense. This is part of a broader story of renewables reaching near-majority status in global power capacity that set the stage for this decade’s acceleration.
Second, a wave of debt relief and concessional financing in the early 2030s C.E. freed up government budgets in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia — the two regions with the deepest remaining deficits. The mounting debt burden flagged in the 2023 C.E. progress report had been one of the primary structural barriers to electrification investment.
Third, a coordinated push by national governments, international development banks, and the private sector to train and deploy local energy technicians created jobs and maintenance capacity at the community level. Previous electrification drives had sometimes faltered not at the installation stage but years later, when equipment failed and no one nearby could fix it.
Who led the way
The countries that closed their gaps fastest were often those that bet early on distributed generation rather than waiting for central grid expansion. Several nations in East Africa became regional models, having built out dense networks of solar home systems and mini-grids serving villages that would have waited another generation for a transmission line.
Indigenous and rural communities — historically the last to receive infrastructure investment — were central to this effort. In many cases, community-owned energy cooperatives managed their own systems, a model that proved more durable than top-down utility delivery. These local energy networks echo the land stewardship models being recognized globally, including the formal recognition of Indigenous land rights covering 160 million hectares at COP30.
International coordination also played a role. The World Bank’s Sustainable Energy for All initiative and IRENA’s financing frameworks helped channel capital toward the communities most in need, and SEforALL’s tracking and accountability infrastructure kept governments and funders honest about where gaps remained.
What remains unfinished
Universal electricity access is real and worth celebrating. But it is not the same as energy justice.
The quality and reliability of electricity supply varies enormously. A household with a small solar lantern that charges a phone is technically “electrified” under the standard definitions used in global tracking — but that is a very different situation from a home with stable, sufficient power for cooking, heating, cooling, and economic activity. Advocates for a more rigorous definition of energy access have spent years arguing that the headline number obscures this gap, and they are not wrong.
Clean cooking — long the neglected sibling of electrification — remains one of the world’s most urgent unresolved health crises. As of 2030 C.E., 1.9 billion people still cooked over polluting fires or rudimentary stoves, a situation linked to millions of premature deaths each year from indoor air pollution. The 2034 C.E. milestone changes nothing for them.
And in some regions, electricity grids remain fragile — vulnerable to climate disruptions, conflict, and underfunded maintenance. Connection today does not guarantee connection tomorrow.
Still, today’s announcement is the product of decades of measurement, advocacy, financing, and community-level work. The Tracking SDG7 reports, published every year since 2013 C.E., created a global accountability system that made it harder for governments and donors to look away. That accountability infrastructure — more than any single policy or technology — may be the most replicable lesson this milestone has to offer.
Read more
For more on this story, see: SEforALL — Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Renewables now make up at least 49% of global power capacity
- Indigenous land rights recognized for 160 million hectares at COP30
- The Good News for Humankind archive on renewable energy
About this article
- 🤖 This article is AI-generated, based on a framework created by Peter Schulte.
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