UN Chief appeals for universal access to energy

‘I studied by candlelight’:

NORWAY: UN chief Ban Ki-moon, who himself studied by candlelight as a child, pleaded Monday for universal access to clean energy, a privilege denied more than half the world population. “We need energy not only to be universal, we need it to be clean and sustainable as well,” he said at an energy conference in Oslo.

Improving access to energy was key to addressing global challenges like poverty, climate change, water scarcity, lacking health care and food shortages, Ban said.

About 1.3 billion of the world’s seven billion people have no access to energy, while another 2.7 billion are reduced to using so-called dirty fuels like coal and wood for domestic purposes, according to the International Energy Agency. “For me, this is anything but academic. It is how I grew up in Korea.

I studied by candlelight. Refrigerators, air-conditioning or a simple fan were just a far-off luxury that didn’t touch our lives,” Ban told the conference.

AFP