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Energy expert sees 1.4 billion without power in 2032

William Maclean in Johannesburg

Rapid population growth means 30 years from now almost one in five people on Earth will lack electricity based on current patterns of energy investment.

The International Energy Agency, the West's energy watchdog, delivered the sobering message to the Earth Summit in Johannesburg on Wednesday and suggested that all sources of supply -- including traditional "dirty" fuel coal -- be developed to try to bring power to all.

IEA executive director Robert Priddle said 1.4 billion people -- an estimated 18 per cent of humanity in 2032 -- would lack electricity, the lifeblood of modernity.

"I think it's a shocking figure," Priddle said in a briefing at the Earth Summit, where energy is a key topic in talks on sustainable development.

"Today in the world 1.6 billion people have no access to electricity," he said. "What is more staggering is that on the basis of our projections of the situation as it is today if it is carried forward in 30 years there will still be 1.4 billion people with no access to electricity."

He said that although 75 million people would be connected to new electricity supplies each year in the next 30 years, the proportion of those still without electricity would fall by only one third -- from 27 per cent to 18 per cent.

"It's still too many people," Priddle said.

World population is forecast to grow to about eight billion in 2030 from about six billion today.

ADVOCACY OF COAL

The IEA, the energy arm of the wealthy countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, was set up after the 1970s oil shock to help ensure the security of the petroleum supply but today examines global energy problems.

Priddle said countries outside the 26-nation OECD needed to find $2,600 billion in the next 30 years simply to finance investment in new electricity generation.

But he added without elaborating that even if they were able to mobilise that sum it would still leave many people in the world without access to power.

Priddle's advocacy of coal, a key fuel for power plants, is likely to displease environmentalists because it is among fossil fuels that are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions blamed by many scientists for heating the planet.

Priddle said clean coal technologies had to form a part of a diverse array of energy sources, arguing that it was not prudent to narrow the world's sources of energy supply.

Coal is in abundant supply around the world. China and Australia are among major producers.

The IEA has declined to take a position on a debate at the summit over the role of green energy in getting electricity to those who do not have it without adding to the pollution caused by fossil fuels or nuclear power.

The issue has divided the World Summit on Sustainable Development, with some countries resisting calls for a global target for increasing the Earth's use of renewables.

The European Union wants the world to aim to get 15 per cent of the Earth's energy from renewables by 2010. The United States and others are opposed to any target.

But green groups criticised the EU's target, saying that without defining "renewables", it would encourage the building of large environmentally damaging hydro dams and do nothing to reduce poor countries' reliance on firewood and dung for energy.

Some green groups say renewables already account for 14 per cent of world energy. Excluding these hydro dams and firewood, that figure falls to two per cent.

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