The latest edition of Tracking SDG 7, the annual report on global progress toward universal energy access, finds that 655 million people worldwide still lack electricity, while around two billion rely on polluting fuels for cooking. Sub-Saharan Africa alone accounts for more than 560 million of those without power, and progress there has slowed enough that the pace of electrification needs to triple to hit universal access by 2030.
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According to the report, global electricity access has stalled at 92 percent, with annual growth roughly halved compared with the previous decade. The rural picture is worse still: the rural electricity deficit in Sub-Saharan Africa grew from 376 million people in 2010 to 447 million in 2024, even as most other regions closed in on full coverage.
The clean cooking gap
Clean cooking remains the larger gap, affecting close to two billion people, around a quarter of the world's population. The divide runs predominantly urban versus rural: 89 percent of city dwellers have access to clean cooking fuels, against just 56 percent in rural areas. The report warns that if this is left unaddressed, 1.8 billion people could still be cooking with charcoal, wood, kerosene or coal by 2030, with household air pollution from these fuels linked to roughly three million deaths a year.
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The report's news on renewables is more encouraging. Renewable sources now supply over 30 percent of global electricity, and renewable generating capacity has reached a record 544 watts per person worldwide, enough, per the report's own comparison, to run a refrigerator. That average hides a wide gap of its own: low-income countries have just 33.6 watts of renewable capacity per person, against 1,224 watts in high-income countries – a gap of more than 36 times.
Poorest countries falling further behind
Financing tells a similar story of uneven progress. International public financial flows to developing countries for clean energy rose only slightly, from $24.4 billion in 2023 to $24.6 billion in 2024, a level the report describes as insufficient against what's needed. Flows to the least developed countries fell further behind, dropping 11 percent to $3.7 billion in 2024, with debt-based financing still making up roughly 80 percent of the total.
Francesco La Camera, Director-General of the International Renewable Energy Agency: "Recent global energy shocks have made one thing clear: countries with strong renewable energy capacity are better positioned to withstand economic and supply disruptions. Accelerating the deployment of cost-competitive domestic renewables must now be central to strengthening both energy security and economic resilience, while pursuing SDG 7."
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The report points to distributed solutions, including off-grid solar and mini-grids, as already serving hundreds of millions of people, alongside a growing role for electric cooking, bioethanol and biogas in closing the clean-cooking gap. Affordability remains the more difficult obstacle: even where infrastructure exists, connection fees and basic service costs put electricity out of reach for many households, and the report calls for targeted subsidies and better-designed financing to close this gap by 2030. (TF)
The findings were presented to policymakers at a launch event on 8 July, following the SDG 7 review at July's High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development in New York.
