This week I have completed my mandatory annual training, this included a module on Human Rights. It got me thinking whether access to energy is a basic human right?
Should all people across the world have access to energy? Withholding access to energy could be a way of suppressing people and ensuring dominance of one group over another.
What would it mean to say that access to energy is a basic human right? It could mean that people are guaranteed access to sufficient energy to run their daily lives – for hot water, cooking, heating or cooling their homes, for transport. It could also mean that this is provided at an affordable cost, and that the energy provided is safe and clean.
The UN Declaration of Human Rights has been in place since 1948. It guarantees the rights including freedom, justice, peace. It includes social security and education, but not healthcare. It provides a template against which a basic energy right could be added.
There are many places around the world where it would not be possible to live without access to energy. In the cold north, in cities, in rural communities. It is probably easier to list the very few places where it would be possible to live without access to energy – not that I can think of many.
But who would pay for this, who would put the infrastructure in place, who would make the decision on how energy is distributed, what is the fair amount needed for life, what is the price.
And can the planet afford for everyone to have access to energy? At the moment we are 75% fossil fuel based energy. Around 3bn people live very low emission economies, a further 3.5bn live in medium economies. If everyone consumed energy at the rate of the 1bn people in high emission countries, we would have an even more serious problem.
