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SPRU Professor gives views on energy access to Elsevier “Energy Sessions”

Benjamin Sovacool, Professor of Energy Policy at the Science Policy Research Unit and Director of the Sussex Energy Group and the Centre on Innovation and Energy Demand, was recorded speaking about energy access in developing countries as part of “Energy Sessions”. It is a new forum by the publishing house Elsevier that invites energy experts to give their thoughts on the “big questions in energy.” Prof Sovacool was one of three experts in the first part of the series titled “How can we make energy sustainable?“,  discussing the future of energy generation and use in relation to Goal 7 of the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN.

Sustainable Development Goal 7 aims to ensure universal energy access, increase the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix and improve energy efficiency. In his video Prof Sovacool focuses on energy access in developing countries and how it is interconnected with other issues such as gender empowerment and health. He highlights the fact that indoor air pollution is the fourth biggest killer in the world and how it mainly affects women’s health. He concludes that there isn’t a quick fix when it comes to energy access and different countries require different approaches and different types of energy generation. The best way to approach these problems, he highlights, is “not a top-down approach but a polycentric one, as these problems transcend levels and scales.”

Professor Sovacool’s research focuses on the areas of energy policy, energy security, climate change mitigation, and climate change adaptation.  He has written extensively on designing public policy to improve energy security and access to electricity. As the new director of SEG/CIED, he remarked that “I hope that much of the cutting edge research we do here at SPRU and Sussex continues to benefit not only stakeholders in the UK but also those in emerging economies and developing countries most in need.”

Elsevier have worked together with SciDev.Net on a report that was released in conjunction with the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN in September. The report is part of a broader effort to provide more evidence and analysis on the role of science, technology and innovation in achieving global sustainable development.

Watch the video:

*flickr photo by Engineering for Change  shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license