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Who on Earth still doesn’t have electricity?
The world is hungrier than ever for energy.
Demand for heating, cooling, lighting, computing power, and just getting around is rising. In particular, the buildout of data centers to power technologies like AI has set off a rush for new power plants in countries like the US and China. Fossil fuel consumption reached a record high in 2025, but there was also an unprecedented amount of renewable energy added to power grids around the world. Global greenhouse gas emissions are slowly starting to level off. China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, saw its carbon dioxide output drop last year due to renewable energy for the first time.
Key takeaways
We don’t have a good grasp on how many people live without electricity. Official estimates place the number of people without power at 730 million, but a 2024 satellite study suggests the actual figure is closer to 1.18 billion — roughly one in seven people on Earth. Plus, global efforts to connect people to electricity have stalled since 2020. The vast majority of those without electricity live in Sub-Saharan Africa. Energy poverty exists even within countries with robust grids because political power is not evenly distributed. Clean energy can be a ladder out of poverty, but only when it reaches a tipping point of cost and reliability. The combination of solar and energy storage has a lot of promise. But it requires a lot of investment, and disasters worsened by climate change are undermining progress.Yet despite this growing torrent of electrons, there are far more people than many realize who essentially live in a world without electricity, and many more who too often don’t have power when they need it most.
The International Energy Agency reported last year that there are 730 million people in the world who live without power, and progress in connecting them to electricity has stalled since 2020.
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But the actual number is likely much higher since it’s hard for researchers and public officials to keep track of people in the poorest and most remote areas of the world. A 2024 study using satellite data found that 1.18 billion people — about one in seven people on the planet — showed no evidence of electricity use.
And “access” isn’t enough. There are 447 million people who are connected to the grid, according to official records, but don’t use power. Of those that do use power, many struggle to keep lights on consistently whether because of outages and load shedding, or because they can’t afford it. Some places are poised to see an increase in power outages as more people plug in and extreme weather events rip up fragile power connections. In the past, there have also been years where progress in increasing the reach of electricity has reversed.
As a result, the world’s poorest people end up relying on cheap, dirty fuels like kerosene, sticks, and animal dung for heating, lighting, and cooking. Some are even burning plastic to warm their meals. This energy poverty drives a negative cycle of ecosystem destruction, air pollution, and poor health that creates further impoverishment.
Often, discussions around energy — particularly in wealthy countries — treat it as a scarce resource that must be conserved. However, energy is a critical tool for........
© Vox
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