Turning on a light in the evening, cooking a meal or listening to the radio - many things that are taken for granted in industrialised countries are possible for only a select few in the developing world. The majority of the poor have no access to energy for even the most basic everyday activities. Without energy they cannot cook food, heat their homes, boil drinking water or summon an ambulance in an emergency. Health clinics need electricity to operate medical equipment and keep medicines chilled; schoolchildren can only study in daylight. Without energy it is almost impossible to produce goods or provide services. 

About a quarter of the world's population has no electricity. Candles, batteries or diesel generators may be used to provide light or to operate electrical appliances for a few hours at a time. In many rural areas geographical conditions, sparseness of population or severe poverty make connection to national electricity grids impracticable even in the long term. Even where electricity grids exist, many families cannot afford to be connected to them. A secure and reliable electricity supply to which even rural households and the poor have access remains a distant dream for many countries. 

Some 2.7 billion people cook and heat with energy from biomass, i.e. with wood, charcoal, dung and agricultural wastes. In most African countries around 90 per cent of households use biomass to meet their everyday energy needs. In rural areas, in particular, biomass is often the only available source of energy.

This gives rise to a number of problems. Because combustion in traditional stoves is inefficient, cooking on these stoves produces large quantities of smoke. In consequence respiratory problems are widespread, especially among women and children, and are responsible for the deaths of 1.5 million people per year.

The environmental impacts are also serious. The felling of natural forests causes entire regions to become eroded and desertified. Fuel becomes scarce, causing household expenditure to rise. In many families women and young girls have to spend a great deal of their time collecting fuelwood.

The importance of a decentralised, secure and clean energy supply for economic and social development is often overlooked by policy-makers. Alongside solar energy, biogas and micro hydropower, sustainably produced and efficiently combusted wood is a modern and renewal source of energy with great potential.