Sustainable Education and Development—Clean Energy

This book is Volume 1 of the proceedings of 2023 Sustainable Education and Development Research Conference. This volume concentrates on papers in the area of clean energy. Despite considerable progress, more than 700 million people worldwide still lack access to electricity, and around 2.4 billion people continue to use harmful and polluting fuels for cooking. While efforts have been made to promote renewable energy and energy efficiency, they have not been fast enough to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 7. Adding to the challenge, the ongoing war in Ukraine has contributed to rising global energy prices and heightened energy insecurity in Europe. In response to the energy crisis, some European countries are planning to accelerate the transition to renewables and increase investments in clean energy and energy efficiency. However, others are considering a resurgence of coal, which poses a risk to the overall green transition. Between 2010 and 2020, the percentage of the global population with access to electricity increased from 83% to 91%, with 1.3 billion people gaining access. Nevertheless, this leaves approximately 733 million people still without electricity, and most of them reside in sub-Saharan Africa. Achieving universal access by 2030, the annual growth rate in access needs to accelerate from 0.5 percentage points to 0.9 percentage points, necessitating significant efforts in low-income, fragile, and conflict-affected countries. In 2020, 69% of the global population had access to clean cooking fuels and technologies. While more than half of those without access to clean cooking fuels live in Asia, the 20 countries with the lowest percentage of people having access to clean cooking were predominantly least developed countries in Africa.