Energy Poverty - Major Energy Sources

Major Energy Sources

Rural areas are predominant in developing countries, and the rural areas in the countries do not have modern energy infrastructure. They have heavily relied on traditional biomass such as fuelwood, charcoal, crop residual, pellets and the likes. Because lack of modern energy infrastructure like power plants, transmission lines, underground pipelines to deliver energy resources such as natural gas, petroleum that need high or cutting edge technologies and extremely high upfront costs, which are beyond their financial and technological capacity. Although some developing countries like BRICs have reached close to the energy-related technological level of developed countries and have financial power, still most developing countries are dominated by traditional biomass. According to the International Energy Agency IEA, "use of traditional biomass will decrease in many countries, but is likely to increase in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa alongside population growth."