电力不稳定造成的隐性成本

回想一下你上次经历停电的时候。

那或许不是一段美好的回忆——也许包括在黑暗中无所事事地度过整个夜晚，或者在没有空调的情况下度过炎热的一天。如果停电很长一段时间，连你冰箱里的食物都可能开始变质。

你家的电力供应可能在几分钟或几小时内就恢复了。但全球有近10亿人用不上电，或由于电力不稳定而无法指望用上电。对于他们来说，一次停电可能会持续数天，甚至数周。这样的停电情况不是仅仅造成了不便，而是可能要人命。

点击文末“阅读原文”观看VR视频

许多没有可靠电力供应的人居住在农村，那里甚至连诊所都不能指望有电力供应。停电后，医生有时无法判断冰箱里的疫苗是否已经变质。如果停电发生在晚上，压力甚至会更大。有时，卫生工作者别无选择，只能用烛光或手机照明来治疗病人。

当家里没有电时，连给手机充电都很困难。人们需要步行到当地的商店，花费至少25美分才能把手机插入太阳能插座。这项费用能迅速累积——事实上，使用充电站要比在家给手机充电昂贵数百倍。但是那些家里没电的人别无他法。手机能够使家庭获取改善生活的服务和商业机会，因此许多人会为了使用手机而倾其所有。

对于生活在能源贫困中的近10亿人来说，这些隐性的花费每天都在发生。因此，帮助世界上的贫困人口摆脱贫困的重点之一，就是增加电力覆盖。好消息是，自2016年起，没有可靠电力供应的人口数减少了2亿多。也就是说，又有两亿人可以在日落之后学习、使用电子设备，以及在家里给手机充电。

与此同时，增加能源消耗意味着增加温室气体排放量。煤炭和天然气等发电方式会产生二氧化碳，所以除非我们对能源生产过程进行脱碳处理，否则随着能源消耗的增加，排放量将继续增加，气候变化将变得更加严重。

问题是，最常见的排放量较低的技术——风能和太阳能——仅在刮风或阳光明媚时才能够使用。此外，电池既不便宜，又不能持久供电，不足以让这两种能源成为贫困农村社区的现实性解决方案。于是他们只好倚赖更便宜的能源（多数为化石燃料），增加了大气中的碳含量。

即使能源使用有小幅上升，世界上最贫穷人口造成的排放量在全球总额中的占比也相当有限。如果我们要阻止气候变化，第三层和第四层国家将需要做出最大的变革。但我相信，我们可以通过开发让生产、储存和运输清洁能源变得更便宜的方法，同时解决能源贫困和气候变化两个问题。我不久前写过几个很有前景的创新解决方案。我乐观地相信，能源技术的创新将帮助我们改善最贫困人口的生活，同时为我们迈向零碳未来铺平道路。

The hidden costs of unreliable electricity

Think back to the last time you experienced a power outage. 

It probably wasn't a great memory. Maybe it involved spending the evening in the dark without anything to do or spending a hot day without air conditioning. If the power was out for a long time, maybe even the food in your fridge began to spoil. 

Your power probably came back within a couple minutes or hours. But for the nearly 1 billion people around the world who don't have access to electricity-or whose access is so unreliable that they can never count on having power-an outage can go on for days or even weeks. And these outages are more than just an inconvenience. They can be deadly.

Many people without reliable access to electricity live in rural villages where even health clinics can't count on having power. After an outage, doctors sometimes have no way of telling whether the life-saving vaccines in their refrigerators have spoiled. It can be even more stressful if a power outage occurs at night. Sometimes health workers have no choice but to treat patients by candlelight, or by the light of a mobile phone. 

Even recharging a mobile phone is tricky when there isn't electricity at home. It requires walking to a local store and paying 25 cents or more to plug the phone into a solar-powered outlet. That cost adds up fast. It's actually hundreds of times more expensive to use charging stations than it is to charge a phone at home. But those without electricity don't have an alternative. Mobile phones enable families to access services and business opportunities that improve their lives, so many pay whatever they have to in order to use their phones. 

These hidden expenses are a daily reality for the nearly 1 billion people who live in energy poverty. That's one reason why increasing access to electricity is critical to lifting the world's poor out of poverty. The good news is that, since 2016, the number of people living without reliable electricity has dropped by more than 200 million. That's two hundred million more people who can now study after sundown, use electronic appliances, and charge their phones at home. 

At the same time, increased energy consumption means increased greenhouse gas emissions. Methods of generating electricity like coal and natural gas generate carbon dioxide, so unless we decarbonize the way we produce energy, emissions will continue to increase-and climate change will get worse-as energy consumption goes up. 

The problem is that the most common technologies that produce less emissions-wind and solar-are only available when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. And batteries aren't cheap or long-lasting enough to make either one a realistic solution for poor rural communities. So they have to rely on cheaper energy sources-mostly fossil fuels-that add carbon to the atmosphere. 

Even with this uptick in energy usage, the world's poorest are responsible for a pretty modest share of the world's emissions. If we're going to stop climate change, the biggest changes will need to come from level 3 and 4 countries. But I believe we can tackle energy poverty and climate change at the same time by developing ways to make clean energy cheaper to produce, store, and transport. I recently wrote about several promising new solutions. I'm hopeful that innovations in energy technology will help us improve the lives of the poorest while paving the way to a zero-carbon future.