Keywords

1 Introduction

Sustainable Development Goal No. 7 (SDG 7) of the United Nations is ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy.Footnote 1 Affordable energy means to secure reliable and sustainable energy at the best cost possible. However, this cannot be achieved without taking into consideration energy justice which means a fair distribution of both energy services’ benefits and burdens.Footnote 2 Inevitably, affordability is obtained when there is fair distribution of the energy benefits and burdens. The contrary is true when only a portion of the population will obtain benefits while the others will be the ones exposed to energy burdens.

In this sense, policymakers should design and execute regulations considering the power of energy justice to achieve affordability—this in particular relates to procedural, distributive and recognition justice. For example, governments should design strong incentives for poor people to be connected to the grid, consuming safe and sustainable energy. This could be achieved by substantially reducing the energy bill, which will lead to more people connected to the grid. Additionally, it will help the distributor to reduce losses arising from unregular or sporadic consumption of energy.

2 Achieving Energy Affordability Though Energy Justice

A substantial reduction of the energy bill should be supported by the government by explicit subsidies and not by the rest of the consumers. Implicit subsidies are less efficient due to lack of control and will cause unjustified rises in energy prices for those consumers contributing to the subsidy.Footnote 3 Therefore, affordable energy will be different for consumers depending on their level of income, location and other criteria, but energy justice should be on the centre of the regulation to secure that all people are getting the least cost possible for reliable and sustainable energy as possible.

The specifics of such affordable price will depend on each country and circumstances, but incorporating energy justice to the equation, as said before, should guarantee that everybody is being considered. The process of achieving this goal is not without challenges. Financial restrictions, isolated areas and poor access to renewable energy sources are those which commonly face countries when trying to achieve affordable energy with energy justice in the centre.

There are a number of issues in terms of financial restrictions or limitations related to a reformulation of energy subsidies. Although explicit subsidies imply greater potential for rapid budgetary savaging, they will be off-set with greater subsidies for the poor. On the other hand, elimination of implicit subsidies will not generally cause budget saving.Footnote 4 Clearly, there is general consensus that explicit subsidies are more efficient than implicit subsidies, but yet the question remains as to what are the secondary effects of implementing explicit subsidies.

Therefore, availability of funding for governments to implement explicit subsidies is a key challenge to overpass. In this regard, banks and financial institutions in general should re-think their loans and services related to securing affordable energy to all. There should be long periods that do not accrue interest followed by low interest rates that might be subject to complying with certain key performance indicators (KPIs).

On the other hand, isolated areas are another challenge for those countries which face this problem. In some cases, this occurs due to geographic issues and in other cases because of lack of transmission and distribution investments. This challenge could be partially tackled by incorporating distributed renewable energy (mainly solar panels, wind turbines and batteries). This could help those communities to generate their own energy. However, intermittency of any renewable energy source will lead to add other solutions to secure energy access for those isolated areas. In this regard, explicit subsidies for distributors to reach those communities might be needed to top-up energy needs.

Wind, solar, biomass and hydropower are the main renewable energy sources at the moment. Generally speaking, any location should at least have access to one source of renewable energy. However, abundancy of renewable sources at all times becomes a real challenge. This is obviously linked to the intermittency of the different type of power, but also to the specifics of the area or location that needs power. In order to overcome any difficulties, it is recommended to incentivise and promote virtual energy integration. By doing this, the different communities can implement net metering systems to provide or consume energy from other communities. This virtual integration is possible due to energy smart meters and the possibility of off-set generation and consumption, enabling the virtual integration of different power plants. This new trend for technological convergence in electricity distribution will provide consumers and producers the possibility to rely on different power plants that will not necessarily be located at their communities.Footnote 5

Finally, affordable energy with justice also means energy education. There is a lack of general knowledge in most countries about how to pay less for the energy people consumeFootnote 6 and more research is needed on this issue. In other words, what are the actions people could take to obtain the best price for their energy. Without education, there is no development, and without development, justice will not be obtained. Education should be at the centre of joint efforts of the public and the private sector as a key enabler of energy justice.

Based on the above reasons, clearly energy justice and affordable energy are interrelated concepts and cannot be achieved independently. Complying with SDG 7 of the United Nations will demand working hard on energy justice.