Sec. 2. Findings
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/bill/113/s/2508/is/section-2·A research copy — for the controlling text, always check the official state or federal source. Not legal advice.
Congress makes the following findings: As of 2010, approximately 589,000,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa, or 68 percent of the population, did not have access to power. Lack of access to power services disproportionally affects women, who often shoulder the burden of seeking sources of heat and light such as dung, wood, or charcoal and are often more exposed to the associated negative health effects. Women and girls also face increased risks of assault from walking long distances to gather fuel sources.
Access to power creates opportunities for people to work their way out of poverty, including through entrepreneurship. A lack of power contributes to the high use of inefficient and often highly polluting fuel sources for indoor cooking, heating, and lighting that produce toxic fumes resulting in more than 3,000,000 annual premature deaths from respiratory disease. Reliable access to power is crucial for the storage of vaccines and antiretroviral and other lifesaving medical drugs, as well as for the operation of modern lifesaving medical equipment.
Access to power can be used to improve food security by enabling post-harvest processing, pumping, irrigation, dry grain storage, milling, and refrigeration, and for other uses. Access to power can provide improved information and communication technologies that can greatly improve health and education outcomes as well as economic and commercial opportunities. For the majority of people with access to power in sub-Saharan Africa, power services are highly unreliable and remain at least twice as expensive compared to other emerging regions.
According to Enterprise Surveys of the World Bank, power cuts in sub-Saharan Africa cost companies more than 10 percent of sales in certain countries. The consumer base in sub-Saharan Africa of approximately 1,000,000,000 people is rapidly growing and will create increasing demand for United States goods, services, and technologies, but the current power deficit in sub-Saharan Africa limits that growth in demand by restricting economic growth on the continent of Africa. Approximately 30 countries in sub-Saharan Africa face endemic power shortages, and nearly 70 percent of surveyed businesses in sub-Saharan Africa cite unreliable power as a major constraint to growth.
The work of the Millennium Challenge Corporation in the energy sector shows high projected economic rates of returns that translate to sustainable economic growth and the highest returns are projected when infrastructure improvements are coupled with significant legislative, policy, and regulatory reforms and institutional strengthening. Sub-Saharan Africa has abundant renewable and fossil fuel resources with which to generate power. In some countries in sub-Saharan Africa, weak governance capacity, undue regulatory barriers, and unnecessary legal constraints, as well as a lack of transparency and accountability, stifle the ability of public and private investment to assist in the generation and distribution of power.
Without new policies and more effective public and private investments in power sector enterprises to increase and expand access to power in sub-Saharan Africa, more than 70 percent of the rural population, and 48 percent of the total population, are likely to remain without access to power through at least 2030. Consumers in sub-Saharan Africa spend billions of dollars annually on kerosene and other fuels for household needs, which can, for poor families, represent more than 15 percent of household income and can expose residents to significant fire and toxicity risks.
Kerosene lamps used in homes can cause fires and severe burn injuries and expose users to hazardous air pollutants in close quarters, and switching from fuel-based lighting to cheaper, cleaner systems would provide higher quality light with no negative health effects while achieving significant economic savings. New technological advances in power generation coupled with more efficient appliances are resulting in robust, affordable, and non-polluting off-grid power solutions and entrepreneurs are developing new business models allowing off-grid households to finance systems over time, resulting in a rapidly growing off-grid power market.