The energy poverty nexus in the Middle East and North Africa

• Date: 01 September 2014
• Published date: 01 September 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/opec.12029
• Author: Laura El‐Katiri

The energy poverty nexus in the Middle East

and North Africa

Laura El-Katiri*

*Research Fellow, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, 57 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6FA, UK.

Email: laura.elkatiri@oxfordenergy.org

Abstract

Energy access remains one of the forgotten millennium development goals, despite being a key

ingredient to sustained and equitable socio-economic growth and development.This article looks at

the energy poverty nexusin the Middle East and Nor th Africa, a regionfrequently overlooked in the

study of energy access owing to its significant hydrocarbon wealth,and the impact energy poverty

has made on parts of the region. A closer look reveals the puzzling picture of a region divided

between energy abundant states and states with continuinglyhigh rates of lacking access to electric-

ity and secure supply of modern fuels. The existenceof some of the worst cases of energy poverty in

the MENA in net exporters of oil and gas such as Yemen and Egypt further demonstrates that energy

poverty is effectivelya domestic distributive problem, rather than one caused by a country’s lacking

natural resources. The article explores the main causal factors and suggests short- and long-term

policy remedies.

1. Introduction

Energy access remains one of the forgotten millennium development goals, despite its

pivotal role in facilitating other keyglobal development goals such as improved health ser-

vices and education, and access to the modern world. More than 10 years into the Millen-

nium Development Goals, universal access to modern energy is still far from being

achieved anywhere in the developing world, including many middle income countries.1

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA)2is one of the traditionally most overlooked

regions in the energy povertyliterature, owing much to its status as one of the world’s most

important energy supplier holding over 60 per cent of world oil reserves and more than a

third of its natural gas.

A closer look at MENA economies, however, reveals the puzzling picture of a region

divided between energy-abundant states with high rates of energy access and secure

supply of modern fuels and those that do not; although the members of the oil-rich Gulf

Cooperation Council (GCC) have largelyachieved universal energy access, many parts of

North Africa and the Levant3continueto face restricted, unstable or no access at all to basic

electricity, particularly in remote rural areas and urban shanty towns, with severe effects

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on labour availability, health, education access and the local environment. Studying

energy poverty in the MENA region is also highly illustrative of the fact that energy

poverty can be pertinent even in countries with significant own energy resources, with

some of the region’s worst cases of energy poverty being in net-energy exporters such as

Yemen and Egypt. These observations suggest that lacking domestic access to energy is

much more a domestic policy problem than one tied to a country’s lacking own energy

resources; and hence fundamentally links energy poverty back towards national income

distribution and the concentration of economic activity and development between

regions.

However, the MENA region also reveals that energy poverty does not result from a

single cause, but rather from a combination of different but inter-related factors, including

geographical and cultural factors. To solve energy poverty, one must address all of these

factors, including such often under-appreciated obstacles as under-education and the

weight of custom in perpetuating the use of traditional fuels. This article uses the scarcely

available data to show the extent of lacking access and to suggest various causes of con-

tinued energy poverty in the MENA region. Section 2 provides an overview of the scope

and depth of energy poverty in the MENA based on the limited data available. Section 3

discusses the various factors accounting for the persistence of energy poverty in the

region. Section 4 presents possible solutions based on the region’sexperience. Concluding

remarks follow.

2. Energy poverty in the MENA: an overview

Although energy poverty is not one of the development problemstraditionally associated

with the MENA, modern energy systems, including access to electricity,have in fact been

a relatively recent introduction in most of the region, following the rapid expansion of

public investment in infrastructure in the 1950s and 1960s.That is the case of the oil-rich

Arabian Peninsula, which today is fully electrified. Until the mid-1990s, lower middle-

income countries such as Morocco reported rural electrification rates of less than a fifth of

all households. Rural areas, where some 38 per cent of the MENA’s population live today,

have long been neglected (Achy, 2010; WorldBank, 2013).

Recent statistics, despite significant shortcomings in household-level data availabil-

ity in all but a few cases, suggests a dramatic improvement in energyaccess.4The MENA

region today is highly stratified across the income range. At the top of the ladder are the

economically advanced, high-income countries of the Gulf, such as Qatar, the world’s

richest country on a per capita basis, and the other monarchies of the GCC. These are fol-

lowed by upper-middle and middle-income countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya

and Algeria. At the bottom of the scale come lower-middle-income and low-income

countries such as Morocco, Jordan, Syria, Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, where electricity

The energy poverty nexus in the Middle East and North Africa 297

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