How Blockchain Is Solving the Energy Crisis in Developing Nations

According to the latest figures, more than 1.2 billion people globally lack energy access, and many more communities have inconsistent or prohibitively expensive electricity.

Electricity poverty burdens are not distributed equally around the world - more than 95% of people experiencing energy poverty come from sub-Saharan Africa or developing portions of Asia and 84% live in rural areas.

The predominance of rural energy poverty means that simply adding more capacity to centralized energy grids predominantly servicing urban areas is not the solution.

Former Indian Minister of Power, EAS Sarma, has observed that the addition of 95 thousand megawatts of power to India's power grid, mostly through coal-fired plants, made virtually no reduction in the number of Indian communities experiencing energy poverty between 2001 and 2015.

How can we address energy poverty? One startup called ImpactPPA is proposing a decentralized solution.

This principle holds true in communities across the globe who have wrestled with energy access, in both developed and developing nations.

These conditions have yet to come about in many developing countries, which means communities who are interested in DEG's often can't find the initial capital to build them.

The blockchain is uniquely well-suited to solving the financial problems posed by rural energy poverty.

Clean energy DEGs make economic sense for the communities who build them.

The result will be a blockchain-based funding "Engine" that tackles energy poverty across the world, one community at a time.