Energy is like an other economic good. It needs decent governance, functioning institutions, and effective markets to get electrons from the producer to the consumer on a sustained basis. Without reliable energy, virtually every aspect of life is negatively affected. After all, energy, at its most basic, is the capacity to do work. At the village level, energy poverty means you can't pump clean water regularly, there's no communications, no way to have adult literacy classes, and certainly no way to run computers at school or have access to connectivity. This perpetuates social inequality. Its mostly women in rural villages that bear the greatest burden of energy poverty, because it is they who must walk for miles every day to fetch water for drinking and bathing, or to collect firewood. Young girls are often taken out of primary school to assist in the daily struggle for energy subsistence.
-Thomas Friedman, Hot, Flat and Crowded, on energy and development in the poverty stricken regions of the globe
