Beyond electricity coverage energy services available

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Access to energy infrastructure is essential, however, this does not guarantee that households will use energy-derived services. A home may have an electrical connection but the service may be of poor quality (with frequent and prolonged blackouts), or may have difficulties paying for its electricity consumption , and acquiring the necessary appliances to, for example, refrigerate its food, or live. at a suitable temperature, etc. For this reason, considering only access to the electrical connection is not enough . The IDB's 2020 flagship publication, From Structures to Services: The Path to Better Infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean , invites us to think about access as the scope of structure. In the case of energy (power plants, towers and distributio.

We invite you to think of it as having final services for the use of energy in the home. Energy services are “those user activities that use energy as a means to obtain or facilitate desired final C Level Executive List services and benefits” [1] . To illustrate the differences between access to energy infrastructure and services, the following examples can be mentioned: electrical coverage vs. lighting, heating fuels vs. temperature control, transportation fuels vs. mobility. In a recent study we analyzed access to energy services in households in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), with special emphasis on lighting services in homes, cooking, refrigeration, knowledge-communication-entertainment, among others.



LAC shows important progress in electrical coverage, but has low energy consumption. Why? Thanks to a set of investment and reform plans , the population's access to electricity went from 78% in 1990 to 97% in 2018, according to OLADE figures, which places the region only behind North America (without considering Mexico) and the European Union to achieve universal access to electricity coverage . However, its annual per capita consumption is one of the lowest in the world (2,156 KWh), when compared to the world average (3,131 KWh) and other regions, such as East Asia & Pacific (3,678 KWh). ), the European Union (5,908 KWh), and with North America (13,254 KWh). High access to electrical coverage does not necessarily imply high equipment in homes.