Currently, 840 million people* worldwide live without access to affordable, reliable and safe modern energy. Collectively, they spend about US$27 billion each year on lighting and mobile phone charging with kerosene, candles, battery torches or other fossil fuel-powered transitional technologies. These traditional solutions are expensive, harmful to health, hazardous and polluting. They resign the poorest people on the planet to a life of energy poverty which constrains economic development and impedes access to education, health, and basic services including communications, water, and transportation. Off-grid solar energy products provide a safer, cleaner, cheaper and reliable alternative to conventional solutions.
* Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report 2019 finds that global electrification rate reached 89 percent in 2017 and that the number of people without electricity access dropped to around 840 million, compared to 1 billion in 2016 and 1.2 billion in 2010.