The paper, entitled “Measuring Energy Access: Supporting a Global Target” and published by the Earth Institute at Columbia University, outlines a set of options and calls for establishing systematic measurement and reporting with regard to energy poverty.

The UN Secretary-General's Advisory Group on Energy and Climate Change (AGECC) has recommended that the international community strive to ensure universal access to energy by 2030.

The Earth Institute's paper discusses the associated benefits to assuring effective national policy-making as well as effective international cooperation on energy. It also urges the international community to play an active role in building capacity and providing resources to increase the quality and quantity of data on access to energy.

It suggests that the UN is well placed to help take this work forward in partnership with the International Energy Agency (IEA), and other organizations. The UN's inter-agency mechanism for energy, UN-Energy, is specifically designed to help coordinate cross-cutting issues, and would benefit from such a role, according to the paper.