There exists a strong correlation between per capita energy, specifically electricity, consumption, and levels of human development, with a minimum consumption of 4,000 kWh/capita required in order for a “decent” level of HDI = 0.9 to be attained, says a recent report published by ADB.

The Report titled 'Energy for All: Addressing the Energy, Environment, and Poverty Nexus in Asia' says that this energy consumption threshold (and the corresponding HDI value of 0.86) has remained unchanged in recent decades, even as the HDI plateau for developed nations has gradually risen due to increasing prosperity levels.

In fact, 4,000 kWh/capita is at best a conservative benchmark—for comparison, the corresponding average for the G8 countries (excluding the Russian Federation) is over 11,300 kWh/capita, or almost three times higher. In effect, incomes rise with electricity use well beyond the 4,000 kWh/capita threshold, and neither the GDP nor the HDI of developing countries can be expected to increase without a corresponding increase in electricity (and energy) use.

In particular, incremental increases in average per capita income can result in dramatic improvements in human development indices for countries that fall below the 4,000 kWh/capita threshold. In other words, there is a very strong “quality of life” payback for even small increases in delivered quantities of modern energy supplies, especially electricity, in most developing countries.

Garcia, the scholar, postulates the following broad categorization between per capita electricity consumption and levels of human development: below 1,000 kWh/capita, people subsist in abject poverty, barely able to meet their 8−9 megajoule (MJ)/day survival requirements; 2,000 kWh/capita (close to the world average in 2003 of 2,465 kW/h and an HDI of 0.741) is required to sustain a mix
of modern technological components in an otherwise agricultural society; 3,000 kWh/capita results in a high level of socioeconomic development; 4,000 kWh/capita enables the high development plateau of HDI = 0.9 to be reached; modern technological societies without regional disparities or excluded minorities typically require 5,000 kWh/capita on average; and at 6,000 kWh/capita, the highest forms of developed societies can function.

Such categorization is at best a rough approximation, with important exceptions in actual country data, but nevertheless provides a practical basis for assessing the energy requirements necessary for human development. Equally important to the average per capita consumption figure is how efficiently energy is distributed and utilized within the country, which ultimately determines its
benefits for the population as a whole, and therefore, the overall level of HDI achieved.

With the exception of Singapore and Brunei Darussalam, all developing Asian countries had HDI scores of less than 0.8 (and per capita electricity use below 1,300 kWh) in 2002. In particular, the 10 Asian nations at the lower end of the HDI scale (i.e., at or below 0.7)—consisting of Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, India, the Lao PDR, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Viet Nam, and representing almost half of developing Asia's and a quarter of the world's population—stand to benefit the most from increased access to electricity supplies.

In terms of population, as much as 57% of the Asian Development Bank (ADB)'s developing member countries' (DMCs) population had a percapita consumption of less than 1,000 kWh in 2002, compared with a worldwide proportion of 43%. Excluding Sub-Saharan Africa, it is clear that developing Asia represents the least energy-developed region of the world, and with over half of the world's inhabitants, it contains 70% of global population living on less than 1,000 kWh/capita consumption.

The challenge of taking the least-developed 10 Asian countries—containing 47% of developing Asia's population—up to the world average HDI of 0.741 would require, among other measures, increasing their per capita electricity consumption to 1,150 kWh, or almost two-and-a-half times their 2002 level of 479 kWh/capita, compared with the 26% increase actually achieved by them on average in the 7 years since 1995.

However, in the projections discussed, the major portion of the increase in electricity use will occur in countries that are already above the 4,000 kWh/capita threshold, even though almost half (1,240 gigawatts, GW) of the worldwide increase (2,640 GW) in installed generation capacity between 2003 and 2030 is expected to take place in developing Asia. This is because the population growth rate in developing Asia more than doubled compared with the OECD countries (0.9% versus 0.4% average annual increase) during the corresponding period.#