Earth Today | Loading: Clean Energy Day 2025

THE PUBLIC’S attention is once again being called to the essential role of clean energy in the fight against greenhouse gas emissions-fuelled climate change, but also as a contributor to safeguarding sustainable access to reliable sources of power for people worldwide.

While the climate crisis escalates with impacts such as extreme hurricanes already being experienced in Caribbean small island developing states, a reported 685 million people are also said to ‘live in the dark’, with the majority of that number from sub-Saharan Africa.

It is against this background that another International Day of Clean Energy is being celebrated this year, on January 26.

Officially declared by the United Nations General Assembly in 2023, International Day of Clean Energy exists in recognition of the “indivisible interlinked nature of the Sustainable Development Goals and that Goal 7 aims to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all by 2030”.

It is, according to information out of the United Nations Environment Programme, therefore vital for clean energy to be given primacy, having regard to the associated human development challenges.

“The connection between clean energy, socio-economic development, and environmental sustainability is crucial in addressing issues faced by vulnerable communities worldwide,” reads a section of the UN’s Clean Energy Day event page, https://www.un.org/en/observances/clean-energy-day.

“For populations without clean energy access, the lack of reliable power hinders education, healthcare, and economic opportunities, and many of these developing regions still rely heavily on polluting fossil fuels for their daily life, perpetuating poverty. If current trends continue, by 2030 around 1.8 billion people will still use unsafe, unhealthy and inefficient cooking systems, such as burning wood or dung,” it said.

While there is some improvement, however, the data has shown that in 2022 the number of people without electricity actually grew by 10 million,“as population growth outpaced progress”, leaving countries off track on ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all by 2030, as reflected in SDG7.

Locally, researchers including Professor Anthony Chen, have long championed the need for the shift to clean energy, in and outside of the developed world.

Speaking at the University of the Commonwealth Caribbean’s third academic research conference in 2019, the Nobel Laureate proposed Jamaica’s pursuit of 100 per cent renewables, including solar and wind, by 2055.

At the time, Chen said that such a pursuit was the only way to go, to effectively tackle climate change, recognising the need for aggressive, scaled-up action to reduce emissions.

“The good news is that it is now possible to replace fossil fuel by solar and wind, both economically and technically, at least in the case of electricity generation,” said Chen, who was among the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change researchers awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

The need to pursue renewables is punctuated by the UN, even with the necessary technologies to make it happen at varying levels of development.

“The science is clear: to limit climate change, we need to end our reliance on fossil fuels and invest in alternative sources of energy that are clean, accessible, affordable, sustainable, and reliable. Renewable energy sources – which are available in abundance all around us, provided by the sun, wind, water, waste, and heat from the Earth – are replenished by nature and emit little to no greenhouse gases or pollutants into the air,” reads the Clean Energy Day page.

“At the same time, improving energy efficiency is key. Using less energy for the same output – through more efficient technologies in the transport, building, lighting, and appliances sectors for instance: saves money, cuts down on carbon pollution, and helps ensure universal access to sustainable energy for all,” it added.

This year’s Clean Energy Day, as in the past, is intended to raise awareness and enable action for the needed transition. Those efforts come as countries face a ticking clock on successfully limiting the increase in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as part of efforts to climate-proof the planet.

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