Tracking SDG7 progress for Lesotho using energy indicators for sustainable development

Abstract

Energy is regarded as a global variable in achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs). In Lesotho however, there are no traces of how far Lesotho’s progress is regarding affordable and clean energy access status towards achieving the set SDG7 targets. There has never been any initiatives engaged for tracking the progress ever since the SDG7 targets were set globally. It is essential to know the country’s current energy status, economic stability, what needs to be improved and at what pace should the improvement be done. This study therefore traces progress of Lesotho energy sector on the four targets of SDG7: energy access (electricity and technologies for clean cooking), renewable energy and energy efficiency. The study further monitors the overall progress of the energy system towards sustainable development and indicates progress with the latest available data up to 2019 against a baseline year of 2014. The five-year data from 2014 to 2019 is going to be projected from 2020 until 2030 to examine the possible progress that would be achieved through two scenarios; Business as Usual (BAU) and Sustainable Development (SD) scenario. It is with SD scenario that certain policies will be informed which will help accelerate the progress. The results from this study suggest that only 68.4% of population will have electricity access by 2030 under BAU scenario. This verifies the SDG gap of 31.6% to meet 100% access target. Moreover only 50% of population will have clean cooking access by 2030 leaving a gap of another 50% to have 100% access. On the other hand, by 2030 renewable energy share will only be 45.5% and still lacking 18.5% to double the renewable energy share of 2014 to 64%. Results further show that in 2030, the energy efficiency improvement will only be 14.3 MJ and still lacking 5.3 MJ to double the improvement to 19.6 MJ. In essence, all four SDG7 targets are not going to be achieved by 2030; hence more powerful policies are needed to make these targets a success.