Energy and development in developing countries

This research aimed to look at the relationship between energy use and development in developing countries, to establish thresholds of energy provision for policy makers. An extensive literature review provided the basis of knowledge for the analysis in this study. Pearson correlations coefficients in this study were used to find the strength of the relationship between energy use per capita, and various indicators of development, including education, population (including urbanisation), infrastructure, health and gross domestic product, in a sample of 12 representative countries (7 developing, 5 developed). The strongest relationships between energy and the indicators were found in developing countries, and in particular between both urban population and energy use per capita, and under 5 mortality rates and energy use per capita. Indicating that energy use per capita is most strongly influenced by urbanisation, and increased in energy use per capita is related strongly to decreased under 5 mortality rates. The threshold analysis in this report found a general trend in data, which showed that countries with energy use per capita of 600kg of oil equivalent or more were able to meet the majority of basic human needs. Therefore this is seen as the target amount of energy per capita, which should be achieved in order to create an enabling environment for development......