Provision of the energy needed to do useful work and provide critical public services can contribute to the eradication of poverty and improvements in quality of life for those living at the margins of society. 

Access to modern, reliable clean and affordable energy - enshrined as Sustainable Development Goal 7 - is a critical enabler sustainable development broadly, and a necessary prerequisite in achieving many other SDGs.

In order for this promise to be fulfilled, energy must be provided in such a way as to systematically support the lives and livelihoods of those who would suffer without it.

We offer a working definition of ‘affordable energy’, namely, the cost of basic energy services must be less than 10% of disposable income for an individual or a household. For a person living on $2 per day, the energy cost must not exceed 20 cents/day.

This highly challenging target not only has clarity of purpose, it is a metric against which progress can be measured. Achieving this goal rests on critical advances in the scientific and technological capacity to deliver innovations on a scale large enough to render energy poverty a phenomenon of the past.

The initiative draws on insights from a broad, multi-disciplinary knowledge base in order to comprehensively address the problem of energy access. The focus is on cutting edge scientific research through international collaboration, yielding breakthrough innovations for energy access. Research in the social and behavioral sciences is informed by experience in the field and applied to guide technology development efforts.

Four research domain areas have been identified, around which research collaboration is organized.

I. Generation, Devices & Advanced Materials	II. Micro-Grids for Dispersed Power	III. ICT for Energy System Convergence	IV. Environmental & Human Dimensions of Energy Transitions
- Geothermal - Wind - Solar - Hydro - Fuel Cell - Bio Energy - - -	- Integration of Smart Energy - Off-Grid Micro-Energy Systems - Electric Mobility - Geothermal - - -	- Data Mining & Analytics Devices - Informatics - Sensors - - - - -	- Business Models for Productive Energy Use - Social Acceptance of New Technologies -Self-Financing - Low Impact - Sustainability of Energy Use for Human Development Goals

A major failing of the existing global energy system is its indifference to the needs of a third of humanity. It is vast in scope, delivering upwards of 550 EJ of primary energy annually through an immense interconnected system of pipelines, power plants and transmission and yet leaves millions in the dark to scour the forests for firewood. The problem is one of unequal distribution and affordability.

The link between energy, water, food and health is as strong as it is pervasive, and unequal access to energy remains one of the largest handicaps to meeting human development goals. If the energy poor are to be drawn into the mainstream of global economic well-being, then access to low cost energy is a fundamental requirement. 

The global energy system must also evolve through the expansion of new low-carbon sources that do not put the climate at risk. What remains largely unacknowledged is the scope and scale of change required to unlock the barriers to achieving a low carbon energy system in concert with affordable energy access on a global scale.

A low-carbon electricity ecosystem (Adapted from Waterloo Global Science Initiative, 2012)