This week, leaders from around the world are gathering in New York for the United Nations General Assembly and Climate Week NYC. Energy is at the center of the conversation.

The timing is significant. The global transition to clean energy is accelerating, with renewable energy expanding at a record pace. But progress toward universal energy access has slowed.

The latest Tracking SDG 7: The Energy Progress Report offers a snapshot of where the world stands. Its findings point to a growing challenge: ensuring that the clean energy transition reaches the communities that have historically lacked access to electricity altogether.

What is SDG 7?

Sustainable Development Goal 7, or SDG 7, calls for “affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all” by 2030.

Energy underpins progress across many of the other Sustainable Development Goals. Electricity powers health clinics and schools. It pumps and purifies water. It enables food production, refrigeration, connectivity, and communications.

Over the past decade, the world has made significant progress in expanding electricity access. But with less than five years remaining until the 2030 deadline, that progress is losing momentum.

Global electricity access has stalled at 92%

In 2024, 92% of the world’s population had access to electricity, according to the 2026 SDG 7 report. An estimated 655 million people remained without it.

That number deserves some context.

The global figure tracks people considered to have access to electricity. It does not fully capture the broader experience of energy poverty. Many more people have a grid connection but receive unreliable or insufficient power, face frequent outages, or cannot afford the electricity available to them.

Meaningful energy access requires more than a wire to a home or community. Electricity must be safe, reliable, affordable, and sufficient to meet people’s needs.

Yet, even by the conventional measure, the world is not moving quickly enough. The pace of electrification must more than triple to achieve universal access by 2030.

The remaining energy access gap is increasingly concentrated

Global averages can also obscure enormous geographic disparities.

More than 560 million people without electricity live in sub-Saharan Africa. While electricity access has expanded rapidly in many parts of the world, progress in the region has struggled to keep pace with population growth.

Rural communities face a particularly large gap. In rural sub-Saharan Africa, the number of people without electricity increased from 376 million in 2010 to 447 million in 2024.

These numbers underscore one of the central challenges of the next phase of electrification. Many of the communities still waiting for reliable power are located far from existing infrastructure or in places where conventional grid expansion is difficult or expensive.

Fortunately, the grid isn’t the only option.

Distributed renewable energy can help close the gap

Solar and other distributed renewable energy technologies make it possible to generate electricity where it is needed, without waiting for centralized infrastructure to arrive.

Off-grid solar systems and mini-grids are already providing electricity to hundreds of millions of people worldwide. These systems can serve individual homes, but they can also do much more.

At the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF), we see electricity as an essential tool to meet a wide array of human needs. Solar energy can power water pumping and purification, refrigerate vaccines and medicines, provide power for schools, support food production, and create new opportunities for local enterprise. In this way, energy is a catalyst for advancing much larger goals.

This approach is particularly important as the world works to address both humanitarian and environmental challenges. Communities do not have to choose between development and sustainability. Distributed renewable energy offers an opportunity to advance climate progress while fostering equality and prosperity.

The energy transition must reach everyone

This year’s Climate Week NYC is focused on “the energy, the impact, and the action” needed to drive global progress. The UN General Assembly is also putting renewed attention on the Sustainable Development Goals and the transition to a cleaner, more resilient energy system.

There is much to celebrate. Renewable energy is growing rapidly, and technologies that once seemed out of reach are becoming increasingly practical and affordable.

But the latest SDG 7 data offer an important reminder: Growth in clean energy does not automatically translate into universal energy access.

The next phase of the energy transition must be measured not only in megawatts installed or emissions avoided, but also in people reached.

With 2030 approaching, the question is no longer simply how quickly the world can build a cleaner energy system. It is whether we can build one that works for everyone.