Hundreds of millions of people in India have little or no access to electricity. Yet demand for power by industries in a country which saw its GDP at or above 9% in the three years to 2007/08 has taken a toll on capacity and infrastructure.

Of the 76 million homes in India that have no access to electricity, 65 million use carbon-emitting kerosene, according to REEP. Kerosene is highly flammable and the fumes are noxious. Every year thousands of people in developing countries die from accidents involving kerosene stoves and lamps.

Developing nations now emit more than half the world’s greenhouse gases and that figure is set to rise.

In India, greenhouse gas emissions are expected to jump to between 4 billion tonnes to 7.33 billion tonnes in 2031. There is no figure for India’s current greenhouse gas emissions.

Its per capita emissions, estimated at 1.2 tonnes, are expected to rise to 2.1 tonnes by 2020, according to a recent government-funded study.

"Hundreds of millions of people in India have little or no access to electricity"India adds about 10 gigawatts of power every year and is likely to see a shortfall of as much as 21,000 MW as capacity expansion fails to keep up with demand, leading to more outages. Solar power will ease some strain on the grids.

In neighbouring Bangladesh, the state-owned and private sector power plants can generate between 3,700 to 4,300 megawatts of electricity a day, against a demand of 5,500 megawatts, according to the state run power development board.

With only 40% of the country’s people having access to electricity, microfinance institutions such as Grameen Bank have made a major push towards expanding the use of solar power.