The Geography of unequal access to energy services in Mexican households

Abstract

The Sustainable Development Goal 7 states through target 7.1 that by 2030 we should ‘ensure universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services’. We hypothesize that Indicator 7.1.1 centred on universal electricity provision is certainly a necessity, yet it alone is insufficient to truly reflect the access to energy services. The objective of this study is to present a spatial analysis of the degree of access to different energy services. Using data from Mexican households, we define six categories of energy services and ten domains to measure the access levels, and analyse their distribution at the national scale. We find a clear geography of unequal access to energy services in Mexican households. In addition, a sharp difference between access to electricity and energy services supports our hypothesis. We conclude discussing how our proposal might set the basis for further studies on energy services in connection with other socio-economic and environmental dimensions. We suggest conceiving sustainable development beyond only guaranteeing universal access to electricity