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Abstract

In a climate-constrained world, understanding the energy required to achieve universal access to modern energy is critical. This requires making assumptions on future population trajectories. Although access to modern energy can affect population dynamics, this feedback has not yet been accounted for in demographic models. Access to modern energy leads to fertility declines as it reduces child mortality, improves health, increases women's access to information, education and employment. In this paper we present a demographic model that endogenizes the effect of increased access to modern energy on population dynamics and estimates the size of this effect on total final energy use by households for the case of Zambia. To do so, we built a microsimulation model to project future population size and composition, accounting for how fertility depends on access to modern energy and education. We used these population projections to then estimate household energy demand of the Zambian population until 2070, under different scenarios. We found that in 2070, while electricity consumption is higher in a universal access scenario compared to a baseline scenario, total energy demand is 29% lower, partly due to a strong decline in the use of inefficient traditional cooking fuels. We also found that reduced population growth due to universal energy access contributes to lowering the energy demand by 56% by 2050, compared to a more limited expansion in energy access, and this contribution increases over time. Although the challenge of achieving universal access to modern energy seems daunting, our results suggest that this could have co-benefits with achieving climate goals. Our study also reveals that accounting for the energy–population dividend in energy models will scale down the currently assumed energy needs to ensure a decent life for all.