Equality of watt? The injustice of conflating goals and means in the global energy access agenda

The United Nations and the World Bank measure the progress in global energy access through the number of electrical connections and the Multi-Tier Framework respectively. Assessing universal energy access through availability and specific electrical parameters obscures how it is linked to other development themes and conceals the impact of electrification projects on local communities worldwide. The exclusion of adequacy as assessment parameter has led to policies prioritizing cheaper and insufficient energy systems. As a result, communities that classify as fully electrified may never be able to achieve the development goals of universal energy access. This paper therefore argues that the multi-tier framework and the metrics used by the United Nations run the risk of creating epistemic injustices where households and communities are inaccurately labelled as electrified. The history of SDG7, as it is presented in this paper, explains the genealogy of this distorted framing as the result of a historically open process in which access to energy was framed as a goal instead of a means. It shows that household electricity access was historically not deemed to be a goal itself, but a means towards other development goals. The paper reveals that this framing of SDG7 was the result of a path-dependency and shows the cruciality of the distinction between means and ends for making just assessments. Amartya Sen's criticism of welfarism and his Capability Approach are used to develop suggestions for how to make assessments epistemically more just and to emphasize the utility of energy access.