According to a new report from the World Bank, 1.6 billion people gained access to electricity between 1990 and 2000, 70 percent of them in urban areas. But, as of 2010, 1.2 billion people were still living without it – 173 million of them in urban areas.

In the West, sustainability often means a better light bulb, or a new lithium-ion battery in an electric car, or a smarter way of powering all the appliances we’ve long since grown dependent on. The fate of global sustainability, however, is ultimately tied to the billion-plus people worldwide who still have no electricity at all.

In the coming decades, we have to figure out how to rein in energy use as a planet – while ramping up alternative sources of it – even as we deliver electricity for the first time to 17 percent of the world’s population.

Read the article in The Atlantic Cities here