While access to energy is crucial for economic development, the challenge before every nation is to meet the energy demand of the people at an affordable cost, said Prof Michael Greenstone from University of Chicago.

Speaking on ‘Energy security and innovative solutions to environmental challenges’ at the eighth session of the Odisha Knowledge Hub (OKH) Lecture series here said there is a great variation in energy access and consumption pattern in various parts of the world.

While the per capital consumption of energy in USA is around 13000 kilo watt hour (kWh), in many parts of Europe and Germany the per capita consumption is around 5000 to 7000 kWh per annum.

On the other hand, there are countries like India with lower energy consumption. Even China per capita consumption (2700 kWh) is much higher than India with per capital energy consumption of 1400 kWh, he said…