1.6 billion people live without access to electric light. Of these, as many as 500 million people use fuel-based products such as kerosene wick lamps to meet their basic lighting needs.

In general, paraffin is a large emitter of CO2 and is very costly. Moreover, the paraffin- and diesel-fuelled lighting is much less efficient than even the most inefficient incandescent lamp. The combined use of the paraffin- and diesel-fuelled lighting provides only 1% of global lighting but is responsible for 20% of lighting CO2 emissions.

The fuel-based lighting products consume a large share of incomes of the people in the developing countries. However, the quality of light they can provide with is very low, which makes many activities impossible or inefficient after dark. Moreover, they often cause heavy indoor air pollution and fire hazards.

The 17 billion spent on fuel-based lighting by African households and small business every year are evidence of the fact that lighting is a high priority for consumers (up to 50% of total energy expenditures in the household are spent on lighting, consuming as much as 33% of annual household earnings). The high oil prices of the past years are further increasing the costs for kerosene-based lighting and therefore directly hurt poor consumers.

The plight of the 1.6 billion people using fuel-based lighting could be significantly improved were they to have access to affordable and superior-quality lighting. Recent advances with white-light emitting diodes (WLEDs) have dramatically improved the cost-effectiveness, durability, longevity and overall viability of standalone photovoltaic-powered lighting systems. It is recommended that an international development effort be considered to accelerate the spread of this technology to those in most need of it. Moreover, newly developed handheld solar-charged solid-state lighting devices can provide affordable reading lights for off-grid households that are currently reliant on inefficient fuel-based lighting.

Despite the clear advantages of renewably powered solid-state lighting (SSL) compared with fuel based lighting and other off-grid sources, the transition to off-grid SSL will not occur rapidly without substantial support. The technology will need to be demonstrated to each target group if they are to consider adopting it. Since first costs are still beyond the means of most potential users, financing mechanisms would need to be established to minimize the size of the initial investment. Nonetheless, this technology holds out the potential to bring effective task lighting to off-grid households at less than one-tenth of the cost of other options, the same time curbing CO2 emissions and improving indoor air quality. This has major development implications and is worthy of serious consideration for targeted development assistance. The costs have also declined dramatically as the efficacy of white-light emitting diodes (WLEDs) has improved over the last few years, and this trend is likely to continue into the future.