Two billion people globally do not yet have electricity, oil or gas to cook food and for daily living. This perpetuates the poverty trap and undermines attempts to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals while putting pressure on economically-important ecosystems such as forests for fuel-wood and charcoal. It is a crisis but also an opportunity including a business one given the potential size of the market for alternative energy systems The Clean Development Mechanism of the UN's Kyoto Protocol is starting to reach some of the smaller developing economies.