Establishing Property Rights and Private Ownership: The Solution to Malinvestment in the Energy Sector in Developing Countries

There are over 800 million people in the world without access to modern forms of energy services, like electricity, cooking gas, and LPG. This has been called energy poverty. Most studies in the field of energy poverty address the issue from an absence of technological or financial resources perspective. They address the problem as energy in itself having an objective inherent value, more or less addressing the symptoms of the problem and not the problem itself. In this chapter, a new paradigm that addresses the problem of energy poverty and malinvestment is introduced. This paradigm, utilizing the theory of economic calculation and the use and exchange value embodied in the subjective value theory, makes a case for the importance of private property rights in the factors or means of production for modern forms or energy such as electricity. The Nigerian energy sector is used as a case study for this.