Despite energy globalization, market exclusion remains a serious challenge. To date, some two billion people do not have access to modern energy services due to poverty and a lack of energy infrastructures. Many regions are overly dependent on a single, locally available resource, such as traditional fuelwood or coal, and have limited access to the clean flexible energy forms required for economic and social development. Policies to deregulate markets and get ``prices right'' ignore the poor. Even the best functioning energy markets will not reach those who cannot pay. To include today's poor in energy markets, poverty must be eradicated, and that requires policy action that goes beyond energy policies alone.
What energy policies can accomplish is the improvement of old infrastructures - the backbone of the energy system - and the development of new ones. As emphasized in the regional reviews, extended interconnections are needed in Latin America and Africa, and new infrastructures are needed in Eurasia to match the large available resources of oil and gas in the Caspian region and Siberia with the newly emerging centers of energy consumption in Asia. Given FSU's location between the large, mature energy market of WEU and the new, rapidly growing markets of Asia, and given the increasing importance of grid-dependent energy in all scenarios, there are strong incentives for FSU to build a network linking its oil and particularly its gas resources to the large markets to its east and west. This would enhance trade and revenue possibilities enormously while facilitating cleaner, less coal-intensive development in Asia.