"Renewable energy is an easier, quicker and cheaper method than burning coal to help lift people out of poverty through access to power, a new report says.

In the report intended to challenge the mining industry's "spin" about coal and poverty, Oxfam Australia says coal is ill-suited as a power source for most people living without electricity.

More than one billion people around the world don't have power and 84 per cent of those live in rural areas, the Powering Up Against Poverty report says.

It says the cost of extending electricity grids to those rural areas offsets any economic incentive of coal power, making renewable energy a cheaper option."

Australian Associated Press had the story July 29, 2015. [2]