We contribute to the literature on the effectiveness of aid and to energy poverty literature by providing the first study that examines the effect of aid on energy poverty. Using eight rounds of the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and sub-national aid data for Senegal, we find that aid lowers the probability of energy poverty. Our main results show that living within a 25km radius of an aid project reduces the likelihood of being energy poor by 4.5 percentage points. This finding is robust to a suite of sensitivity checks. We also examine four channels through which aid could influence energy – income poverty, education, health and economic growth – and find that income poverty, education and economic growth are mechanisms through which aid transmits to energy poverty.