Options to address West Africa’s energy poverty
Lack of access to energy in West Africa can be addressed through creative solutions that embrace expanding their power generation by leapfrogging to new technologies that are transforming energy systems throughout the world.
Lack of energy access in Africa has been blamed on constraints of weak transmission lines and broken infrastructure, gas to power challenges, lack of market reflective tariffs and retrogressive regulatory frameworks. Nigeria for example centralizes grid power and has no provision for reverse metering. This discourages private power producers from investing in the sector.
Therefore African leaders who converged at a high level panel for African leaders on Energy and Climate Change hosted by the African Development Bank at its 2016 Annual Meeting in Lusaka, Zambia recently spent the better part of the session discussing the problems.
Panelists identified lack of financial resources, inadequate information on technologies, as well as lack of incentives for the private sector to invest in climate-change mitigation technologies as main barriers to technology development and transfer.
“Our immediate needs require the base load power – fossil fuels, coal – that will move us quickly. We must start from what we have, from our natural endowments, not just clean energy,” said Yemi Osinbajo, vice-President of Nigeria.
For his part, Idriss Deby, president of Chad, underscored the need to protect the environment by promoting use of renewable energy. He emphasized the need to encourage industrial production of solar energy in Africa.
“If each country looks only at itself, we won’t get anywhere. We need to explore a global solution for the continent. There are challenges, there are possibilities, and then there are realistic actions. Focus on the realistic actions,” Deby said.
They urged developed countries to assist African countries to address these challenges.
Edgar Lungu, President of Zambia, pointed out that Africa’s issue is not switching from carbon to clean energy, but access to power. Shortage of rainfall, he said, is already causing power shortages.
“Ninety-nine per cent of our energy is hydro. In two years, there has been no rainfall – should we wait until rains come? We need a solution,” Lungu said, underscoring that priority be placed on increasing access to energy using cheaper, non-clean sources, or more expensive renewables like solar.
Sustainable initiatives have become imperative because Africa is the most vulnerable continent to climate variability and change and access to energy services in African countries also ranks among the lowest in the world.
The African Development Bank reports that currently, over 645 million Africans do not have access to electricity, 700 million have no access to clean cooking energy and 600,000 die each year from indoor pollution due to their reliance on biomass for cooking.
But herein lies the contradiction, about 7.7 per cent of the world’s proven conventional oil reserves, 7.6 per cent of available natural gas reserves and 3.7 per cent of coal reserves are in Africa says the AfDB.
The continent has well over 10 TW of solar potential, 350 GW of hydroelectric potential, 110 GW of wind potential and an additional 15 GW of geothermal potential.
John Gibbs, Africa Deals Power & Utility Lead, PwC, said: “For the millions of people who don’t currently have access to electricity, the old assumption that they will have to wait for grid extensions is being turned on its head by new technological possibilities.
“634 million people without electricity are in Africa. Faster progress is needed, and we believe it can be achieved if national energy policies adopt a more comprehensive approach to energy access, embracing the new starting points for energy provided by standalone renewable technology and mini-grids.”
Energy analysts have said the solution lies in rethinking strategies adopted to improve energy access in Africa. Creative solutions has to be created to provide energy where it is needed using the most sustainable means in the locality to generate power whether through natural gas, biomass, renewable or other technologies.
“We need three things to address energy in Africa – finance, technology, expertise,” said Kassim Majaliwa, Prime Minister of Tanzania.
However, this will require decisive action on the part of Africa’s leaders, continuous dialogue on how they can, collectively and individually, formulate national policies to address Africa’s interlocking climate and energy problems.
Indeed Africa has what it takes to achieve universal access to energy services while reducing the carbon intensity of its growth, weak energy and climate change policies could limit Africa’s ability to harness its conventional energy resources especially oil, gas and coal.
In her remarks, Mary Robinson, the former President of Ireland (1990-1997) who currently serves as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Change, urged African leaders to work as a region and intensify pressure to the developed world to achieve strengthened international cooperation on these issues, but also mobilize funds for climate change adaptation and mitigation.
“You must persuade the world to be with you on climate financing,” Robinson said, underscoring that Africa is the most vulnerable continent to the adverse impact of climate change.
Analysts have maintained that without proper regulatory frameworks and increased private sector participation, investments in the energy sector will continue to go downhill.
According to the United Nations, sustainable energy goals are designed to encourage investments in new technologies in power generation which will come to fruition if it is backed by political will.
Ghana’s Home Energy which specializes in development and sales of renewable energy products for business governments and residential homes has announced that has secured a $705,000 grant from the US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) for the development of a solar PV power generation project.
Some innovative solutions in power generation include sourcing power from biomass. General Electric has developed the Jenbacher Engine which treats biogas collected at landfills and converts it into electricity.
This is just an example of the plethora of new technologies being developed to generate electricity. Industry operators say where capacity is lacking; it can be procured through consultancy services and funding constraints can be addressed with the involvement of private sector capital.
ISAAC ANYAOGU