Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Africa has just produced a report which estimates between $60 – $90 billion per year will be required for Africa’s green energy revolution.
Following high-level declarations at the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Conference in late 2015, there is a growing appetite for renewable energy in Africa. This is much-needed; the continent’s energy supplies are not meeting the needs and aspirations of its people. A better system will promote economic diversification, raise productivity, and improve the health and wellbeing of citizens.
Africa requires between $60 and $90 billion annually to address its energy shortfall, roughly quadruple 2014 investment levels. While fossil fuels, notably coal, oil and gas, continue to provide a signi cant quantity of energy – especially in South Africa – renewables need to play a greater role.
Africa has plentiful resources, from geothermal power in Kenya and Ethiopia to hydropower in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Solar and wind are especially promising, thanks to falling costs and resource abundance. From solar-powered hospitals in Lagos to wind farms in Lake Turkana, renewable energy is not just a pipe dream – it is a reality. Renewables can increase energy security, reduce energy import bills, and diversify and de-risk the energy mix. Through off-grid technologies, they can provide direct,affordable power to rural regions beyond the reach of the grid system.
But to harness renewables at scale, very significant infrastructure is needed: both core assets like wind and solar farms and transmission grids, as well as connective infrastructures, like roads to and from sites for transporting kit and manpower, or for bringing products, like solar-powered mobile phones, to market. This requires effective regulation, sufficient financing, appropriate technologies and smart business models.
Read more: http://www.ihstowers.com/documents/7/EIU_Renewable_Report.pdf
IHS Towers, the African company which produced the report, appears to be a major African telecommunications success story. They are backed by major Western finance companies including Goldman Sachs, and Dutch and Singapore sovereign wealth funds.
In my opinion this report simply adds to the evidence that renewables are utterly unaffordable, even if they were practical from an engineering perspective. Unlike India’s $2.5 trillion dollar estimate, IFS Towers at least offers an instalment plan. But it seems doubtful cash strapped Western governments will ever be able to raise the money required to fulfil the report’s ambitions – and this is just the estimated price tag for Africa going green. No doubt though Western governments will foot the bill for yet more jetset climate summits, in lieu of doing anything practical, so everyone can discuss the issues.
So solar is useful to provide off-grid power to communities far from the grid but they need to invest in transmission grids, as well as connective infrastructures, like roads to benefit from being off grid and for companies to be able to distribute solar powered mobile phones to them.
What a convoluted crock.
Clearly there is another agenda behind what is being proposed here and spun as ‘renewables’ and energy security, blah…
Since it is the Economist, they are probably really just trying to dress up ramping up consumerism in African market since the west is just about saturated and ready to cave in.
“Africa has just produced a report which estimates between $60 – $90 billion per year will be required for Africa’s green energy revolution.”
Well that is nothing. I just produced a report which claims I need $250 billion a year just to live in the style that I would like to become accustomed to. I expect the money to start rolling in very soon. Send the money to our host, and he can keep 10% for his troubles, and I’ll make sure the rest is well spent.
As to Africa, if the white man would leave them alone they would find their way. Politics is the main cause of famine in Africa —- and backwardness also.
Mark,
Done.
This year’s cheque is in the mail – it will be posted from Nigeria.
Could you just give me your bank details to help me make out the cheque?
ROFLMAO!
Yes, just send $1000 to cover administrative processing fees and transfer taxes and we will get your check right out to you.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.
The UN energy policy is based on giving Africa a $90 billion fish every year. This only guarantees that, metaphorically speaking, they will never learn to fish for themselves.
There’s a South African addition to that. It goes:
“Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.
Take the fish away and give it to someone else, and he’ll vote for you.”
Commenters here seem to have missed some important points about providing power in Africa…
Many African nations have no natural gas of their own, or coal, and the cost of importing fuel to a developing nation would be prohibitive. Morocco is answering this by building solar CSP, which can be built and maintained by local labour and also provides power into the night.
Also there is usually a complete absence of power grids outside (some) cities – you not only need to build a coal plant, but a power grid. Renewables (solar) mean power can be delivered without the grid.
And delivered more quickly too: a large solar farm is months not years to build. Rwanda added 10% to its (admittedly tiny) grid with one solar farm built in months…
Kenya is currently rolling out power to all its citizens, using a combination of sources -geothermal, wind, solar, etc. It can be done… solar used for the off grid areas in particular.
You Griff seem to be missing the point, how is this our problem and what does it have to do with us? The argument is we put to much CO2 into the atmosphere and we need to reduce our output as does the rest of the world. Currently via your own statement above these countries are not ever going to emit large amounts of CO2 because they don’t have coal or gas and most certainly can’t afford to buy those in.
We don’t even have to bother with your idea as it has nothing to do with us, go tell the African nations the great renewable power god is coming to save them. Your speaking to the wrong audience !!!!! It is of no consequence to me whether Africa powers the whole continent by renewable energy other than a fact I might use to win a game of trivial pursuit.
I often see expressed in these forums ‘but what about all the people with no electricity -you greenies don’t want them to have our standard of living’. but I do – and this is how they will get it – renewables.
Co2 is everyones problem (except those who have an alternative science)
Griff – Are you sure CO2 a problem?
Show the data. Especially demonstrate that fossil fuels cause warming through CO2 emissions. What caused the previous warming periods? Perhaps CO2 is a net benefit. Perhaps fossil fuels are a huge benefit. We wouldn’t even be having this discussion without petrochemicals and fossil fuels. No steel, no plastics, no cars, no bicycles, no synthetic rubber tires, no electrical wiring, no grid, no anything modern. Wood and stone. Ever slept in a hut in Africa with your face up against a wall of sticks and mud mixed with animal dung? Ever stayed in an African hotel with charcoal burning in the lobby?
They have a ways to go, but I doubt very much that not allowing fossil fuels and petrochemicals will help.
The difference between having no power and having power that doesn’t work is???
Clearly in equatorial Africa, solar power does work…
Depends on how you define “works”.
How exactly does one distribute power without an electrical grid? Unless each household/building/structure has geothermal sources or its own little solar or wind farm, it will need to get the electricity from solar plants or wind farms. Hydropower would need a grid for distribution as well. I am certainly not an expert, so if I am in error, someone please tell me.
I do not think that solar or wind power is necessarily impractical, but I do think the effectiveness and reliability are limited. There are also many environmental concerns, from bird and bat deaths to land degradation. Put a solar panel on the ground and you may as well have paved that ground. Little, if anything, is going to be able to grow under and around the panel. Besides, if we do not want to have wind farms “spoiling” our landscapes (a complaint that one hears even from supporters), why would Africans, especially if they are not getting the promised power?
Considering the vast resources that Africa does have, importing coal and/or natural gas should not be out of reach. Unfortunately, the usual problems will get in the way no matter what type of energy sources are used: corruption, governmental inefficiency, and bossy, holier-than-thou politicians from the UN and developed world.
Ally – grass grows fine around solar panels… look up ‘solar farm UK’ in google images. Most UK solar farms are grazed. UK doesn’t have a problem with birds/bats either: our planning law sees windfarms are sited where there aren’t birds flying into them – US problems seem to be from older designs put across migration routes (Altamont Pass e.g.)
Many African nations have no local coal or gas: Morocco for example. And they don’t have the foreign exchange to buy them in..
I have seen mud huts in rural Ethiopia with power meters on the wall.
“Griff June 16, 2016 at 4:35 am
Commenters here seem to have missed some important points about providing power in Africa…
Many African nations have no natural gas of their own, or coal,…”
Seriously, Africa has no resources? Too funny and proves you haven’t a clue. Africa is full of resources being exploited by the West and the Chinese at great expense (Meaning they don’t benefit from that resource) to Africans.
This “growing appetite” for renewables wouldn’t have anything to do with the prospect of getting some of that “free”
extortionclimate money from idiotic, guilt-ridden developed countries now, would it?I’ll bet Big Green is chomping at the bit on this though. They have everything to gain, and Africa everything to lose. It’s a brave new snake-oil world out there.
And they all get along so well together there. The freedom loving, tolerant, kind, non discriminating Africans. They’ve built such wonderful infrastructures that’s it’s the envy of the world. The advancements and inventions are too numerous to count. The US is so envious that many US cities look just like Africa. It’s such a wonderful improvement! ( sarc)
They US could give them everything they have, and they’d be right back to where they are now in a few years. They have no concept of time.
I saw the ads in 1950’s about US aid. Giving local farmers hand tools. I wondered even then why they didn’t focus on tractors, irrigation, packaging, distribution, and transportation systems. As if a shovel makes a big difference.
Sustainable energy is not sustainable with even the best available human resources. It is too costly.
Off Topic but On Target……Daily Caller
Global Warming Skeptic Responds To Massachusetts AG’s Subpoena: ‘F**k Off, Fascist’
http://dailycaller.com/2016/06/15/global-warming-skeptic-responds-to-massachusetts-ags-subpoena-fk-off-fascist/
From the article: “Following high-level declarations at the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Conference in late 2015, there is a growing appetite for renewable energy in Africa.”
The growing appetite is for free money. I would like to have some free money myself.
article: “Solar and wind are especially promising, thanks to falling costs and resource abundance.”
Proposing more bird choppers. I saw a headline the other day that claimed 573,000 birds had been chopped by windmills.
What’s it like underneath these bird-chopping windmills? Is there carrion laying all over the ground underneath the windmills? If so, this must attract more birds to their doom. If not, who cleans all the dead bodies up? What’s it smell like down there?
Yes, Africa has an abundant resource in its birds, and some humans are proposing to kill millions (tens of millions?) of them by going with windmills, instead of a better, non-lethal electrical generating method.
I bet there is a lot of shovel and shut up going on at those wind farms, even with their indulgence, I mean waiver to kill X number of raptors without consequences. Shooting a raptor is bad, but shredding one with a windmill is fine. Consistency at its finest.
Like many less developed nations, African countries are seeing a decline in vulture populations (and other raptor type birds I believe). Windmills may well accelerate the decline, without providing much energy to offset the losses.
People in Africa living a village life won’t be rushing out to buy fridge freezers, electric cookers or hair driers if power is supplied to them. They can’t afford to pay for the power – forget what you could connect to it.
but they can get light…
Here’s another example of an organisation providing solar power to those off grid -here in Bangladesh, but they have SA offshoot
http://www.greeneconomycoalition.org/glimpses/grameen-shakti-bangladesh
People in Lagos pay a connection fee to power companies for power, which is mostly not supplied forcing people to run small domestic, petrol powered, power generators. And thus, air quality is a serious problem.
“there is a growing appetite for renewable energy in Africa.” The only appetite I can see is for $90 billion annually.
I can’t help but visualize those reaching hands, on arms belonging to someone like Mugabe.
From the report:
“Through off-grid technologies, they (renewables) can provide direct,affordable power to rural regions beyond the reach of the grid system.
But to harness renewables at scale, very significant infrastructure is needed:”
So, the advantage of renewables is that they don’t require the grid system, however they do require significant infrastructure. Kind of like a grid system?
Sort of like; tonight I’ll be making potato leek soup. First I’ll need some potatos and leeks. Oops, need a pot to cook it in. Oops, need a stove. Oops, need some gas. Good thing I’ve got that solar panel though. At least I can have some light. If only I had a light bulb….
I would love to know how the infrastructure to support renewable energy sources compares to the infrastructure needed to support more traditional energy sources. I suspect there is not much difference. Roads? Grids? Power plants? Cell towers? Are the trucks and trains going to run on solar power? If the energy is really going to be reliable and constant, either energy storage is going to need to take a great leap forward (not a Mao style leap) or traditional plants will need to be built for backup. Do we really want the power to go out or be unavailable in hospitals? Sorry, the wind is not blowing and it is nighttime so we have no solar power. No surgery for you, dying person!
At present the hospital may have no reliable daytime power and what there is might be from expensive to run diesel generators… Cell towers are being run from solar + battery in Africa and India now
Certainly a lot of the grid infrastructure at the mega scale is not needed (HVDC power lines strung on pylons)
…Hmmm, A climate model that might actually work ?
“IBM’s Deep Thunder gives weather forecasting an injection of tech”
http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/ibm-deep-thunder-weather-forecasts-for-business-use/?intcmp=hplnws
People seem to forget the quotes around “renewables”. Because they aren’t, really. Point one which can be build without fossil fuels and which can be completely recycled…
Thorium is the answer.
Make that $200 billion if the green “help” to Africa is first routed through tax credit giveaways to the rich in the U.S. on their behalf. Of course any amount of green giveaway is in addition to a third or fourth round of debt forgiveness for corrupt leaders use of sovereign loans.
Doing business in Africa? Get ready for lots of corruption.
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Canadian junior miner caught up in corruption, murder scandal in Kenya
In 2013, the company’s licence for its Mrima Hill niobium project was cancelled by the government under suspicious circumstances, prompting cries of corruption and an international arbitration case being launched against Kenya. But all that turned out to be a precursor to something much worse.
On May 5, Pacific Wildcat filed all its evidence in Washington for the US$2.1-billion arbitration case. Later that day, a director from its Kenyan unit was shot dead in Nairobi.
http://business.financialpost.com/news/mining/canadian-junior-miner-caught-up-in-corruption-murder-scandal-in-kenya
Politics of gift giving. Everybody gets a gift. And it’s all according to rank. Want to try doing business in Africa without it? It’s on the PERT charts . This guy gets a gift when you want to do that. Graft you say? Corruption? Rampant. It’s an exercise in how not to do business.
Which country? They do share that same trait, corruption.
Somebody didn’t get the right gift in Kenya. How dare they insult him like that!
I wish that article had a better headline. It makes it sound like the miner was corrupt and had something to do with the murder. These state takeovers are horrible. Allowing companies to find and develop resources, promising licenses and support, then swooping in and confiscating everything is dishonest and unethical. Do your own work if you want so much of the profits.
“In my opinion this report simply adds to the evidence that renewables are utterly unaffordable, even if they were practical from an engineering perspective.”
Why, just because it’s s big number? And why is it expected that the money has to come from Western governments? The private sector is happy to put it up if they can get a decent return on their money. Indonesia is doing the same thing, telling foreign investors please come invest. From a speech he gave on this topic: “We want to build mass transportation in six big cities in Indonesia. We started in Jakarta last year, and we want to build in Medan, Makassar, Semarang, Bandung [and] Surabaya. So, this is also your opportunity. Because you know our national budget is limited.” And “In five years we want to build 24 seaports and deep seaports. We have 17,000 islands, so we need seaports and deep seaports. And this is your opportunity: 24 seaports and deep seaports.” There’s at least $200B in projects he mentions, most of which he wants to carry out in the next 5-10 years.
http://jakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/news/waiting-invest-indonesia-jokowi-tells-apec-speech/
“solar-powered hospitals” – Heaven forbid you should need surgery on a cloudy day.
Even worse, what happens if a thunderstorm hits after they have already opened you up?
Here’s a fully running solar powered hospital
http://www.renewableenergyfocus.com/view/44364/solarworld-donates-50-kw-of-solar-panels-to-provide-clean-power-for-haiti-hospital/
Generally cloud is not a problem for solar PV – see conclusions here for SA:
http://geomodelsolar.eu/_docs/papers/2014/Suri-et-al–SASEC2014–Cloud-cover-impact-on-PV-power-production-in-South-Africa.pdf
A hospital would have battery or even diesel backup… (no, running the diesel all the time isn’t a good idea due to cost)
Just think how many grandiose palaces, fleets of personal jets and armoured limousines can be bought for $90B per year!
“Africa has just produced a report” come on guys, I know Americans think of the rest of the world as a giant black hole, but ‘Africa’ is not a country or an entity or whatever that could produce a report. Its a massive continent with dozens of countries. Just sayin’
And I very much doubt you have been there, spent time there with various cultures and peoples. Yes Africa is a continent with many different countries.
Thanks to all the realists (and someone called Griff) who have entertained me with these interesting discussions! I am a South African who hates seeing my tax money wasted on these ludicrous “renewable” energy projects, all of which are hideous eyesores which degrade the environment with huge windmills and hectares of shiny silicon. But no, the “environmentalists” prefer to despoil our coastal areas, deserts and mountain ranges rather than building homes for a few quietly fissioning uranium nuclei or using our enormous coal reserves. Anyway, send the billions no matter what. Let the government plunder those funds rather than my taxes for a while. And yes, Africa is not a country. And no, the Laws of Thermodynamics probably don’t include the concept “renewable”.