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Solar Energy in Africa and in the Middle East
Published in Peter F. Varadi, Frank Wouters, Allan R. Hoffman, Wolfgang Palz, Anil Cabraal, Richenda Van Leeuwen, The Sun is Rising in Africa and the Middle East, 2018
Peter F. Varadi, Frank Wouters, Allan R. Hoffman, Wolfgang Palz, Anil Cabraal, Richenda Van Leeuwen
The opportunities for renewable energy in Africa were accurately described by IRENA Director General Adnan Amin in an article entitled “Renewable Energy Will Power Africa’s Ambitious Future”: “Africa is blessed with plentiful land and natural resources. Prodigious sunshine blankets the continent for much of the year, ideal conditions for solar power. Hot rocks in areas such as the Rift Valley store geothermal energy. Vast plains and mountain ranges are great sites for wind turbines while mighty rivers like the Zambezi can be harnessed for hydropower projects. Finally, biomass is abundant—all providing multiple opportunities for renewable energy production.” The promise of Africa was also recognized in a speech to the Brookings Institution by U.S. Senator Chris Coons of Delaware: “From urbanization and economic growth, to public health and energy, Africa is developing at a pace that rivals nearly every other region of the world. It is truly the continent of the 21st century.”
Inclusive growth and the sophisticated influence of carbon emissions, renewable energy, and financial development: An introspective analysis of Africa
Published in Energy Sources, Part B: Economics, Planning, and Policy, 2022
Easmond Baah Nketia, Yusheng Kong, Isaac Adjei Mensah, Sabina Ampon-Wireko, Kingsley Anfom
Another scientific finding from this research is that renewable energy has a detrimental effect on Africa’s inclusive growth. The result may be attributed to Africa’s low energy consumption (which renewable energy is a portion of it), with the majority of nations struggling with the energy deficit. Renewable energy has a negative impact on inclusive growth in Africa as a whole as well as in both low-income and middle-income country groupings. The policy on renewable energy in Africa stipulates that by 2030, an additional 300 GW of renewable energy will be added to the renewable energy production in Africa, dubbed; The African Renewable Energy Initiative (Müller et al. 2020). Attaining such initiative may not be a priority for low-income countries in Africa since it has not proved to generate jobs rapidly.
Adoption of a holistic framework for innovative sustainable renewable energy development: a case study
Published in Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and Environmental Effects, 2021
Angeliki Kylili, Qahtan Thabit, Abdallah Nassour, Paris A. Fokaides
Although there is a common understanding among the scientific community that the exploitation of renewable energy can contribute in the region’s carbon dioxide emission reduction targets, a few studies discuss some further implications from this. For instance, in a comparative assessment for the impact of renewable and fossil-fueled energy consumption on financial growth in 30 SSA countries, employing heterogeneous panel cointegration and panel-based error correction tests, it was validated that even both types of energy have a positive impact, fossil-fueled energy causes a higher impact. In particular, for the same percentage increase (10%) in consumption, renewable energy caused a financial growth of 0.27% and nonrenewable energy 2.11% (Adams, Klobodu, and Apio 2018). Also, the analysis on the efficacy of renewable energy for Africa in the work of Wesseh Jr and Lin indicated renewable energy drives higher economic growth than nonrenewable, although a transition toward renewables is restricted due to aspects of scale, economics and sitting challenges. Within this perspective, the authors recommended that, first, African countries should try tackling energy poverty issues with the use of conventional power generation, before gradually moving toward cleaner energy generation (Wesseh and Lin 2016). With the use of a Multi-Regional Input-Output Model, it has also been shown that the total carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions of the SSA region could be reduced by 10%, given the fulfillment of a 50% renewable energy supply target by 2030. Nonetheless, African countries meeting their 2030 carbon emissions reduction targets will be very challenging, while at the same time also realizing the anticipated GDP growth and energy access goals (Hamilton and Kelly 2017).
The ocean as a source of renewable energy in sub-Saharan Africa: sources, potential, sustainability and challenges
Published in International Journal of Sustainable Energy, 2023
Alberto Filimão Sitoe, António Mubango Hoguane, Soufiane Haddout
The use of fossil fuels is driven by the fact that they are the cheapest source of energy available until now (Collier and Venables 2012; Schwerhoff and Sy 2017); oil and gas are easy to transport and store and can be stored in concentrated form (Carbonnier and Grinevald 2011). However, in view of the increased demand for energy and environmental concerns, efforts are being made to shift from traditional sources to renewable sources of energy, which are clean and reliable (Owusu and Asumadu-Sarkodie 2016). Deichmann et al. (2011) and Ouedraogo (2017) argued that sustaining increased development in sub-Saharan Africa would require increased energy and energy access, and further suggested that renewable energies, given the fact that they are diverse and widely distributed may play a major role in boosting socio-economic development. Indeed, in the past 2 decades (2000–2020), there have been noticeable efforts to promote renewable energy in Africa, because of the increased demand and reduction in investment costs (Hafner, Tagliapietra, and de Strasser 2018). Emphasis has been put on hydroelectric, geothermal, wind and solar power (African Development Bank 2017) and on bio energy from organic material or biomass. Biomass includes surplus wood (International Renewable Energy Agency 2015), which is plentiful in Africa (Hafner, Tagliapietra, and de Strasser 2018). There has been little consideration of ocean renewable energy sources, for which sub-Saharan Africa has considerable potential, owing to the fact that it is surrounded by two Oceans, the Atlantic on the west coast and the Indian Ocean on the East coast. This paper reviews the opportunities associated with renewable energy sources from the ocean, their potential and sustainability and discusses the opportunities and challenges for harvesting these abundant and valuable renewable energy forms for economic development in sub-Saharan countries, as a means of diversification of energy sources for attaining sustainable development, in compliance with the stipulation in Sustainable Development Goal 7 (STD7), which urges all United Nations’ Member States to ‘Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all’ by 2030 (United Nations 2021).