The Economics of Renewable Energy Expansion in Rural Sub-Saharan Africa

By Uwe Deichmann, C. Meisner, S. Murray, David Wheeler. 2010

317 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Accelerating development in Sub-Saharan Africa will require massive expansion of access to electricity -- currently reaching only about one-third of households. This paper explores how essential economic development might be reconciled with the need to keep carbon emissions in check. The authors develop a geographically explicit framework and use spatial modeling and cost estimates from recent engineering studies to determine where stand-alone renewable energy generation is a cost effective alternative to centralized grid supply. The results suggest that decentralized renewable energy will likely play an important role in expanding rural energy access. But it will be the lowest cost option for a minority of households in Africa, even when likely cost reductions over the next 20 years are considered. Decentralized renewables are competitive mostly in remote and rural areas, while grid connected supply dominates denser areas where the majority of households reside. These findings underscore the need to de-carbonize the fuel mix for centralized power generation as it expands in Africa.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Energy Engineering and Power Technology, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e013629dc2e3951a5ed3eea8471e954c810ee926

Citations in the corpus

• The spatial allocation of population: a review of large-scale gridded population data products and their fitness for use (2019, unknown): “…transportation infrastructure management and rural access (Iimi et al., 2016; World Bank, 2016), resource allocation strategies (Islam et al., 2006; Deichmann et al., 2011), disaster risk mitigation, management and reduction (Ehrlich et al., 2018a; Aubrecht et al., 2016; Gunasekera et al., 2015;…”
• Sustainable energy in Africa: A comprehensive data and policies review (2014, unknown): “Such studies have a continental perspective [27–29] or a macro-area perspective [30–32].”
• Renewable Energy in the Context of Sustainable Development (2011, unknown): “Decentralized grids based on RE are generally more competitive in rural areas with signifi cant distances to the national grid (Baumert et al., 2005; Nouni et al., 2008; Deichmann et al., 2011) and the low levels of rural electrifi cation offer signifi cant opportunities for RE-based minigrid system”
• Financing energy access and off-grid electrification: A review of status, options and challenges (2013, unknown): “Others supporting an important role of off-grid system in universal electrification of Africa include [19] and [20].”
• Off-grid solar PV: Is it an affordable or appropriate solution for rural electrification in Sub-Saharan African countries? (2014, unknown): “…that is out of reach, and this is not expected to change in the short to medium term, in spite of falling PV prices and finance innovations (Deichmann et al. 2010; GTZ 2010; Lighting Africa 2010). annual cost of a solar PV system would be US$51 (US$4.2 per month), or 2.3 per cent of…”