East Africa Leads Continent in Renewable Energy Uptake

Posted on :Wednesday , 28th December 2016

East Africa’s economies top countries in sub-Saharan Africa in injecting clean energy into their national grids, through new projects in wind and solar.

The latest report of Climatescope, the clean energy country competitiveness index by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, shows that clean energy policies are becoming more widely adopted across sub-Saharan Africa.

“Fourteen countries from the region have introduced renewable energy targets that saw their clean energy investment nearly double between 2014 and 2015, to reach $5.2 billion,” the report says.

Kenya consolidated its standing as a global leader in geothermal energy, adding 58MW, which raised its total installed capacity to 740MW at the end of 2015.

Ethiopia commissioned 150MW of onshore wind power plant in 2015, nearly doubling its cumulative wind capacity since 2010. It is second to South Africa in terms of new installations.

In June, Ethiopia’s Minister of Water, Irrigation and Electricity Motuma Mekassa told the Africa Energy Forum in the UK that the country would be tendering for a 5,200MW solar power plant, which would be the biggest project on the continent.

“We have an average daily solar radiation potential of 5.5kWh and this project will be a game changer. We have held formal discussions and we will look out for the best partner,” said Mr Mekassa.

According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Ethiopia has this year issued requests for proposals to install a dozen additional geothermal and solar projects, introducing a competitive auction bidding process that is significant for the sector.

“Four of the new projects will be privately owned; the rest will be built under engineering, procurement and construction contracts and retained by the Ethiopian Electric Power,” the report says.

More investments

South Africa was the best scoring country in sub-Saharan Africa on clean energy investments, thanks to its auction programme which saw it bag $4.1 billion of new investments last year.

It was followed by Uganda and Kenya, thanks to significant policies supporting clean energy development, healthy investment activity and a growing number of stakeholders involved in the energy sector. Nigeria also signed a $1.75 billion deal with 14 solar companies to supply electricity to the nation’s power grid.

Last year also saw an increased interest from private equity and venture capital flows into off-grid solar. The report also shows that off-grid electrification companies in Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe received about $80 million in new investments last year — more than four times the amount recorded in 2014.

Early this month, Kenya and the World Bank said that they were in talks to finance a $150 million solar-and-wind project. Kenya Power managing director Ben Chumo said that this was part of the government’s efforts to get new capacity from renewable sources, which should bring down energy costs.

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