Energy Poverty Impacts Three Billion People. Time to Think Big.

We're at the very beginning of building an exciting analytical and advocacy program around the potential for power sector transparency to boost accountability, spur private investment, and accelerate clean energy deployment.

This memo uses updated project information since our December 2020 and May 2021 analysis. Coal-to-power today is exceedingly modest outside South Africa Using the latest data, 36 coal-fired power plants totaling ~54 GW of installed capacity provide about a third of all electricity produced on the African continent (Table 1).

Geothermal power is produced by drilling thousands of feet into ‘hotspots’ in the Earth’s crust, in a process similar to drilling for natural gas, in order to harness high (150°C+) temperature water for the production of electricity and heat. The Great East African Rift System (EARS) is a major tectonic structure that extends 6,500 kilometers from the Middle East (Dead Sea - Jordan Valley) in the north to Mozambique in the south.

The East African Rift System (EARS) could be a major source of clean energy for East Africa’s economies. However, more than 95% of the region’s total geothermal potential (~20GWe) remains untapped.

The Energy for Growth Hub is seeking an associate to join our team working on international energy and development policy, including a special project to promote transparency of electricity contracts.

The director of research, data & innovation for WRI Africa talks with Katie & Rose about climate justice and building resilient energy infrastructure in small island developing states, why climate finance pledges don't always translate to reality, obstacles to electrical vehicle uptake in Africa, and Nairobi's reggae scene. Dr.

Electricity for industrialization and economic growth Industrialization is a central tenet of nearly every African country’s economic development program (see, for example: Rwanda Vision 2050, Plan for an Emerging Senegal, Kenya Vision 2030, and the Ethiopia Homegrown Economic Reform Plan).

The US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) is the $60 billion agency that’s supposed to catalyze investment to capital-starved countries, bolster job-creation in emerging markets, and support US foreign policy.

South Africa has been in the midst of an ever-deepening power supply crisis since the late 2000s – in large part due to a high-level of political intervention in the sector and governance failures at the state-owned power utility Eskom.

The former chief economic advisor to India’s government on how climate policy has become disconnected from energy needs of poorer countries, the politics of India’s electrical tariffs and why he thinks renewable energy has yet to be proven economically viable there. Arvind Subramanian is Senior Fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs and a Distinguished Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development.