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

Given everything else happening these days, it’s easy to imagine a new administration putting international development policy on the back burner.

Demand for electricity across Africa will grow many times over by 2050. Nuclear power is a potential source of clean power to drive industrialization and growing incomes, especially with new smaller, safer, and more flexible designs expected to come to the market over the next decade.

COVID-19 makes a chronic issue more urgent ELECTRICITY ACCOUNTS FOR MORE THAN HALF OF DATA CENTER OPERATING COSTS Massive changes in how the world works, learns and does business have been made possible by the Internet and related information and communications technology (ICT).

At the recent UN Climate Ambition Summit, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a major policy announcement, a move being hailed as having made the UK “the first major industrialized nation to end all public finance for fossil fuel projects overseas.” But that isn’t exactly true. In fact, the policy makes (important) exceptions to enable energy for development in the world’s poorest countries, where climate change intersects with widespread energy poverty.

One of the most striking infographics from the wonderful Our World in Data is the treemap which asks “Who has contributed most to global CO2 emissions?” In the original version from Hannah Ritchie, sub-Saharan Africa is so small that only South Africa and Nigeria even warrant labels. So, with Hannah’s generous permission, we used her data to recreate a reconfigured graphic.

How would the large-scale deployment of off-grid solar technologies affect the future of Africa’s power generation mix? This is a critical question for African governments and investors considering how and where to prioritize energy infrastructure -- and what impacts those decisions will have on poverty alleviation, economic growth, and climate. The US Energy Information Agency’s “Off-Grid Electricity Development in Africa” report lays out two potential pathways to achieve universal electricity access in Sub-Saharan Africa1 by 2030: Relying solely on central grid systems results in a doubling of coal generation and a tripling of natural gas generation by 2050.

As all regions transition to a cleaner energy future, coal-fired power is in the spotlight. As the region with the greatest shortages of energy, might Africa have a coal future? Coal-to-power today is very modest outside South Africa As of 2020, 34 coal-fired power plants totaling ~53GW of installed capacity provide about a third of all electricity produced on the African continent (see Table 1).

Hub Fellow Varun Sivaram discusses with Hub Policy Director Katie Auth what might be next for Mission Innovation as US energy and climate policy prepare for a reset in 2021, and what industrializing clean energy may look like in emerging markets such as India.

ARC Insider hosts Karen Allen and Tara O'Connor are joined by Todd Moss to cover elections inside and outside of Africa with a particular focus on how the US election results might impact US-Africa relations. Listen to their full conversation here or below:

Americans take for granted 24/7 internet, cloud data storage, and on-demand air conditioning, all powered by abundant electricity. During the pandemic, many are taking solace in Netflix, Zoom, Call of Duty, Animal Crossing, or Among Us -- again requiring lots more electricity around the clock.