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

Quality electricity is critical to ending energy poverty, but reliability data is scarce, while officially-reported outages often differ greatly from actual consumer experience.

From Electricity Journal (June 2021) Falling costs of wind and solar have encouraged development agencies and multilateral lenders to restrict financing for new fossil fuel developments.

One of the world’s most visionary climate scientists tells Katie & Rose why he thinks nuclear energy is key to quelling climate change and delivering prosperity to the developing world, why he’s gone all-positive on Twitter, why considering solar geoengineering won’t stop us from addressing climate change, and what he learned from pumping crocodile stomachs as a grad student.   Ken Caldeira has been the senior scientist at Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology on the Stanford University campus in California since 2005.

Nigeria holds Africa’s largest proven natural gas reserves. Yet despite its enormous domestic energy needs (Nigeria’s annual per capita electricity consumption is one of the lowest in the world), the country consumes only 25% of its commercialized gas supply and less than 1% of the global total.

The Energy for Growth Hub is seeking a Project Director/Senior Associate to join our team to help establish and manage a new global campaign to promote transparency of electricity contracts.

Originally appeared in a Council on Foreign Relations post, May 28, 2021.  The new U.S. Climate Finance Plan aims to double contributions to climate funding for developing countries.

Emerging markets are grappling with the dual challenge of decarbonizing their energy systems while providing abundant, affordable, and reliable energy to everyone.

India has suffered some of the most significant economic damage worldwide from Covid-19 -- the country entered a technical recession, with the government reporting an 8 percent contraction in GDP over 2020-21.

This memo uses updated project information since our December 2020 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).

The former OPIC, African Development Bank and Black Rhino Group official tells Katie & Rose why she's frustrated with energy and climate finance double standards for Africa, how she would advise President Biden on climate & Africa, & why it's unethical to argue Africa must stay poor to reduce climate change impacts.

Tariff reform is often listed as a high-priority issue in Nigeria. In March 2020, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) issued an order to transition from demand-based to cost-reflective and service-reflective tariffs.

Power for All's Podcast Host William Brent speaks with Todd Moss on the recent launch of a new framework called the Modern Energy Minimum, which calls for a huge jump in ambition for what the global development community considers basic energy access (25:39). Listen to Todd describe the Modern Energy Minimum here or below: Power for All · Increasing Energy Access Ambition for Global Development: Interview With Todd Moss

The globally recognized climate & energy philanthropist on loving cities, funding overlooked technologies & why optimism is the best approach to tackling climate change. Rachel Pritzker is President and Founder of the Pritzker Innovation Fund, an organization that supports the development and advancement of paradigm-shifting ideas to address the world’s most wicked problems.

Economists at the World Bank recently wrote that “poverty does not end when a household crosses the US$1.90 per person per day International Poverty Line.” We all know that higher levels of income are needed to improve livelihoods and expand economic opportunities.

Development finance institutions (DFIs) help catalyze and direct investment in emerging economies. Their policies toward particular energy technologies and fuel sources therefore influence development trajectories.

The Mambilla Hydropower project will be a complex of four dams and two underground stations in the eastern Nigerian state of Taraba.

SDG7 commits the world to ending energy poverty by "ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all by 2030." Yet we have no accepted international indicator for reliability.

On April 22nd, the Biden administration released its Climate Finance Plan, which aims to scale-up financial resources to help developing countries reduce greenhouse emissions, increase resilience, and adapt to climate impacts.

Watch the US House of Representative's Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing, "The Effects of Climate Change in Africa" and read the full transcript of Todd's testimony below. Testimony before the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Global Human Rights Thank you Chair Bass, Ranking Member Smith, and other members of the Subcommittee.

The new director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Africa Program on why resource curse thinking is wrong, politics is integral to policy & we should stop saying “leapfrogging.” Zainab Usman is the inaugural Director of the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Mohamed explains why transparency is an overlooked issue in addressing energy poverty, why he thinks decarbonization will increase public demands for more energy transparency, and the one crucial thing about energy poverty nobody’s talking about. Mohamed Rali Badissy is an Assistant Professor of Law at Penn State Dickinson Law, where his research focuses on the interplay between energy regulation and private investment.

It’s easy to feel daunted by the overlapping (and overwhelming) challenges of simultaneously ending energy poverty and tackling the climate crisis.

Hub Board member Tisha Schuller meets with Rose Mutiso to discuss the important and the unique considerations for Africa’s energy future in the context of global decarbonization (45:05). Listen below or on Energy Think's podcast page here.

Data is often scarce when it relates to the development of electricity infrastructure in emerging economies. Using geographic information system (GIS) databases has become standard practice,1 but information digitization, data collection, and aggregation at scale can be costly and take years.

How we aggregate global data affects how we talk about it, and -- more importantly -- what we do about it.

Electricity generation in India has risen almost ten-fold since 1985, a dramatic increase leading to a surplus of capacity. Despite this technical surplus, and the claim of “universal village electrification,” 240 million people in the country continue to lack any access to electricity, with the remaining population experiencing regular blackouts, voltage fluctuations and other distribution-related problems.1 Since generation isn’t the issue, what is? The transmission and distribution (T&D) sectors face massive technical constraints and corruption issues - close to 25% of all power generated in India is lost to theft, corruption, and malfunctioning infrastructure.

10 Recommendations to enhance Power Africa’s impact on energy poverty, economic development, and climate change The US Government’s Power Africa initiative grew out of a bipartisan commitment to addressing energy poverty.

As availability and quality of grid-based electricity services remain abysmal in many parts of Africa, homes and businesses have sought coping strategies to mitigate the adverse economic impacts of service interruptions.

Originally appeared in a World Economic Forum post, March 22, 2021 The majority of western funding institutions have pledged to stop financing fossil fuel projects overseas. Yet western economies are benefiting from Africa's natural gas resources – this contradiction must be addressed. African nations deserves an adaptation-first energy strategy to level the playing field and build a green economy. The West’s approach to climate prioritizes emissions mitigation and energy austerity, which is exactly the opposite of an adaptation-first energy-abundance strategy that vulnerable African nations need. Africa’s energy poverty is staggering.

Mozambique, one of the world’s poorest countries with a GDP per capita under $500, is also home to Africa’s third largest confirmed reserves of natural gas.

Firms across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) view power outages as significant obstacles to productivity, and firms in the Maghreb share this concern, despite better infrastructure and greater government capacity.

Ghana’s electricity sector faces an urgent crisis of immense financial strain that calls for a new, more transparent approach for contracting power in the future.

Episode #5 Ken Caldeira: Let’s Align Self-Interest with Global Climate Interest June 7 | 28 mins One of the world’s most visionary climate scientists tells Katie & Rose why he thinks nuclear energy is key to quelling climate change and delivering prosperity to the developing world, why he’s gone all-positive on Twitter, why considering solar geoengineering won’t stop us from addressing climate change, and what he learned from pumping crocodile stomachs as a grad student. Episode #4 Mimi Alemayehou: Climate Justice Means Africa Needs More Energy Investment May 24 | 26 mins The former OPIC, African Development Bank and Black Rhino Group official tells Katie & Rose why she's frustrated with energy and climate finance double standards for Africa, how she would advise President Biden on climate & Africa, & why it's unethical to argue Africa must stay poor to reduce climate change impacts.

Planning efficient, least-cost electricity infrastructure can benefit from using modern tools to gather improved information describing areas of interest. Building location data in the form of latitude and longitude coordinates are important when outlining the most efficient ways to electrify an area with limited resources.

The term ‘developing countries’ has become passé, but it’s especially outdated for thinking about energy and climate. Grouping incredibly diverse societies together can be misleading, a problem that has struck me lately in reading about the energy transition and the frequent implicit or explicit use of South Africa and/or India as stand-ins for other countries across Asia, Africa, or Latin America. India obviously looms very large because of its scale, but is it really indicative of the economic development and energy transition issues faced by other countries? What about South Africa? Many countries are facing the dual challenge of (a) urgently providing infrastructure to enable job growth and higher incomes and also (b) managing decarbonization.

The global population without electricity access (overwhelmingly located in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia) fell below 1 billion in 2018. But this have-or-have-not measure of access to electricity overlooks how much electricity people actually consume and how reliable the supply is (see more here by Todd Moss).1 Power outages are widespread in growing economies, making electricity unreliable -- even for those with ‘access.’ In addition to disrupting lives and hindering economic activity, outages indirectly cause air pollution issues.2,3 Back-Up Generators: a solution that creates more problems? During power outages, many firms and households turn to back-up diesel generators.

The historic cold snap that led to widespread power outages across Texas was tragic and continues to be a dangerous situation for the millions affected.

Demand for electricity across the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) will triple 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.

Originally appeared in a post on the Rockefeller Foundation's website, February 16, 2021.  The world will not end extreme poverty without ending energy poverty.

Power Hungry Podcast host Robert Bryce talks to Todd Moss about the challenges of electrification in Africa, the fuels that will likely play the biggest roles in that effort, and the Hub's proposal for a Modern Energy Minimum.

Demand for reliable, affordable electricity is growing fast in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), but the power grids aren’t keeping up.1 Roughly one billion people globally with a grid connection experience over 1,000 hours of power outages per year (about 40 days), many of them in SSA.

The challenge of anchoring nascent gas markets in the power sector Gas-fired power may seem like an attractive option for developing countries trying to expand their electricity supply, especially if they possess domestic gas resources.

Ghana’s discovery of large quantities of oil and gas in 2007 promised to change the face of the country’s energy industry and drive economic growth through export and the development of new electricity generation capacity.

A recent paper in Nature Energy has grabbed headlines such as ‘Africa's green energy transition unlikely this decade' on the BBC.

Energy is fundamental to modern living and any competitive prosperous economy. SDG7 calls for modern energy for all, but the indicator for tracking progress against this goal is meeting a very low level of residential electricity consumption.

The Modern Energy Minimum proposal calls for a higher, more inclusive level of electricity consumption as a better access metric to raise global energy ambitions. Learn about it in our video (1 min 40 secs):

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.

Utilities are among the most cited obstacles to functioning, modern power systems in Sub Saharan Africa’s emerging economies. While the challenges each country faces are unique, “zombie utilities” are common and typically characterized by five traits: 95% IN SSA, 95% OF UTILITIES DO NOT RECOVER FULL COSTS, AND ONLY 50% COVER OPERATING COSTS  Operates at a loss.

Over the past 30 years, most countries in South Asia have introduced market-oriented reforms geared at addressing structural obstacles to power sector development.

Over the past 30 years, many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have introduced market-oriented reforms geared at addressing structural obstacles to power sector development.

‘Dumsor,’ which means ‘off-on’ in the Akan language, has become a household name for the persistent and erratic power outages in Ghana.

Rose Mutiso outlines how African countries need more energy, not less, to fight climate change and deserve the majority of the world's carbon budget to exercise their right to opportunity at the 2020 TED Countdown Conference. Watch her talk (6:42) here, or below: 

Hub Fellow Varun Sivaram discusses how India has a historic opportunity to power its industrialization with clean energy, and proposes a plan for India to reimagine its economy with renewable energy at its heart at the 2020 TED Countdown Conference. Watch his talk (10:58) here, or below: 

Advanced nuclear has the potential to help meet both future energy demand and climate goals. But is this technology just for rich countries? And which countries are really going to be ready? To help answer these questions, the Hub and our friends at Third Way created the first-ever interactive map of nuclear readiness and projected electricity demand out to 2050 for 148 countries.

The Hub and Third Way collaborated to create a new interactive map that provides a first-of-a-kind ‘nuclear readiness’ assessment and electricity demand projections in 2050 for 148 countries.

Energy development is at the heart of an inclusive African recovery from Covid-19, but how can we supercharge the region's power sector? Todd Moss (Energy for Growth Hub), Rose Mutiso (Energy for Growth Hub; Mawazo Institute), and Kate Steel (Nithio) join host CSIS Judd Devermont to discuss the future of Africa's energy sector, South Africa's struggling diplomacy in Zimbabwe, and key challenges facing African think tanks.   Tune in below, or with CSIS here.

Hub Policy Director Katie Auth examines Power Africa, including lessons learned for the next phase in the fight against energy poverty and how the initiative may inform U.S.

Last fall, the Energy for Growth Hub proposed a new metric, reliability-adjusted cost of electricity or RACE, to estimate the effective cost paid by firms for reliable electricity.

Reliability-adjusted cost of electricity (RACE) estimates the cost of industrial tariffs for grid power plus the additional cost of backup generation, weighted for how often grid power is unavailable. This incorporates data for: Tariff price.

Originally appeared in a Center for Global Development post, September 16, 2020  In its latest batch of investments around the world, the DFC has approved two sizable energy projects in Mozambique.

The world’s fourth-most populous country is rapidly reaching universal electrification, with almost 99% of its more than 270 million people considered electrified. However, the sector is not without its problems. A major outage hit the greater Jakarta area in mid-2019, affecting over 30 million people and paralyzing the economy, while shorter blackouts are a common occurrence.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 7 commits the world to ending energy poverty by “ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all by 2030.” The dominant measurement of progress against SDG7 is the access rate, which measures the number of people with basic household electricity.

I’m thrilled to welcome Katie Auth to the Hub as our first-ever Policy Director. Katie brings years of practical experience working at the nexus of energy and development in both the U.S.

From Electricity Journal (August 2020) While the electricity access rate is regularly measured in most countries, there are no routinely tracked metrics that measure reliability.

Kenya Power is one of the largest electric utilities in Africa, connecting more than 7.5 million customers.1 Like many utilities the world over, Kenya Power struggles with fully recovering operating costs.

Originally appeared in a Scientific American post, August 11, 2020 COVID-19 has spurred massive changes in how the world works, learns and does business—changes made possible by the internet and digital infrastructure. But without power, there is no internet.

What exactly is Africa’s role in climate mitigation? We already know that the entire continent accounts for just 3% of cumulative CO2 emissions.

Jessica Lovering talks with Power Hungry host Robert Bryce about her work with The Energy For Growth Hub on nuclear power for emerging economies, the challenges facing the nuclear sector, the advantages of small modular reactors, and why they have the potential to be, as she put it, the “iPhone of nuclear reactors.”   Listen to their discussion here, or below.   

Hub Research Director Rose Mutiso proposes a post-COVID agenda for Africa's power sector that doesn’t simply revert to the old status quo.

Nigeria has one of the most rapidly growing tech sectors on the continent, fueled by a robust supply of high-skill workers and venture capitalists looking for new markets.

Originally appeared in a World Economic Forum (WEF) post, July 23, 2020. Several high-profile financiers of emerging markets infrastructure, such as the UK government, are actively considering a blanket ban on fossil fuels that would preclude any new projects involving natural gas.

Hub Fellow and Assistant Professor at UMass-Amherst Jay Taneja walks us through the latest trends with the most up-to-date satellite data in our first ever Coffee Break Briefing.

Originally appeared in a Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) post, July 21, 2020 COVID-19 and the global recession are a gut-punch to Africa’s battle against energy poverty.

The debate over which countries should pursue nuclear energy is timely because the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) is considering lifting its prohibition on financing nuclear power projects.

Investing in electrification has long been considered an essential ingredient for industrial development, and ultimately growth. In practice, the evidence is mixed, and can vary substantially across different contexts.

The US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) is considering a change to its current ban on financing projects with a nuclear reactor, a relic holdover policy from its predecessor agency OPIC.

Host Daniel Raimi talks with Todd Moss on efforts to build electricity capacity across Africa, as well as economic and political hurdles that complicate the expansion of power.

Written in collaboration with Nextier Advisory Context: Nigeria’s transmission network has long been a weak link in the country’s electricity value chain.

In the midst of the coronavirus crisis, 2020 is shaping up as a pivotal year in India’s transition toward renewable energy. Over the prior decade, India dramatically accelerated its deployment of wind and solar power (see figure). Now it must grapple with the challenges of integrating ever-larger quantities of volatile renewable energy into its grid. In the first half of 2020, the government has successfully concluded two creative tenders for flexible renewable energy that represent steps in the right direction—even though serious challenges remain to keep India’s energy transition on track.

Ghana is fast approaching 100% electrification, but continues to battle with irregular electrical power supply. In 2014, Ghanaians experienced severe power outages -- known as “dumsor” -- with the productivity losses estimated at 2 percent of GDP.1,2 Reliability has since improved but hydropower remains vulnerable to erratic rainfall (for generation via the Bui, Kpong and Akosombo dams) and thermal power is subject to volatile oil prices and inconsistent gas supply from the West African Gas Pipeline (WAGP).3 Domestic natural gas production could provide reliable and low cost electricity for Ghana, if it can be developed.

When it comes to deploying renewables for Africa’s urgent need for a high-energy future, big is indeed beautiful -- and necessary. But history suggests that proposing massive coordinated infrastructure projects as quick fix/catch-all solutions to a country or region’s energy challenges is far less straightforward than the alternative: fostering a market for utility-scale renewables. Supersizing project ambitions beyond the capacity limits of governments, utilities, and grids may not ultimately be the fastest or most cost-effective path to achieving infrastructure goals.

Varun Sivaram heads anyone’s short list of global solar power experts. A physicist, best-selling author and clean energy technology expert with experience spanning the corporate, policy and academic sectors, Sivaram was most recently the CTO of ReNew Power, India’s largest renewable energy firm. His 2018 book, Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet, was heralded by the Financial Times as “the best available overview of where the industry finds itself today, and a road map for how it can reach that brighter future.”

In the second session of the Climate Solutions Series features experts Jesse Jenkins (Princeton University), Sue Tierney (Analysis Group), Chris Shelton (AES; AES Next); and Todd Moss (Energy for Growth Hub) for a discussion of the important themes and issues facing the power sector in the context of decarbonization.

One of our Hub Fellow's, Jessica Lovering, joins Matt Yglesias to discuss the role of advanced nuclear in combatting climate change.

Electricity systems across many developing countries face tariffs set below cost recovery, typically due to social and political pressures. Utilities are often stuck, because the energy infrastructure in most frontier markets is insufficient or decrepit, and non-cost-reflective tariffs mean these utilities are chronically low on cash-flow and usually unable to attract significant private investment. Tariff reform is usually seen as a crucial step toward making the electricity system sustainable and luring capital for further enhancements to boost quality and reliability.

In early 2020, the United Arab Emirates will start up the massive 5.6 GW Barakah nuclear power plant, the first country in nearly a decade to successfully start a new nuclear power program.

If you were planning to open a coffee shop in your neighborhood, you would want to know how many cups your potential customers might consume each day.

Kenya is the epicenter of Africa’s energy transition. The country is now the world’s 8th largest geothermal power producer, has the continent’s largest wind farm, a vibrant offgrid energy market, and an aggressive last mile campaign to connect every citizen.

ASEAN countries are a diverse group of countries at different stages of economic development and with different energy challenges. Some members, like Singapore and Brunei are high electricity consumption markets, while Myanmar and Cambodia are very low consumers and still working to deliver universal access. Fast economic growth and aggressive electrification efforts will drive higher demand, which is expected to more than double electricity consumption by 2040.1 The region’s current electricity production is over 80% fossil fuels, a trend poised to make ASEAN one of the largest contributors to global warming.2 At the same time, ASEAN is also at great risk of the impacts of climate change, with some members poorly equipped to cope with its effects without solving its electrification constraints.

From World Development Perspectives (January 2020) A number of “disruptive” data science and sensor technologies are creating new opportunities for addressing global challenges.

LCOE = {(overnight capital cost * capital recovery factor + fixed O&M cost)/(8760 * capacity factor)}+(fuel cost * heat rate)+(variable O&M cost)[1] What is the Levelized Cost of Electricity? LCOE is the net present value of the unit-cost of electricity over the lifetime of a system. Pros of LCOE Simple.

Successive interventions, including privatization, have not yet resolved Nigeria’s persistent power sector challenges. This year, the newly-appointed Honorable Minister of Power will continue on the path towards achieving key power sector goals, namely increased reliability and reduced revenue loss.

Context: Energy demand in India is forecast to double between now and 2040 as the country strives to improve living standards for its population of over 1.3 billion.

Summary High penetration of variable renewables requires short-term and seasonal storage  A promising option is to use excess renewable power to produce hydrogen or “synthetic natural gas” which can be stored for later usage.   Power-to-gas needs much of the same infrastructure as gas-to-power, thus limiting risks of climate stranded assets.

Coming soon...

Context: Nigeria has Africa’s largest population and economy, but Nigerians consume 144 kwh per capita annually, only 3.5% as much as South Africans.1 With only 12 GW installed, and typically just one-third of that delivered, Nigerian power production falls far short of demand, which is a primary constraint on economic growth.

Nigeria’s power sector was unbundled and partially privatized to establish a competitive market intended to improve management and efficiency, attract private investment, increase generation, and provide reliable and cost-efficient power supply.

From the World Economic Forum: Energy consumption, in all its many forms, enables everything from how we live, eat and move, to how we work and communicate.

I’ve written on Nigeria’s nuclear power ambitions before (here and here), but last month marked my first visit to the country.

Adequately tracking progress against energy poverty requires a metric that is more closely tied to income and employment than the commonly-used household access rate.

Danger and possibility under Lake Kivu Beneath the surface of the lake lies 60 billion cubic meters (bcm) of methane gas and 300 bcm of carbon dioxide originating from local volcanic activity.1 Without intervention, a gas eruption could occur within the next century.2 Located between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, over 2 million people live on the shores of the lake.

High power generation costs in Sub-Saharan Africa are driven by stark imbalances in supply and demand, poor utility performance, and constraints on independent power producers.

From OneZero: Modern life is amazingly energy intensive. All those computers, data servers, and air conditioners devour a lot of electricity.

Dramatic cost reductions in wind and especially solar power seem to promise a distributed energy future. Grid-connected rooftop solar lets any home or industrial facility become a “prosumer” that produces electricity as well as consuming it.

Power Africa is a multi-agency US government initiative that aims to increase generation capacity and expand access to energy in Africa. The USAID-coordinated program aligns its support and activities by tackling the most pressing obstacles to power projects and private investment in each market.

Eskom, South Africa’s state-owned power company, is in an existential crisis. Problems at Eskom have regional reverberations because it is the continent’s largest utility and trades power with seven countries. More than a decade of mismanagement, governance failure, spiralling costs, and the accumulation of unmanageable debt has put Eskom into a death spiral.

The availability and reliability of electricity services is crucial for economic development because of electricity’s role as a powerful engine of social and economic change.

From Bloomberg: Africa is rural. Or that’s what senior Western officials envision when they talk about the continent. America’s top diplomat for the region, Tibor Nagy, recently said that Africa is “by and large an agricultural society.” He isn’t alone: Germany’s recent Marshall Plan with Africa insists that “rural areas will determine Africa’s future.” This is wrong.

Will Bitcoin cook the planet? A great Axios piece “No, Bitcoin won't destroy our climate by 2033” argues that carbon emissions from the substantial energy consumption of bitcoin mining isn’t likely to significantly contribute to global warming.

Incinerating organic waste is the most common method of producing energy from municipal solid waste. While this approach is significantly more costly than landfills, waste-to-energy (WTE) can make economic sense in areas where there are energy deficits and/or a shortage of landfill space.

Sub-Saharan African countries urgently need more electricity services to foster economic growth and job creation. While plugging the energy gap is not sufficient to address all the region’s economic woes, it is a fundamental building block to the wider aspirations of these societies.

While the country will likely achieve universal access soon, load-shedding is still a common occurrence and a major obstacle to economic activity. In order to prepare for a population that will be far bigger (200 million or more by 2050) and aspires to be richer (aiming for Developed Country status by 2041), the government plans to build a total of 60 gigawatts (GW) of new generation by 2041.

From Scientific American: A global energy transition is under way. Its potential to redraw the landscape will be most profoundly felt in developing economies.

India, already the third largest electricity producer in the world, is rapidly expanding its power sector. In 2017, India alone accounted for a quarter of the rise in global power demand and is projected to more than triple its electricity consumption by 2040.

Host Daniel Raimi of Resources For the Future talks with Todd Moss. They cover two major topics: avoiding the so-called "oil curse" in the nation of Guyana, and supporting economic growth in the developing world by improving energy access for businesses and industries. Listen to the whole Podcast below or here.

It is universally true that all rich countries use a lot of energy. This might make you think about in-home systems: refrigerators, lights, etc.

The launch of the U.S. Development Finance Corporation (USDFC) in October 2019 is an extraordinary opportunity to accelerate capital flows into emerging and frontier markets in support of U.S.

From Axios: Electrification initiative Power Africa has been faulted in a USAID Inspector General report for overstating the impact of its development efforts by counting the delivery of solar lanterns as new electricity connections. Why it matters: Accurate measures of progress are essential for reaching the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 7: to ensure reliable and affordable energy worldwide by 2030.

Access to electricity and clean cooking solutions are separate objectives of Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7). Programs tackling these aims have been largely disconnected, however new research identifies virtuous cycles from their joint consideration: increasing electric cookstove penetrations increases electricity consumption, lowers electricity unit-costs through the realization of economies of scale, and improves the viability of electric cookstoves, continuing the cycle.

More than a billion people worldwide live without access to basic electricity: One in every six people on Earth doesn’t have enough energy at home for indoor lighting or even to charge a mobile phone. But as appalling as that figure is, it has misled policy-makers, nonprofits, and funders about the true extent of global energy poverty.

Context: Power Africa is a US government electrification initiative. With over $50 billion in aggregate commitments since its creation in 2013, it is one of the world’s largest public-private development partnerships.

Energy Poverty conventionally refers to the lack of household electricity. Over 1 billion people live without reliable sources of electricity — but a new group seeks to change how we think about energy poverty. We kick off talking about energy poverty–specifically why the traditional definition of that term may be an inadequate understanding of the problem.

This Memo was drafted in collaboration with Patrick Okigbo of Nextier Advisory In 2016, Nigeria signed power purchase agreements (PPAs) worth US$2.5 billion with 14 independent power producers (IPPs) to build a total 1,125 megawatts of installed solar capacity for the national grid.

When natural gas is brought to the surface but cannot easily be used, it is burned for disposal or “flared.” Flaring mainly happens when gas is produced as a byproduct of oil extraction.

As the country of Ghana approaches universal access, we examine Ghana's power sector goals.

About half of the world’s employed people working outside agriculture are in the informal economy. Because this diverse sector exists outside the rules and formal administration, little is understood about the current and future power needs of urban informal economies.

Given pervasively high electricity tariffs across the region and rapidly falling CAPEX costs, utility-scale solar may be a profitable cornerstone solution to Sub-Saharan Africa’s energy needs. But large-scale solar projects face major execution barriers that cause high pipeline attrition.

Originally posted on World Economic Forum.  Africa is urbanizing faster than any other continent, at a rate of 4% every year, compared to the global average of 2%.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is a small, focused US agency which provides assistance to countries that (a) promote economic freedom, (b) rule justly, and (c) invest in people. Learn how it invests in the power sector.

The World Bank’s Regulatory Indicators for Sustainable Energy (RISE) is a set of indicators intended “to help compare national policy and regulatory frameworks for sustainable energy.” Morgan Bazilian discusses key takeaways.

Can Africans increase their access to energy faster and more broadly through an on-grid or an off-grid approach? Practitioners, advocates and academics who work in the African energy space often fixate on this debate. But the 600 million people without access to electricity in Africa (and yes, it’s still 600 million) would likely prefer a little less debate and a lot more action.

The mobile phone revolution is allowing countries to skip landlines, prompting many observers to assume countries might also skip building an electricity grid and jump right to distributed home energy systems (e.g., here and here). New disruptive technologies are exciting and alluring, especially in sub-Saharan markets where the unmet infrastructure needs are huge. After all, if you can charge your smartphone with a rooftop solar kit, then who needs power plants and a grid?

When we think about energy access, we tend to think about making sure everyone can light their homes and charge their mobile phones.

Last month, Todd Moss joined Dan Runde, Director of the Project on Prosperity and Development at CSIS, on his podcast series Building the Future. Todd discussed what led him to launch the Energy for Growth Hub, a new global network connecting research and policymakers to build high-energy systems.

Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies have the capability to revolutionize large-scale electrification planning. Advances in computer-based electrification planning models, satellite imaging, and machine learning are able to optimize infrastructure planning, lowering the costs of electricity provision and expediting progress.

The global record low tariff for a utility-scale solar PV project has been broken seven times since 2016, all within auction environments, with recent leading bids dipping below US $0.02/kWh, and average prices pushing past the cost-competitive range with coal and gas.

Originally posted in CNN Business: It's no surprise that economies around the world need electricity for economic growth and job creation — not just for keeping the lights on.

Originally in Energy Research & Social Science: Power Africa, the United States’ effort to boost electrification on the continent launched in 2013, has made an impressive start.

Kenya is one of the few African countries that produces more electricity than it consumes. Despite this progress, many households still lack access, those with connections experience poor quality, while reliability stifles economic growth.

Nigeria is home to one in every five Africans and it has the continent’s largest economy. More than half of Nigerians are under 20 years old. Whether all these bright young people will drive growth or generate instability depends largely on whether Nigeria’s economy can produce jobs for them. And Nigeria won’t be able to create jobs at the required pace until it solves its energy crisis.

From the Hindustan Times: Ashwini K Swain, one of the authors of Mapping Power, examines Andhra Pradesh’s game-changing plans to improve electricity access without increasing costs for consumers.

Nigeria is Africa’s largest economy, but also has one of the widest energy gaps in the world. With a quickly growing population, Nigeria urgently needs to improve its power sector.

Board Member Tisha Schuller and Advisor Seth Levey write in Scientific American: We have come to understand that energy is among the most important anti-poverty tools....

Board Member Rachel Pritzker writes in the Stanford Social Innovation Review: Imagine living permanently without power. What would this mean for your health, for your children’s education, for your livelihood....

Energy access is one of the keystone development metrics. But how do we define "access", and what limitations does this methodology have?

Africa needs jobs. Jobs require energy. A low energy future is a jobless future. If millions of young Africans and their families are to escape poverty and have a more stable and prosperous future, the challenges of large-scale power must be solved.

Nesistats: Began in 2015 (and made public in 2017) as an initiative of the Advisory Power Team in the Office of the Vice President to share vital statistics, reports, projects on the power sector, as part of the Power Sector Recovery Programme in Nigeria. NERC: The Nigerian Electricity Regulation Commission (NERC) online library provides useful documents, data, and reports on the electricity sector. NBET: The Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET) company provides industry and market data as well as working papers on the power sector. Energy Mix Report: an energy publication, news service and resource centre for industry professionals with a primary focus on the Nigerian energy sector. PSRP Brochure: Provides overview of Power Sector Recovery Programme (PSRP) Nigeria Electricity Hub: An online portal that provides a variety of platforms for the analysis and dissemination of power sector-related information and dialogues. Gas Generation: http://www.nigeriaelectricityhub.com/download/gas-power-generation/ Hydro Generation: http://www.nigeriaelectricityhub.com/download/hydro-power-generation-report/ Solar Generation: http://www.nigeriaelectricityhub.com/download/solar-power-generation-report/ Transmission: http://www.nigeriaelectricityhub.com/download/transmission-fixing-the-weakest-link/ Distribution: http://www.nigeriaelectricityhub.com/download/distribution-addressing-the-final-link/ Journals: Audu, E., Paul, S.O.

Many countries have vast gas resources, but too often they are squandered or simply exported rather than used domestically. Our gas lead, Mark Thurber, describes what is necessary to fix the gas-to-power value chain.