HomeIn Africa, Kenya has made considerable strides in making energy accessible to all citizens in all corners of the country. While the energy coverage has not hit the 100% mark yet, we are at 75%. A significant portion of the hard-to-reach areas has been incorporated into the national grid.
Nine years ago only 30% of the country had access to energy. According to President Uhuru Kenyatta who was making a presentation on clean energy in Glasgow Scotland, 73% of Kenya’s installed power generation is renewable.
“Renewable energy in Kenya currently accounts for 73% of the installed power generation capacity, while 90% of the electricity in use is from clean sources. We are on course to achieve our target of 100% use of clean energy by 2030 and to achieve 100% access to clean cooking by 2028,” shared the President.
Kenya’s goal of fully transitioning to clean energy by 2030 to 100% is not out of reach. US President Joe Biden said that the world targets to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
“Current technology alone won’t get us where we need to be. So it must be a decisive decade for innovation and development demonstration, commercializing new energy (sources) by 2030 so that they can be widely deployed in time for 2050 net-zero goals,” remarked the American president at the COP26 conference in Scotland.
Technologies that generate clean energy
- Solar energy
- Wind energy
- Geothermal energy
- Hydropower
- Nuclear energy
- Bioenergy
- Hydrogen and fuel cells
Africa’s journey to renewable energy
Civil societies in Africa who want to push the clean energy agenda should look into how to make these technologies available. There is still quite a huge portion of the African population that doesn’t have access to clean, renewable energy.
Many of them still use fossil fuels such as firewood which ends up degrading the environment in more ways than one. First, it leads to deforestation and secondly, it releases harmful carbon emissions into the air. Over time this leads to global warming and climate change.
According to Forbes, many experts believe that Africa is blessed with plentiful sun and numerous natural resources. As such renewables should be the focus of many African countries and will drive economic and social development. This will ultimately secure the continent’s future.
However, the other side of the spectrum argues that the speedy transition from fossil fuels to renewables is unfair to Africa. Africa is home to more than 100 million barrels of oil with Nigeria and Libya being some of the biggest oil producers in the world. Mozambique, Nigeria and Algeria combined, produce something in the neighbourhood of 6% of the world’s natural gas.
Some African leaders argue that the transition should not be radically enforced. Instead, it should be slow and have a continued reliance on fossil fuels such as natural gas which burns more cleanly than coal or oil. And since it releases carbon dioxide into the air, more trees should be planted on large scale to absorb it.
Africa’s population of 1.2 billion is projected to double by 2050 to 2.5 billion. Currently only half of the 1.24 billion Africans access reliable electricity according to the New York Times. That means that Africa’s energy needs will only balloon further. Therefore, African civil societies and NGOs that focus on energy should come up with ways to advise governments on how to address the growing energy needs of the population.
This should be done in light of the tricky balance between using the natural resources that Africa has and the need to decarbonize. Experts agree that global warming is happening faster in Africa than other regions of the world.
According to the New York Times, the region is warming faster than the global average and experiencing bigger increases in sea-level rise. Therefore famine and drought is rampant in Sub-Saharan Africa.
