Senegal edges closer to universal electricity access

Earlier this month, the African Development Bank (AfDB) approved an Action Plan designed to meet the concerns of local residents regarding the Sendou power plant in Senegal. The coal-fired plant went online last November and is capable of supplying 925,000MW of electricity a year-roughly 40% of the country's entire capacity.

Given that only 33% of the rural Senegalese population currently has access to electricity, the plant's approval is a landmark ruling and a major step towards Senegal's goal of doubling its electrification rate by 2030 to afford all its citizens access to power. The AfDB's approval of the plant also highlights a dichotomy which has been increasingly apparent in global energy policy: while developing countries and institutions like the AfDB have set electrification as a top priority, Western agencies have often taken a more patronizing tack, insisting that emerging economies' first priority should be weaning themselves off of fossil fuels.

Fortunately, the West has recently shown signs of softening this stance. At the Davos Economic Forum a few weeks ago, officials and energy executives alike recognised that the world will need a comprehensive energy mix, while the U.S. and other countries have stepped up to offer emerging markets technology solutions to reduce their emissions while continuing to expand their population's access to the grid.

Shining a light on impoverished populations

While less than 10% of the developed world's population does not have access to electricity, that figure rises to more than 40% among the globe's least developed nations. On the African continent, the per capita consumption of electricity is just 613kWh per year; by contrast, it's over ten times that amount in Europe (6,500kWh) and a staggering 13,000kWh in the USA.

Living without electricity has wide-ranging negative effects. Not only does it exacerbate healthcare issues, inhibit the advance of education and make it harder to obtain clean drinking water, but it also forces families to resort to highly polluting methods of cooking their food and lighting their homes, making it an unequivocal blight on modern society. The International Energy Agency (IEA), however, estimates that electricity poverty could be eradicated by 2030 with an annual outlay of $48 billion (or 3% of current energy investment).

Competing priorities

Of course, achieving universal electrification will not be easy, and the task is made even harder by mounting concerns over climate change. Many political and corporate actors in the West, including the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and HSBC, have pulled support for coal and are urging African nations to effectively leapfrog fossil fuels for the more environmentally-friendly alternatives of renewables.

To suggest that Africa has ignored this plea would be disingenuous; in Senegal, for example, the government has set itself robust renewable targets and recently opened its first 30MW solar farm in Santhiou Mékhé, with another 20MW plant in the pipeline. Meanwhile, continued progress in the field of microgrids can help to meet demand in rural and remote communities. These initiatives, however, will not be enough if Senegal wants to connect the entirety of its growing population to the grid by 2030.

Africa-which is expected to be among the hardest hit regions by climate change-is acutely aware of the importance of cutting emissions, but boycotting coal is a luxury which countries like South Sudan, where 99% of the population currently does not have electricity, simply cannot afford. Moreover, the fact that coal was the very power source which drove the Industrial Revolution and provided the springboard for the West to achieve its own wealth and prestige means denying it to developing nations (who have played little or no part in carbon emissions historically) is a touch hypocritical. As South African researcher Jacob Masiala put it: "We [Africa] hold nearly one-quarter of the seats at the United Nations but millions of our people are still without electricity. Yet there are those who seem to view themselves as our overlords".

Collaboration not condemnation

It's this argument which has become more and more widespread among developing nations of late – and it is not falling on deaf ears. Former World Bank president Jim Yong Kim called it "compelling", and it was a recurring topic of discussion at Davos this year. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has pushed for a swift transition to renewables in her own country, admitted: "Without being able to assure a baseload in our energy generation, we will not be able to survive. So we will need [coal] for a certain period of time", while Fatih Birol, the Executive Director of the IEA, called for a sensible combination of energy sources: "We have to make sure that the fossil energy sources: oil, gas, and coal need to be used, produced in a sustainable way, and we have to make a big push for clean energy technologies: wind, solar are becoming cheaper and cheaper."

There are already a number of encouraging initiatives to ensure that fossil fuels are used in the sustainable way Birol was referring to. The U.S. has proposed the creation of a "clean and advanced fossil fuel alliance", which would see developing and developed nations alike sharing research on promising technologies like carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS) and high-efficiency low emission (HELE) plants which could significantly cut emissions.

These technologies offer a badly-needed compromise between immediate practicality and far-sighted forethought, balancing the urgent needs of those without electricity today and those who will continue to need it tomorrow. It's for this reason that the AfDB's approval of Sendou - and the development bank's ongoing commitment to pragmatic methods of support for the African people - is an encouraging sign.