Africa needs context-relevant evidence to shape its clean energy future

Yacob Mulugetta, Youba Sokona, Philipp A. Trotter, Samuel Fankhauser, Jessica Omukuti, Lucas Somavilla Croxatto, Bjarne Steffen, Meron Tesfamichael, Edo Abraham, More Authors

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

16 Citations (Scopus)
26 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Aligning development and climate goals means Africa’s energy systems will be based on clean energy technologies in the long term, but pathways to get there are uncertain and variable across countries. Although current debates about natural gas and renewables in Africa are heated, they largely ignore the substantial context specificity of the starting points, development objectives and uncertainties of each African country’s energy system trajectory. Here we—an interdisciplinary and majority African group of authors—highlight that each country faces a distinct solution space and set of uncertainties for using renewables or fossil fuels to meet its development objectives. For example, Ethiopia is headed for an accelerated green-growth pathway, but Mozambique is at a crossroads of natural gas expansion with implicit large-scale technological, economic, financial and social risks and uncertainties. We provide geopolitical, policy, finance and research recommendations to create firm country-specific evidence to identify adequate energy system pathways for development and to enable their implementation.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1015-1022
Number of pages8
JournalNature Energy
Volume7
Issue number11
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

Bibliographical note

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

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