The black sheep in Africa’s renewable energy family

About 80 percent of the Africa’s population uses traditional biomass and only 42 percent has access to electricity.  The situation is even worse for sub-Saharan Africa where only 31 percent have access to energy — the lowest rate of any region in the world.

This is why 54 African Energy Ministers gathered last week in Johannesburg to identify a common position on energy access in the context of climate change and the need for low-carbon economic growth.

The event was organized by, among others, The World Bank, which was kind enough to invite The Charcoal Project to present its work and vision at a clean energy expo convened for the meeting.

A communiqué due out Friday (16/9) was intended to present a unified voice on the issue of energy access leading up to COP 17 in Durban. (We haven’t seen the communique as of the publication of this blog post.)

Conspicuously absent from the conversation was the role that charcoal and wood play in supplying 600m Africans with their daily energy needs.

While we were not able to attend all the meetings and listen in on every panel, we are opinionated enough to have come up with these additional impressions:

* The Big White Elephant in the Room – Noticeably absent in the majority of the speeches we heard were any reference to biomass, either as a renewable fuel with the potential to deliver significant energy for domestic and economic growth, or for its contribution to sub-Saharan Africa’s energy balance.

From our conversations with some of the ministers and other delegates, it seems very few were aware of the role that wood-based energy is currently playing in renewable energy investments worldwide. Few seem to know that wood-based fuels are today the fastest growing sector of the renewable energy pie, outstripping investments in solar, wind, and hydro.

* Wood-based fuels have an image problem – From my conversations, it is clear that wood and charcoal are still very much perceived as being dirty, lowly fuels – which, of course, they are if you only consider the traditional use of these fuels for meeting domestic energy needs.

It was my impression that few were aware of the significant advances in wood-based fuel technology and how wood can be a source of sustainable, clean energy. In fact, one of the keynote speakers spoke specifically about the need to quickly transcend wood and charcoal.

* This all leads to point #3: lack of information – The delegates I spoke with showed great interest in our presentation of how well-managed woodfuel harvesting can lead to the production of energy for industrial/urban use and the production of sustainable charcoal for domestic consumption. The notion that important export revenue could be generated in Africa from the production of woodfuel products for the European and other markets was well received. This points to basic lack of access to information and developments in the solid biomass energy field.

* Gigawatts vs C02 and renewables – It struck me that there still exists a disconnect between the need for large-scale conventional energy production projects and the importance of bringing renewable energy technologies and fuels (such as clean cookstoves, photo-voltaic illumination, mini-hydro) to the energy poor. I can understand why an energy minister who is faced with chronic energy deficits and brownouts would discount energy efficient solutions for the energy poor as a priority.

After all, clean cookstoves and photo-voltaic panels on schools will never supply the electricity necessary to power energy-intensive industries that are the engine of economic growth.

Still, there are reams of study that show how access to energy efficient technologies can fuel human and economic development. These should never be seen as ‘either/or’ propositions. Delivering energy efficient technologies and clean fuels to the end users in urban and rural areas should be part of every Ministry of Energy’s portfolio and not just the province of the Ministry of Social Welfare.

My conclusion is that engaging leaders and policy-makers on the benefits of addressing sub-Saharan Africa’s biomass energy dependence needs to be an important component of any initiative to promote renewable energy in sub-Saharan Africa.

As for The Charcoal Project, our personal take-away from this meeting is that we need to hone our presentation and hit the African roads to share our vision for sustainable wood-fuel based energy supply in sub-Saharan Africa.

Say, how about the following for campaign slogans: “Got your NBEP (National Biomass Energy Plan) yet?” or how about this, “Wood: it’s not just for grandpa anymore.” Or, “Wood is the new Solar.”

To review a list of publications shared at the conference, please visit our Resource page, scroll to Papers, Reports, and Studies.

We are grateful to Dan Kammen, Dana Rysankova, Klas Sanders and the Clean Energy team at the World Bank for letting us participate. The views expressed here are our own.