The African continent is vast and vast, and all kinds of resources and minerals are also very rich. However, people living on this continent have long suffered from energy shortages.
In recent years, with the rapid development of renewable energy in the world, Africa seems to have seen new hopes for solving energy supply. A large number of large and small renewable energy power generation projects are emerging on the ancient African land, bringing more light to the continent.
Solving the new path of power demand
“Africa is not lacking in energy, but energy is not being used rationally.†African historian and politician CheikhAntaDiop commented on Africa in 1985. Today, 30 years later, modern, reliable and clean energy has become a key factor in supporting Africa's development.
For a long time, Africa’s energy supply has not been good. The United Nations Environment Program has published reports that power supply conditions in many countries in Africa are very poor. A large number of people, especially the rural population, are in an environment where electricity is available. In sub-Saharan rural areas, only 2% to 5% of households can connect. To the grid. This seriously restricts the overall development of the African economy.
In March of this year, at the 15th High-level Meeting of African Ministers of the Environment, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, Achim Steiner, said that the development of renewable energy will help solve the long-supply power supply in Africa. Problems that provide opportunities for Africa’s leap-forward development.
The entire African continent has also seen this development opportunity, and countries have bet on renewable energy. South Africa is the first to propose to invest $90 billion in renewable energy in the next 20 years. It plans to increase the total renewable energy utilization by 40% and the country's total power generation by doubling. According to France Radio International, South Africa is not only planning to build a solar farm with a total installed capacity of 5,000 megawatts, but also plans to vigorously promote the construction of a series of renewable energy power generation projects such as wind and biomass.
Following South Africa is a group of North African countries, of which Morocco is the most active. It is understood that as early as around 2000, Morocco established the first wind farms in its eastern city of Tétouan. Since then, two wind farms have been built on the Atlantic coast of the country. In addition, Morocco has also planned a series of solar power plants in the eastern cities, hoping to increase solar power generation to 2,000 megawatts by 2020, accounting for about 18% of Morocco's total power generation.
In addition, Algeria has also launched a sustainable energy development plan, investing 300 million euros to cooperate with German companies to build solar panel factories.
West African countries are actively developing their abundant hydro, solar and wind energy resources, hoping to meet 10% to 20% of the country's electricity needs in the future. Kenya and Rwanda in East Africa are optimistic about wind power and biomass power generation. According to statistics, Kenya's wind power generation ranks among the best in the world; Rwanda has several biomass power plants that use bio-materials such as bagasse to generate electricity; and Tanzania and Mozambique, which are also planning wind and solar power projects.
Mining loves renewable energy
Mining, one of the pillar industries in Africa, is also favored for renewable energy. According to the article on the Renewable Energy World website, with the development of the economy, the power shortage problem in Africa is becoming more and more serious. The power supply of many utility companies is difficult to ensure stability and reliability, and the mines are often geographically remote, so the renewable energy power supply project is now Greatly welcomed by African mining.
Anglo American Platinum, the world's largest independent producer of platinum, is one of the mining companies that have a special liking for renewable energy. According to the company's chief energy engineer Gerhard Van den Berg, in South Africa, because Eskom, the country's main power supplier, is unable to provide sufficient power for the company, Anglo Platinum has to go into battle to solve the power supply problem. Renewable energy generation is the company's choice. "This is a huge challenge for us." Van den Berg said, "The power company can't guarantee our electricity consumption. We have shut down many furnaces and factories and reduced the electricity consumption by about 65 megawatts. Renewable energy generation is the right choice for us."
In fact, mining companies prefer renewable energy generation because of its remote location and can only rely on expensive diesel power to provide electricity. But today, even those mining projects that have already connected to the big grid prefer to choose renewable energy. Gerhard Winnike, senior project manager at Cronimet Mining Power Solutions, explained that this is mainly due to power shortages in many countries in Africa, such as South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia and Mozambique, so renewable energy is nowadays The African electricity market is particularly popular. “In order to ensure production capacity, mining companies must increase the safety of their energy supply, and these companies are now also concerned about the sustainability of their energy supply,†Winnke said.
Acacia Mining is also actively turning to renewable energy. Nick Skoman, general manager of the company's technical services, said: "The quality of power supply is very important for mining, but now, the biggest challenge we have is from TANESCO's extremely poor power quality."
TANESCO in the mouth of Skuman is a power supply company wholly owned by the Tanzanian government. According to Skoman, the company is not only unable to provide sufficient power to meet the mining, but its transmission lines and distribution systems have not been upgraded in time, and the aging is serious, unable to support the normal operation of mining companies.
Scuman said that Acacia Mining has begun to study how to use renewable energy to meet the electricity needs of its mines of about 40 megawatts, and even bidding to select solar power suppliers to help solve the power supply problem.
Similar to Acacia Mining's experience is Shanta Mining Co., Ltd. The company consumes 24,000 megawatt-hours of electricity a year and has already built a small pilot solar photovoltaic power plant to test the feasibility of building a large-scale hybrid power plant. Project director Ian Fielding revealed that Shanta Mining is still exploring the feasibility of building a hydropower project due to its proximity to the river.
Ian Curry, managing director of BR Energy, pointed out that insufficient power supply is one of the main reasons why many mining companies in Africa choose to generate renewable energy. In addition, the decline in the price of renewable energy such as solar energy and wind energy has also attracted many users from the mining industry. Van den Berg of Anglo Platinum is full of confidence: “Renewable energy generation is becoming cheaper and cheaper. We believe that when our own solar power projects start to operate, the cost should be no longer a problem.â€
Industry development has a long way to go
However, it is difficult to know. Although all sectors of Africa have a passion for renewable energy, the industry still faces many difficulties in its development in Africa. One of them is the serious lack of infrastructure.
Solarbuzz analysts pointed out that many African countries have relatively limited economic development, so infrastructure construction such as power grids is seriously inadequate, and countries with better renewable energy power development often need to build good power grids and related infrastructure. In Africa, only countries with relatively good economies such as South Africa have well-established infrastructure and set renewable energy targets with more mature market mechanisms. In the more backward and backward areas, such as the rural areas where more than 60% of Africa's population is concentrated, the power grid construction is very backward. Although the renewable energy development potential is huge, it still needs a lot of funds and technology support.
In addition, there are many other risks in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, such as political risk, regulatory risk and business risk. At the same time, structural weaknesses in the energy markets of many countries in Africa have become obstacles to the development of renewable energy in Africa.
In order to solve the above problems, African countries are also taking active and effective measures to encourage investment in the field of renewable energy. It is understood that a number of countries have established formal renewable energy policies or long-term goals for renewable energy generation. In addition, many countries provide financial subsidies to companies that invest in renewable energy to help them cope with the funding problems that may arise in the early stages of the project.
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