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The concept of power trading is considered in the context of the vision of the New Partnership for Africa Development (NEPAD). A most promising option is to utilise the rich water resources of the Democratic Republic of Congo for hydro-power generation. Present and anticipated future potential generating capacities are quoted. The development of th...
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... DRC is the leader of potential electricity generation -370 000 Gigawatt per hour (GWh), ahead of Cameroon 115 000 GWh and ahead of Madagascar's 320 000 GWh productions (SNEL, 2000). Figure 1 shows the site of Inga 1 hydropower with Inga 2 on the right hand side. In the same area, the DRC government and other SADC countries plan to build the third phases of Inga 3, while the construction of Grand Inga will not be far from these three hydropower plants. ...
Citations
... According to NEPAD's vision, the challenges and security of electric power for the countries of sub-Saharan Africa could be met through the trading of the energy produced by the Inga project. An energy exchange between the West African Power Pool, the East African Power Pool; and the Southern Africa Power Pool was highly recommended for this purpose (Tshombe et al., 2007). ...
The electricity deficit in Africa causes hundreds of thousands of deaths each year, interferes with the functioning of hospitals and emergency services; compromises educational goals and increases the cost of doing business.
This deficit can be filled by the immense hydroelectric potential, a large part of which, estimated at more than 40,000 MW in guaranteed power, is concentrated on the Inga Falls site in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
However, the realization of the project depends largely on adequate financial resources to be mobilized through investments in public-private partnerships.
As private investors and national agencies have divergent interests and priorities for the project, the DRC government must demonstrate a lot of intelligence for the coordination and support of all these parties, for the advancement and completion of this ambitious project.
Keywords
Africa; Congo River; Deficit; DR. Congo; Energy; Hydroelectric; Hydropower; Inga falls; Potential; Resources; Water.
... Per capita energy consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) is 180kWh which is far below the 13,000 kWh per capita in the US, and 6,500 kWh in Europe (African Development Bank, 2018). This is despite having vast energy potential; for instance, studies have revealed that Africa is currently utilizing less than a tenth of its hydropower potential whilst failing to harness the immeasurable and boundless solar and wind energy potential on the continent (Cuesta-Fernandez, 2015;Tshombe et al., 2017;Mukasa et al., 2017;African Development Bank, 2018). ...
Although a number of studies have analyzed China-Ghana economic relations, an in-depth exploration of the role of the China-Ghana energy infrastructure development partnership in promoting production capacity and industrialization cooperation between the two countries is still lacking. In light of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) Action Plan (201 6)'s commitment between China and African countries towards production capacity and industrialization cooperation, this paper examines the extent to which production capacity and industrialization cooperation between China and Ghana can be facilitated and promoted through energy infrastructure development in Ghana. Methodologically, secondary data sources are utilized. The paper argues that whilst China and Ghana already have a number of projects under implementation in the energy sector, there is scope for China and Ghana to increase and intensify the current levels of investment cooperation in energy infrastructure development to spur industrialization and economic development in Ghana. The paper therefore recommends strategic prioritization of investments in the energy sector, a shift towards more emphasis on renewable energy, improvement of investment climate through policy and regulatory framework review, and complementing Chinese investments through exploring alternative sources of local and international funds for energy infrastructure development. © 2018 Institute of China and Asia-Pacific Studies - National Sun Yat-sen University. All rights reserved.
... The key questions in our study are as follows: Is is possible to achieve Inga 3's three energy goals with wind and solar PV in South Africa and the DRC? If so, what are the system-wide cost impacts of wind and solar options compared to Inga 3? Previous studies have made arguments in favor (Tshombe et al. 2007;Taliotis et al. 2014;Gottschalk 2016) and against Inga 3's development (Showers 2009;Green et al. 2015). However, none of these studies has systematically examined and compared the technical feasibility and economics of supply alternatives to the Inga 3. ...
We assess the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of renewable energy alternatives to Inga 3, a 4.8-GW hydropower project on the Congo River, to serve the energy needs of the host country, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the main buyer, South Africa. To account for a key uncertainty in the literature regarding the additional economic impacts of managing variable wind and solar electricity, we built a spatially and temporally detailed power system investment model for South Africa. We find that a mix of wind, solar photovoltaics, and some natural gas is more cost-effective than Inga 3 to meet future demand except in scenarios with pessimistic assumptions about wind technology performance. If a low load growth forecast is used, including Inga 3 in the power mix results in higher system cost across all sensitivities. In our scenarios, the effect of Inga 3 deployment on South African power system cost ranges from an increase of ZAR 4300 (US 120) million annually by 2035. A cost overrun as low as 20% makes the Inga 3 scenarios more expensive in all sensitivity cases. Including time and cost overruns and losses in transmission from DRC to South Africa make Inga 3 an even less attractive investment. For DRC, through analysis of spatial datasets representing technical, physical, and environmental constraints, we find abundant renewable energy potential: 60 GW of solar photovoltaic and 0.6–2.3 GW of wind located close to transmission infrastructure have levelized costs less than US$ 0.07 per kWh, or the anticipated cost of Inga 3 to residential consumers.
... While the relevance of environmental, technological and social decision criteria have been well documented (Bhattacharyya, 2012;Loken, 2007;Mirakyan and De Guio, 2013;Pohekar and Ramachandran, 2004;Rojas-Zerpa and Yusta, 2014;Trotter et al., 2017a;Wang et al., 2009), it seems imperative that policy makers also consider the politics of African electrification in energy planning (Trotter et al., 2017b). For instance, favourable cost and environmental factors have led to appraisals of large-scale electricity export projects such as hydroelectric energy from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to power significant parts of sub-Saharan Africa (International Renewable Energy Agency, 2015b; Sanoh et al., 2014;Taliotis et al., 2014;Taliotis et al., 2016;Tshombe et al., 2007). South Africa has signed an agreement with DRC, two countries separated by 3000 km and multiple other countries, to supply 2500 MW peak from DRC's Grand Inga dam to South Africa by 2021. ...
... Macro-level politics External political commitments (Acker and Kammen, 1996;Ahlborg et al., 2015;Ahlborg and Hammar, 2014;Forster and Mouly, 2006;Green et al., 2015;Mawhood and Gross, 2014;Mechtenberg et al., 2012;Millar, 2015;Pineau, 2002Pineau, , 2007Rowlands, 1994;Söderholm, 1999;Wamukonya, 2003) 13 (Africa Progress Panel, 2015Castellano et al., 2015;Energising Development Initiative, 2016 Energy security/ sovereignty (Able- Thomas et al., 1995;Aliyu et al., 2013;Bhagavan, 1985;Emodi and Yusuf, 2015;Fagbenle, 2001;Green et al., 2015;Iwayemi, 1983;Mbohwa, 2002;Mulugetta, 2007;Ohunakin et al., 2014;Rowlands, 1994;Rugabera et al., 2013;Söderholm, 1999;Taulo et al., 2015;Wamukonya, 2003;Welsch et al., 2014;Wheldon, 1990) 17 ( Meso-level politics Efficacy of political institutions (Abdullah and Markandya, 2012;Acker and Kammen, 1996;Ahlborg et al., 2015;Ahlborg and Hammar, 2014;Amankwah-Amoah, 2015;Asress et al., 2013;Attachie and Amuzuv, 2013;Bawakyillenuo, 2009Bawakyillenuo, , 2012Brown and Mobarak, 2009;Buchholz and Da Silva, 2010;Buchholz et al., 2012;de Jongh et al., 2014;Elahee, 2011;Emodi and Yusuf, 2015;Gatugel Usman et al., 2015;Green et al., 2015;Iwayemi, 1983;Kaijuka, 2007;Kapika and Eberhard, 2010;Karekezi, 1994;Karekezi and Kimani, 2004;Kehbila et al., 2014;Kenfack et al., 2014;Kroth et al., 2016;Malgas and Eberhard, 2011;Mangwengwende, 2002;Mas'ud et al., 2015;Mawhood and Gross, 2014;Min, 2015;Mulugetta, 1999Mulugetta, , 2007Ondraczek, 2013;Pfenninger and Keirstead, 2015;Pigaht and van der Plas, 2009;Plane, 1999;Sovacool et al., 2013;Taele et al., 2012;Thamae et al., 2015;Trotter, 2016;Tshombe et al., 2007;Verhoeven, 2013) 42 (Africa Progress Panel, 2015African Development Bank, 2013Castellano et al., 2015;Eberhard et al., 2016;European Union Energy Initiative, 2015;Foster and Briceño-Garmendia, 2010;Golumbeanu and Barnes, 2013 ...
... Political instability (Ajayi, 2013;Ayodele, 1982;Bawakyillenuo, 2012;Campbell et al., 2003;Emodi and Yusuf, 2015;Engurait, 2005;Green et al., 2015;Gualberti et al., 2009;Kessides, 2014;Levin and Thomas, 2014;Malgas and Eberhard, 2011;Mbohwa, 2002;Mbohwa and Fukuda, 2003;Mihalyi, 1977;Ohunakin et al., 2014;Rowlands, 1994;Rugabera et al., 2013;Söderholm, 1999;Tshombe et al., 2007;Verhoeven, 2013;Weisser, 2004) ...
Electricity generation expansion planning in Africa has focused almost exclusively on minimising costs. Yet infrastructure projects in Africa have been frequently shown to fail because planners have neglected their socio-political realm. Using the social science literature, this paper derives six political factors that are crucial for African electrification, and incorporates them into a linear, renewable-energy focused bi-criteria optimisation planning model of the African electricity network. The results reveal a significant degree of preventable political risk in the network if the only optimisation criterion is cost minimisation. This cost-minimal solution highly depends on large-scale exports from some of Africa's most politically volatile countries, such as hydroelectric energy from the Democratic Republic of Congo and wind energy from Sudan, Somalia, Chad and Mauritania. However, the model demonstrates that raising the levelised cost of electrification in 2030 by 4% allows to cut preventable political risks of the network by 50%. Crucially, the optimal, most cost-effective risk mitigation strategy is to gradually replace large-scale exports with domestic solar energy abundant in most African countries. High solar energy shares increase national energy sovereignty, meet international climate commitments, and decrease the network's dependence on politically unstable and/or inefficacious countries for generation and transmission.
... Second, different levels of institutional weakness and political instability in the twelve SAPP countries imply that different international network designs lead to greatly differing political risk characteristics of the network. Large-scale renewable electricity export projects, such as the Grand Inga hydroelectric plant in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), have been frequently advertised to power significant parts of sub-Saharan Africa (Taliotis et al. 2016;Sanoh et al. 2014;IRENA 2015;Taliotis et al. 2014;Tshombe et al. 2007). Yet an over-reliance on a highly volatile country marred by dysfunctional political institutions and violent conflict with over eighty armed groups (Stearns and Vogel 2015), where parts of the already installed Inga capacity remained idle, appears to be a politically sub-optimal choice. ...
Southern Africa’s electrification is at odds with United Nations goals to provide modern energy for all by 2030. Electricity planning, a crucial tool to optimally match future supply and demand, has largely focused on minimising costs in southern Africa, sometimes complemented by a discussion of a discrete set of environmental scenarios. Political objectives, although their significance is well documented, had been overlooked in Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) quantitative electrification planning research. This study created a novel geo–referenced, multi–objective linear programming (MOLP) model that combines continuous cost and carbon dioxide (CO2) emission minimisation objectives with the political goal of achieving national electricity self–sufficiency, yielding the optimal trade–off between these three objectives. It solved the MOLP for three different political risk scenarios in order to examine a further political objective. The results revealed a sharp monetary trade–off between CO2 emission reductions and national electricity sovereignty objectives in the SAPP. Furthermore, curtailing international political risks had significant consequences for trade and the optimal generation mix. While the optimal size of the frequently recommended Grand Inga dam in the Democratic Republic of Congo was considerably reduced when either national electricity sovereignty or political risk constraints were imposed on the model, solar energy shares increased significantly in both cases. This was the case especially when CO2 emissions were simultaneously curtailed. Increased technological, institutional and policy–making efforts to implement solar PV at scale would therefore imply immediate political and environmental merits for national governments in the SAPP, and present a sustainable development opportunity for the region.
... 2 [24,35,36,42,53,54,56,59,64,65,67,[6][7][8][9]74,76,79,87,88,92,94,97,[101][102][103]112,113,118,119,131,138,143,148,157,159,160,165,168,170,[172][173][174]184,185,188,192,193,198,204,[2][3][4][5][6]217,218,222,227,234,236,242,247,249,275,284,286,303,304,311,317,319,329] 67 [25,26,28,31,33,51,57,62,70,71,81,84,100,106,116,121,124,126,127,129,137,[154][155][156]167,181,182,191,216,219,230,256,257,260,261,267,269,270,276,278,282,283,285,292,307,328] 49 [132,171,221,266,298] 5 121 ...
... Qualitative Policy analyses [30][31][32]34,41,43,49,50,57,61,63,66,[70][71][72][73]81,[83][84][85]93,96,98,99,104,106,111,117,124,125,127,128,134,146,155,156,164,167,169,175,181,[189][190][191]201,205,207,208,211,224,225,228,232,238,239,241,243,256,259,268,269,271,274,279,280,282,283,285,289,[291][292][293][294]297,300,301,307,308,313,320,322,[324][325][326]328] 85 ...
... References ∑ 1 [24,27,[38][39][40]57,61,62,67,68,73,77,93,98,101,102,105,122,125,130,136,172,180,191,197,209,219,223,224,228,233,243,246,254,257,262,263,265,272,276,278,280,283,288,290,306,313] 47 2 [26,28,35,36,44,60,69,71,72,84,91,95,100,103,107,[113][114][115]117,118,121,124,128,129,139,148,158,159,163,169,177,182,200,202,207,211,215,221,222,229,230,240,247,248,252,253,260,266,271,282,287,297,303,325,329] 55 3 [30,34,45,52,56,74,78,[109][110][111]116,120,126,133,135,140,145,150,161,166,168,170,178,179,183,185,188,192,195,198,206,210,[212][213][214]217,227,239,242,264,273,284,291,301,304,305,307,309] 48 4 [31,37,46,[53][54][55]58,64,79,90,92,99,123,131,141,143,152,160,162,165,176,184,187,190,199,204,205,216,220 Appendix D see: Table D1. ...
Universal electricity access is an important development objective, and the focus of a number of key global UN initiatives. While robust electricity planning is widely believed to be a prerequisite for effective electrification, to date, no comprehensive overview of electricity planning research has been undertaken on sub-Saharan Africa, the world region with the lowest access rates. This paper reviews quantitative and qualitative electricity planning and related implementation research, considering each of the 49 sub-Saharan African countries, the four regional power pools and the sub-continent as a whole. Applying a broad understanding of electricity planning and a practical limit of 20 reviewed articles per country and region, 306 relevant peer-reviewed journal articles are included in this review. A general classification scheme is introduced that classifies the planning literature along the addressed value chain depth, number of different analysed criteria and number of evaluated decision alternatives. The literature is found to be strongly clustered in a few countries, with less than 5 identified relevant articles in 36 of the 49 countries. The total amount of articles per year is clearly increasing over time, addressing technology choice, operation, distribution and implementation analyses. Although including different high-level criteria in analysing electricity systems is common, the literature is only starting to use formalised multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) tools. The review indicates that 63% of relevant articles favour renewable energy technologies for their given problems. Frequently mentioned success factors for electrification in sub-Saharan Africa include adequate policy design, sufficient finance and favourable political conditions. While considerable regional and methodological literature gaps are apparent, the literature in this review identifies a rich and fruitful ground for future research to fill these gaps.
... After the failure of the BHP project, other African countries agreed again on the proposed construction of Inga III and Grand Inga projects. This facility would generate 39,000 MW with 52 turbines capable of responding to the energy needs of the 500 million of Africans currently without electricity through a wide grid [41]. It would be the world's largest hydropower project costing close to $80 billion, with an extra $10 billion for transmission lines, and would have a capacity twice that of China's Three Gorges dam. ...
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is currently
experiencing a general energy crisis due to the lack of proper
investment and management in the energy sector. Some 93.6% of the
country is highly dependent on wood fuel as main source of energy,
which is having severe impacts such as deforestation and general
degradation of the environment. On the other hand, the major share of
the electricity produced, mainly from ill-conditioned hydro and
thermal power stations, is principally used to supply the industrial
sector, as well as very few urban areas. Nevertheless, the DRC
possesses huge potential in renewable resources such as hydropower,
biomass, methane gas, solar geothermal and moderate wind potential
that can be used for energy generation. Recently the country initiated
projects to build a decentralized micro hydropower station to supply
remote and isolated areas; to rehabilitate its existent main hydropower
plants and transmission lines, as well as to extend its current generation
capacity by building new hydropower stations able to respond to a
major part of the African continent’s energy needs. This paper presents
a comprehensive review of the current energy resources, as well as of
the electricity situation in the DRC. Recent energy projects, the energy
policy, as well as the energy challenges in the DRC are also presented.
... To accomplish the build out would require river closure, and the flooding of the Bundi Valley (adjacent to the current Inga dams) to create a 22,000-hectare reservoir, stretching 15 km up river (Tshombe et al. 2007). An outlet from the reservoir would continue to feed Ingas 1and 2. In addition to building the dam wall and Inga C hydropower plant by 2020, the project proposes a power line that would stretch more than 3,000 km, from the powerhouse to South Africa, through Zambia and Namibia (AECON 2011). ...
... According to the FAO (2008), Africa has exploited just about 20.3 GW of its hydropower generational potential of 76,000 GW per annum. Democratic Republic of Congo, with its Congo River, has the potential to boost the electricity capacity of the whole continent (Tshombe et al. 2007). Within this context, the proposed Grand Inga Dam Project in Democratic Republic of Congo, with expected generating capacity of 39 GW and a completion date slated for 2020, is a move in the right direction. ...
The study has identified that (i) the rationalists' theory of neorealism and neoliberalism, (ii) the social constructivism theory, and (iii) several theories of economic integration are key in explaining regionalism and economic integration in Africa. Nevertheless, theories of economic integration that share some parellels with neoliberalism theory and focus on trade, economic interdependency, and monetary, fiscal, and political policy coordination are seen to be at the forefront of regionalism and economic integration in Africa. The study has also shown that opportunities and possibilities of deepening regionalism and economic integration in Africa exist in a number of areas and sectors, particularly the power and energy sectors, the manufacturing sector, and in public-private partnerships.
... The majority of this power potential is concentrated at the Inga site while the rest is distributed all over the country. Inga hydropower existing facilities and identified large projects in DRC consist of Inga 1and 2 with a total installed capacity of 1,745 MW, Inga 3 generating capacity of 4,320 MW and Grand Inga, the world's largest hydropower scheme, with a total of 39,000 MW of power generated from 52 turbines (Tshombe et al. 2007). This study mainly looks at the combined generating capacity of these four hydropower schemes and other small power plants were not considered in water resource systems modeling for current the analysis. ...
