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Leapfrogging to Solar
Abstract
Discussions of energy in sub-Saharan Africa tend to focus on leapfrogging, theorizing how some non-Western countries might be able to avoid carbon-intensive fuels, such as coal and oil, and directly start using renewable energy infrastructure, mainly solar. While theories of leapfrogging have been attractive, there has been limited research on how exactly renewable energy resources are adopted in sub-Saharan Africa, especially at times of unreliable access. Drawing on fieldwork with energy professionals in Accra and Tema, Ghana, this article analyzes the transformations in energy infrastructure in Ghana during the period following its 2012–16 electricity crisis, known as dumsor. It argues that an increasing volume of rooftop solar panels installed by affiuent individuals and institutions in the aftermath of the crisis has led to declining participation in the electricity grid, and thereby higher electricity rates for everyone else with no choice but to remain on the grid. In response to such growing inequality, decision-makers searched for innovative business models, appealing to green loans as ways of expanding this class of solar consumers. As a result, while a select few have managed to leapfrog to renewables, others continue to endure the grid, struggling with unsteady electricity provision and increasing tariffs.
... On a related subject, see Cirolia et al. (2021), Günel (2021), Lemanski (2021), Cirolia and Pollio (forthcoming). 6 In this article we are not concerned with (nor would we have the data for) defining the sociological contours of this demographic category (the lower-middle class) but we treat it as an emic category that our informants used to describe an under-served market and therefore an opportunity for processes of algorithmic optimization. ...
The 'last mile' is not only a powerful metaphor of contemporary life, but also the tangible site of a challenge, whether for governments reaching their citizens, or companies their customers. In urban Africa, this challenge is compounded by the fragmented material condition of cities. As a result, a growing number of tech companies have been compelled by the possibility of creating digital platforms that address the unique logistic configurations of African cities, often enrolling informal systems, such as motorcycle taxis, to address spatial and economic fragmentation. Through the perspective of three Nairobi-based startups that incorporate motorcycle taxis into their last-mile platforms, this paper illustrates how processes of 'algorithmic suturing' knit together the loose ends of splintered urban networks thanks to platform business models that visualize the last mile as a site of optimization. In parallel to common understandings of suturing within African infrastructure debates, which foreground makeshift practices of the urban poor, this paper argues that algorithmic suturing is a speculative endeavour through which urban fractures are made legible as sites of value. By stitching city fragments, these platforms envision large data-driven urban economies which interface informal mobility networks and the shifting urban demographic of the lower-middle classes.
This article considers the entanglements revealed by the recent and rapid influx of solar technology on the archipelago of Zanzibar. Following a technical failure that left the islands without electricity for three months in 2009–10, the Zanzibari government has pursued several avenues to increase energy autonomy, including solar power. However, the future of energy independence promised by solar development is complicated by a legacy of political conflict and new relationships of dependence and inequality. Drawing on interviews with domestic energy users, government officials, state engineers and NGO activists, and situated within the unique post-revolutionary context of Zanzibar, this article explores how solar innovations and investments contribute to the reimagining of social, economic and political entanglements while simultaneously reproducing persistent discourses of hierarchy, inclusion and exclusion.
This study applied the Open Source Energy Modelling System (OSeMOSYS), an optimisation model for long term energy planning, which is integrated in Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning (LEAP) to develop optimal generation pathways and dispatch scheduling of selected generating technologies for power generation in Ghana. Simulating conventional and non-conventional energy technologies, the study examines the technological, economic and environmental implications of renewable energy policies from 2010 to 2040. Sensitivity analyses were undertaken to determine the effect of varied development in non-conventional renewable energy technologies investment cost as well as fuel prices. The findings suggest that, with a comprehensive implementation of energy efficiency and other strategies, renewable energy technologies can contribute more than 70% of the generation requirement in Ghana by 2040. This will result in significant economic and environmental benefits as well as sustainability of the energy sector. © 2017 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.
Cities in the global South are often considered to be in the midst of infrastructural breakdown, and characterized as either lacking networked services or as suffering from ongoing disruption and sometimes failure. This article focuses on the electricity network of Accra to examine the series of socio-natural processes that produce this ongoing disruption and to explore the power relations of networked systems in the city. It focuses on the production of disruption through the analytical lens of urban political ecology, in order to show how such a framework can be utilized to interrogate energy geographies. The article begins by describing what happens when the lights go out and the flow of electricity is interrupted across Accra in order to connect a series of socio-natural processes that contribute to the ongoing network disruption and interruption. The article establishes the effect of historical infrastructural governance, greenhouse gas emissions, flows of international capital, water and drought in northern Ghana, as well as urban sprawl, slum urbanism and rising energy demand in the city, to illustrate the fundamentally unequal and politicized socio-natures of these disrupted infrastructural processes.
This chapter aims at fostering a crystal-clear understanding of how to promote GBTs adoption in Ghana, a developing country in West Africa. To this end, the primary drivers for GBTs adoption have been discussed, with a focus on Ghana. Similarly, this chapter has analyzed the key barriers hampering the widespread adoption of GBTs in Ghana. Finally, strategies that can be used to overcome the current barriers in the industry and promote the GBTs adoption are presented. The value of this research lies in the fact that this research can help policy makers, practitioners, and advocates promote the GBTs adoption. The key strategies they could adopt for promoting the GBTs adoption include—more publicity through media; GBTs-related educational and training programs for key stakeholders; availability of institutional framework for effective GBTs implementation; a strengthened GBTs R&D; and financial and further market-based incentives.
KeywordsGreen buildingGhanaTechnology adoptionBarriersDrivers
en What are the ethical commitments of people who design, build, and sell solar photovoltaic technologies to those living in energy poverty across sub‐Saharan Africa and South Asia? Over the past decade, dramatic falls in the cost of solar photovoltaics have seen our increased capacity to convert sunlight into electricity married to projects of governance, social or moral reform, and expressions of care for distant others. Tracing these projects across the floor of an international trade fair in Dubai and a social enterprise in India, this essay shows that the pursuit of the solar good hinges on the knowable ground that is capitalism today.
Abstrait
fr Le bien solaire : éthique énergétique dans les marchés des pays défavorisés
Résumé
Quels sont les engagements éthiques de ceux qui conçoivent, construisent et vendent des installations photovoltaïques aux habitants des régions d'Afrique subsaharienne et d'Asie du Sud‐Est mal desservies en énergies ? Avec la baisse spectaculaire du coût de l’énergie solaire au cours des dix dernières années, notre capacité accrue de convertir la lumière du soleil en électricité s'est vue intégrée dans des projets de gouvernance, de réforme sociale ou morale, et dans l'expression de notre souci pour les autres qui vivent au loin. En suivant la piste de ces projets dans les stands d'un salon international à Dubaï et au sein d'une entreprise sociale en Inde, l'auteur montre que la poursuite du bien solaire s'articule sur la base connaissable qu'est le capitalisme actuel.
The growth of climate finance, a field of investment focused on funding climate change adaptation and mitigation projects, both legitimizes and transforms financial flows. Green bonds, a financial product within climate finance, redirect investments from institutional investors into low-carbon infrastructure through the global bond market. These projects include clean energy, water infrastructure, public transportation, and sustainable forest management. The green bond market expands the scope of finance through the commoditization of the environment, as nature enters into financial markets as the added value of green bonds. In interpreting the environmental and economic value of forests, greener building methods, and public transportation, climate finance practitioners translate environmental, climate, and engineering expertise into the language of finance through the use of the term risk. However, these translations into risk require further risk management, promoting the production of green bond market devices such as standards and market indices. The ambiguity of risk supports these translations, creating a credible form of change within finance that legitimizes the development of the green bond market. This use of risk complicates its meaning and thus requires further examination beyond research already done in the social sciences on societal and individual dimensions of risk.
At the end of 2010, the British Museum unveiled the final artefact in their exhibition 'A History of the World in 100 Objects': a portable solar-powered lamp designed for and sold to people living without access to mains electricity in Africa and Asia. Solar-powered lights have become iconic objects of social entrepreneurship in Africa and Asia and this article explores the work involved in producing them as humanitarian goods. Following the 100th object from its conception in a Stanford University classroom to points of sale and use in rural India, the article explores how it has been made to materialise both an ethic of care and an ethic of commercial interest. Drawing from traditions in the social study of technology and the conceptual vocabulary of Michel Callon, the author argues that the significance of objects like the ultra-affordable solar lamp lies in their capacity to make and define markets at the 'bottom of the pyramid'.
Meet Salma Okonkwo, the woman who is building Ghana’s biggest solar farm
- Durodola Abiola
Seven Women Entrepreneurs of Solar Energy. Paris: IEA. iea.org/reports/seven-women-entrepreneurs-of-solar-energy
- Iea
Ghana: Energy Maverick Salma Okonkwo Is Set to Build Ghana’s Largest Solar Farm.” AllAfrica
- Kiunguyu Kylie
Can Dumsor Be Fixed? An Assessment of the Legal and Policy Framework for Privately-Owned Power Generation Projects in Ghana
- Ahlijah
Blackouts and Progress: Privatization, Infrastructure, and a Develop-mentalist State in Jimma
- Mains
Why This 48-Year-Old Woman Is Building Ghana’s Biggest Solar Farm
- Chloe Sorvino
Introduction: From Solar to Solarity
- Szeman
GHANA: CrossBoundary commissions solar off grid for bottling plant
- Marie Takouleu Jean