Dr Damola Omole is the Director of Utility Innovation on the International Vitality Alliance for Individuals & Planet (GEAPP). On this interview with KINGSLEY JEREMIAH, Omole discusses the power disaster in Nigeria and different African nations and the revolutionary options to electrifying Africa.
How can we entice extra capital to help African nations to achieve common power entry, create jobs, construct the worth chain and be owned by native communities?Closing the inexperienced power funding hole in creating nations requires revolutionary financing buildings. GEAPP leverages a variety of blended finance and versatile capital options, enabling organisations to co-invest and multiply funds. By deploying our agile capital – together with debt, fairness, ensures, and grants – we check concepts, scale them, and create momentum round these sectors to drive sustained, irreversible change. Our method is designed to nurture tasks, mobilise further funds, and display profitable transactions that entice extra capital.
Market shaping performs an important position in driving long-term system change. GEAPP helps pilot tasks and creates optimistic demonstration results that entice new market entrants and justify further funding. By working carefully with the non-public sector, we assist display new enterprise fashions and supply the versatile enterprise help wanted for corporations to discover new sectors and broaden their impression. By these efforts, we additionally assist create jobs, construct native worth chains, and empower communities to take possession of their power future.
Addressing the issue of power entry in Africa and local weather finance typically have been extra about discuss than motion. Is GEAPP one other formidable initiative to affect hundreds of thousands of Africans by 2030? Within the three years since its inception, GEAPP has made important progress in advancing clear power options globally. Up to now, we’ve invested over $440 million in tasks, connecting 1.2 million individuals to new or improved power programs throughout 9 nations and supporting over 600,000 new jobs and livelihoods. Our efforts have diminished 44 million tons of CO2 over the lifecycle of our tasks.
In the meantime, our deal with distributed renewable power (DRE) and battery power storage programs (BESS) has enabled us to construct the world’s largest portfolio of mini-grids, with 722 mini-grid investments at the moment in operations throughout Asia and Africa. Extending the nationwide grid might be an costly and prolonged course of. Decentralising the grid with distributed renewable power programs akin to rooftop photo voltaic panels and mini-grids helps deliver energy to underserved communities at a low value and helps scale extra dependable low-carbon applied sciences.
As renewable power turns into the most cost effective type of energy in historical past, GEAPP is driving a inexperienced power revolution on the continent and past by partnering on initiatives akin to Mission 300. Led by the World Financial institution Group (WBG) and African Improvement Financial institution (AfDB), with help from the Rockefeller Basis, GEAPP and SEforALL, with a shared purpose of connecting 300 million Africans to electrical energy by 2030, the initiative goals to unlock new financial alternatives and rework lives at a tempo and scale by no means seen earlier than.
How is GEAPP’s method totally different from the various elusive clear power initiatives which have been launched in help of Africa?To scale commitments in renewable power tasks throughout Africa, we have to present native traders that investing in these tasks isn’t as dangerous because it appears.
International locations akin to Sierra Leone, which just lately launched its Vitality Transition and Inexperienced Progress Plan, have the political will and regulatory enablement in place for the expansion of renewable however undergo from the notion of excessive threat amongst traders.
GEAPP’s capital is risk-tolerant with restricted conditionality, which positions us to drive funding into underfunded sectors and underserved areas the place conventional traders could hesitate. For example, we are supporting Sierra Leone’s power transition plan by means of our Productive Use Equipment Financing Facility (PUAFF). PUAFF has helped present viability-gap subsidies for the availability of over 20,000 productive use home equipment – together with walk-in chilly rooms, fridges, electrical cookers, and photo voltaic water pumps – reaching greater than 100,000 individuals in six African nations, together with Sierra Leone.
Our country-led method additionally ensures our options are tailor-made to native priorities and distinctive contexts. Recognising that prime capital prices are a big barrier to renewable power adoption, we partnered with Chapel Hill Denham to deploy $50 million into DRE tasks throughout Nigeria by means of an area foreign money facility. We’re serving to to extend the provision of Naira-denominated debt and fairness for off-grid power builders, addressing funding challenges in native markets and creating long-lasting ecosystems the place clear power can thrive and drive financial progress.
Wanting particularly at Nigeria, what tasks or initiatives are GEAPP and its companions at the moment concerned in, and the way do they match into the nation’s broader power transition plans?Nigeria has the most important electrical energy entry deficit on this planet, with practically 90 million of its inhabitants with out energy. GEAPP is dedicated to fixing the nation’s power trilemma: guaranteeing power safety, environmental sustainability, and affordability.
We’re serving to Nigeria’s distributed renewable power (DRE) sector transfer ahead sustainably and at scale. We’re working to decrease the value of power by means of our DART programme (Demand Aggregation for Renewable Expertise), taking small DRE corporations’ procurement wants and aggregating them for scale. In partnership with RMI and Nigeria’s Rural Electrification Company, we’re additionally leveraging revolutionary power options to drive cross-sector interventions, stimulating demand for mini-grid renewable power by selling productive makes use of akin to irrigation programs for smallholder farmers.
Trying to the longer term, BESS has a essential position to play to accommodate extra renewable power in help of Nigeria’s drive for extra on-grid technology (which is at the moment round 5,000MW, though demand is estimated to be 10 instances increased). We’re dedicated to scaling BESS options in Nigeria, one of many first-mover nations that dedicated to our BESS Consortium. We see the battery power storage programs (BESS) as a world market exceeding $100 billion and are desperate to drive innovation by means of finance and cutting-edge know-how to speed up Nigeria’s transition to a extra sustainable power future.
The BESS market is rising quickly exterior Africa, how will the rise of BESS know-how profit African people, households and companies?By enabling utilities to raised handle power demand and keep away from spikes in consumption, BESS helps stabilise energy provide whereas shielding shoppers and industries from rising power prices. For households and companies, BESS reduces electrical energy bills throughout peak hours by storing and dispatching cleaner, cheaper power when it’s wanted most.
We just lately launched our first BESS venture in Africa – a 20MW system in Lilongwe, Malawi. In a rustic the place electrical energy entry is restricted and grid reliability is often impacted by excessive climate – akin to Cyclone Ana in 2022, which worn out 30 per cent of the electrical energy provide – the venture will stabilise energy for properties and companies. This initiative additionally demonstrates the worth of grid providers as a enterprise mannequin in Africa, setting the stage for scaling related tasks throughout Consortium nations, which, alongside Nigeria, embrace Barbados, Belize, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Ghana, Honduras, India, Kenya, Mauritania, Mozambique, Uruguay, and Togo. By 2030, we purpose to unlock 90 GW of BESS deployments to allow 400 GW of renewable power capability.
BESS additionally holds the potential to drive the expansion of a transformative industrial sector in Africa. The continent possesses a minimum of one-fifth of the worldwide reserves of essential minerals important to the power transition, together with lithium for electrical car batteries and grid-scale storage. Creating native provide chains and manufacturing capability may allow Africa so as to add worth to its assets, positioning the area as a world chief in battery know-how by means of part manufacturing for worldwide markets.
Given the Africa Local weather Summit at COP29, what steps are African nations and companions taking to mobilise capital and implement tasks that drive inexperienced progress?At COP29, GEAPP, alongside African leaders, co-hosted the Africa Local weather Summit Excessive-Degree occasion, highlighting the essential want for local weather justice and monetary reform to help Africa’s local weather and improvement targets. African nations, united of their voice, are calling for pressing local weather adaptation funding and stronger multilateral collaboration to construct resilience and safeguard livelihoods.
GEAPP additionally hosted a roundtable, in partnership with Targets Home, on how you can unlock the immense promise of battery storage to ship a simply power transition in rising markets. To fulfill the goal of 400GW of renewable power wanted by 2030 to alleviate power poverty and minimize a gigaton of CO2 emissions, 90GW of storage capability have to be developed. Convening like this performs an important position in securing world buy-in, offering a platform to check and scale revolutionary concepts, and fostering a motion that drives lasting and irreversible change.
Waiting for COP30, the urgency to ship the best options for the best problem dealing with individuals and the planet has by no means been clearer. African-led local weather innovation have to be funded – and quick. Initiatives just like the Accelerated Partnership for Renewables in Africa (APRA) and the Africa Inexperienced Industrialisation Initiative (AGII) have already made transformative strides in scaling climate-aligned infrastructure tasks. However the size of Africa’s challenges calls for extra from us and the worldwide group.
To fulfill this demand, Africa and its world companions should rethink financing mechanisms, shifting past conventional local weather finance. This consists of increasing blended finance fashions, leveraging African-based inexperienced bonds, and creating de-risking monetary devices to unlock new capital that can energy Africa’s inexperienced transformation.
