THE WIND IN AFRICA

North leads rest of Africa in wind power
Agnieszka Flak and Maha El Dahan (w/Keiron Henderson), June 30, 2009 (Reuters via UK Guardian)
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FACTBOX-Africa wind power projects and potential
Agnieszka Flak, Maha El Dahan, George Obulutsa, Tom Pfeiffer and Keiron Henderson, June 30, 2009 (Reuters)

SUMMARY
The slogan of the African Wind Energy Association (AfriWEA) is "There is wind in Africa!" but Africa’s enormous wind power potential remains largely undeveloped, especially south of the Maghreb.

95% of Africa’s 563 megawatts of installed wind power capacity is in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia.

With momentum in Europe continuing to drive the search for sources of emissions-free electricity generation, New Energy developers are looking to the kind of public-private partnerships that have been successful in Egypt for the funds and opportunities to do further building.

There is wind in Africa! But much of it is undeveloped and the resources of Equatorial Africa are virtually undocumented. (click to enlarge)

Egypt presently has 390 megawatts of installed wind capacity. The government’s aggressive support of New Energy has much to do with the success of public-private partnerships there. Supportive policy establishes a commitment to New Energy that makes Egypt an attractive place for Spanish, Danish and French investors to finance New Energy projects.

Egypt’s current continent-leading built wind capacity, funded by the government and multilateral organisations, will be expanded by a series of tenders begun in May for build-operate-own offers that 72 international investors have shown interest in. This influx of capital will sustain Egypt’s wind sector.

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A boost for the new approach recently came in South Africa, Africa’s biggest economy. Dipuo Peters, South Africa’s new energy minister, will back independent power producers in adding 400 megawatts of new wind energy-generated electricity to the national grid in the next 3 years.

Ms. Peters’ assertion of a new-found political will to build New Energy leaves only (1) the technical problem of an utterly inadequate and outdated map of South Africa’s wind resources and (2) the mindset problem of a country far too addicted to fossil fuels.

A lot of the New Energy challenges and opportunities in emerging and developing countries (E& DC) are catalogued at Developing Renewables. The Developing Renewables Report summarizes the situation through 2008.

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COMMENTARY
400 megawatts of new capacity will not be difficult for South Africa’s developers to achieve if energy consultant Nano Energy is even close to accurate in its assessment that South Africa has 60,000 megawatts of potential wind power.

Recent droughts in East and West Africa that diminished the generating capacity of hydroelectric projects have spurred interest in more wind development and how to do it. As Egypt has demonstrated and South Africa is about to demonstrate, harnessing the wind (and the sun and the geothermal springs and the waves and tides and currents of the powerful circum-Africa oceans) first requires policy reforms.

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After policy reform, the next necessary African improvement must be in the transmission and distribution of electricity. The need for new wires in service to New Energy is a lesson it is not yet clear the U.S. and the EU fully understand. but it is something the nations of Africa must eventually confront, too.

The highlights of Africa’s wind development:

EGYPT…wants to get 12% of its power from wind by 2020. That will require adding 7,200 megawatts of new wind capacity to the national grid. The Ministry of Electricity has allocated 300,000 feddans (126,000 hectares) of land in the Gulf of Suez region for wind installations.

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ETHIOPIA…has a $307.8 million, 120-megawatt project in development and plans to bring it on line by 2012.

KENYA…Lake Turkana Wind Power will install 300 megawatts of new capacity, about 25% of the 1,200-megawatt national electricity demand, in the windier north of Kenya by 2012.

MOROCCO…has a 125-megawatt installed capacity at present but studies show it has a 6,000-megawatt potential and the government says it wants to obtain 15% of its power from wind by 2020.

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SOUTH AFRICA…has a 100-megawatt installation, planned to be expandable to 200-megawatts, with a March 2010 deadline that Eskom, the national utility, has delayed. If Ms. Peters, the new energy minister, intends to reach her goal of 400 megawatts of wind power by 2012, she is going to have to get coal-dependent Eskom out of the way.

TANZANIA…has a 50-megawatt projected scheduled to be operational in its windy central region by 2015 and the Ministry of Energy and Minerals now wants to bring it on line by 2010.

TUNISIA…has a 20-megawatt project in its north-east planned for expansion to 55 megawatts. It is seeking loans to add another 100 megawatts to its national grid.

The logline: It appears Africa is on the verge of a New Energy boom.

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QUOTES
- Jason Schaffler, Managing Director, South Africa’s Nano Energy: "…[W]e have built our economy on coal, a fossil resource, and it will require a more serious carbon commitment and more ambitious targets to change that…"
- Sipha Ndawonde, energy analyst, Frost & Sullivan: "Loans with favourable interest payments provided by Spanish, Danish, and French organisations have assisted in developing the North African wind market ... South Africa should look to investigate similar routes…"
- Mohab Hallouda, energy expert, World Bank: "The fact that the [Egyptian] government is adopting regions and farms is a good point as you have a baseline for wind energy production…(The state) can sustain operations should going to the private sector prove to have hurdles."