A Multidimensional High-Resolution Assessment Approach to Boost Decentralised Energy Investments in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

There are over 650 million people in Africa who have no access to electricity; this is in sharp contrast to the continent's vast untapped renewable energy potential and due largely to the historical lack of investments in energy infrastructure. New investments in decentralised power generation within Sub-Saharan Africa play a progressively important role in increasing energy access and addressing the continent's electricity supply shortages. Tracking the performance of Sub-Saharan African countries along various socio-political and economic axes can spur the mobilisation of private, public and international sectors in investing in decentralised energy technologies. An increasing amount of high-resolution global spatial data are available, and used for various assessments. However, key multidimensional indicators are mainly still provided only at the national level. To this end, we present a comprehensive and consistent analysis of the attractiveness for decentralised photovoltaic technologies at an unprecedented level of detail using both high-resolution spatial data and national reports. We develop and build a new composite indicator that considers the interplay between social, political, environmental and financial factors at a granular regional level for Sub-Saharan Africa and embeds within it the importance of the local production costs at high-spatial resolution.

Dataset for multidimensional assessment to incentivise decentralised energy investments in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…The description of the data sets are provided in the data tables for the main indicators of each dimension in this article, while raw data are provided in table in the Supplementary Information. The original research article [1] describes the analysis and methodology used to create the PV-DEI Index.

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“…This indicator ‘rewards countries where historic peak electricity demand growth (5 year rolling average) is the highest.’ Positive Ind.50 Future consumption Moner-Girona et al. [1] 2019 Future consumption based on model estimated potential (see section methods [1] ) Positive p.10 Experience in the sector Ind.51 Clean energy Investment $ ClimateScope [20] 2018 Data from ‘Experience’ category [20] . This indicator rewards countries where historic clean energy investment is the highest (levelized against GDP).’ Positive Ind.52 Foreign investment in Clean energy ClimateScope [20] 2018 Data from ‘Experience’ category [20] .…”

“…These represent the total amount of investment in solar-PV decentralised technologies per country (if all the mini-grid investments recommended using the analysis of the PV-DEI Index were undertaken). The overall investment costs are calculated by aggregating the costs of each PV mini-grid at national level [1] . In case of private investments approach, the PV-DEI index allowed to estimate the overall investment cost for each country, showing that for three-top PV-DEI countries the overall investment cost were of approximatively EUR 890 million for Ethiopia, EUR 550 million for Kenya and EUR 525 million investments for South Africa.…”

“… In this data article, we present datasets from the construction of a composite indicator, the Photovoltaic Decentralised Energy Investment (PV-DEI) index, presented in detail in [1] . This article consists of a comprehensive energy-related data collected in practice from several sources, and from the outputs of the methodology described in [1] . The PV-DEI was designed and developed to measure the multidimensional factors that currently direct decentralised renewable energy investments.…”

“…The PV-DEI index includes 52 indicators and was constructed because factors stimulating investment cannot be captured by a single indicator, e.g. competitiveness, affordability, or governance [1] . The PV-DEI index was built in alignment with a theoretical framework guided by an extensive review of the literature surrounding investment in decentralised Photovoltaic (PV), which led to the selection of its indicators.…”