A suggestion for an enterprise which will have enormous benefits.
I was listening to a presentation on energy problems in Africa when something obvious crossed my mind. There is no enterprise or single action which can do more for climate change than replacing coal fired power stations in developing countries with solar plus storage.
The story is relatively simple. In Africa, for instance, the vast majority of power stations are powered by dirty coal. The power stations are also extremely old, costly to maintain, are extraordinarily inefficient, and would have been closed down in developed countries some time ago.
At the same time there is an enormous shortage of energy in sub- Saharan Africa. Most energy supplied is either intermittent or expensive. In one go one can potentially solve the two problems. We want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions -one could do no better than replace these coal fire power stations with solar energy . In addition, the solar plants can be built quickly, cheaply, and distributed in many different places.
I discussed this issue with a friend who runs a company called Gigawatt Global which has been building solar power solar power stations in Africa and in particular Rwanda and Burundi. His company has been doing wonderful work. He was enthusiastic about the idea because we do not need to go through special government tenders and no need to organise connections to the grid which simplifies matters significantly. I also talked to a senior investment banker. He made it clear that there is a lot of finance available for such type of projects in Africa.
You could say that the investment per ton of greenhouse gas removed he is one of the lowest possible. And yet my wishful thinking was really nonsensical. Yes, there is a lot of goodwill to do this kind of thing . But coal-fired power stations take up a lot less space than their equivalent size of solar power. There are some new designs which incorporate solar panels in towers saving some space. Even so extra land is needed and consequently permits. In other words this is not a one for one replacement . These kinds of replacements will happen but the project will be more complicated then I originally envisioned . I need to dream on.
David Waimann is VP Energy at OurCrowd Investments and executive director at five water and renewable energy tech companies. drw@ourcrowd.com
This article is part of a series of more than 20 posts discussing climate policy and technology.
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