Bright Ideas: Inside Africa’s Solar Revolution💡

— Written by Lyle Jarvis

The Plan 📝

Electricity is something we often take for granted, but roughly 600 million people in Africa are without it (and around 1 billion people globally). Electricity is a fundamental pillar to the modern age, enabling access to economic advancement, information, and even critical benefits like modern medicine and schooling, or safe cooking and food storage. In fact, the NIH published a study on the impacts of wood fire cooking practices in Africa, detailing significant links to health problems.

In the new plan, the goal is to bring power to 300 million Africans over just the next six years, ensuring as many people as possible can access electricity, which is key to a healthier life.  It’s also an opportunity for clean energy to power the globe!

Learning By (Not) Doing 🏭

The decision to aggressively push solar energy wasn’t picked out of a hat. While it has the benefit of being fossil-free, solar energy is the cheapest option for new electricity generation in most countries around the globe, per the IEA.

We can’t afford for developing countries to make the same mistakes developed countries have in building their infrastructure (i.e., 150+ years of disastrously carbon-intensive energy systems). Instead, developed countries like the U.S., the U.K., Germany, etc., can serve as a prime example of what not to do.

When developing countries “skip” these less efficient, expensive, carbon-intensive practices altogether, and instead rely on clean practices (like solar), we call this “leapfrogging.”

Using Local Solar to Power Solutions ☀️

Historically, Africa’s electricity is run by governments and has been highly centralized toward big generation sources, like dams. The problem is, with centralized sources, it can be hard to connect out to more rural areas. That’s where minigrids come in.

Minigrids (also called microgrids) are localized solar farms, often paired with batteries to support 24/7 electricity. The close proximity of these grids to actual communities makes them much more reliable and flexible than the conventional, centralized sources.

Alongside larger-scale investments from big banks and African leadership, independent companies are working across the continent, using minigrids to power African communities. Last year, in our series Reinventing Tomorrow, we explored the work of Energicity – an African-based minigrid utility bringing electricity to several Sub-Saharan countries. Last week, they announced two new minigrid sites they’ll be building in Liberia, commissioned as part of Mission 300.

The concept of localized energy isn’t exclusive just to minigrids, it’s the future of how we can power all sorts of practices more sustainably. Last week, we covered Nitricity, a company using localized energy to more cleanly create fertilizer – totally reinventing how we grow food!

Check out the Energicity episode to learn more about minigrids, here’s the Nitricity story ICYMI.

What We’re Watching 🎥, Reading 📚, and Listening to 🎧

Looking for inspiration and information to get you through the current moment?  Look no further.

• 🎥  Understory is a beautiful documentary about the threatened Tongass Forest in Alaska, the largest remaining temperate rainforest.

• 📰 Walmart is set to launch a project building new community solar farms across 5 states. (The Cool Down)

• 🎧 L.A. Times Climate Reporter Sammy Roth launches the Boiling Point podcast alongside his climate newsletter. (Boiling Point Podcast)