The paper Carbon pricing and system reliability impacts on pathways to universal electricity access in Africa led by Dr. Hamish Beath was published in Nature Communications 16 May 2024.

We know that there is a considerable gap in the rate of improvement in electricity access and where it needs to be to meet UN Sustainable Development Goal 7 (energy access for all). We highlight this in our research under our ‘baseline scenario’, with several hundred million people projected to still be without access in 2030 and 2035 without an acceleration of progress. The reliability of existing and new connections is also a big problem: existing electricity grids in sub-Saharan Africa in many countries are under strain, with poor reliability experienced by many and this seeing a reduction in the value of access.

We demonstrate that the potential role of off-grid solar PV to meet these electricity access plans is potentially underestimated. We use a new technique (that considers a wide range of country-specific factors) to look at the problem and identify the places and different electricity demand levels for which off-grid PV is likely to be most cost competitive (useful additional info for policymakers, although these estimates exist already). Next, we explore two new aspects not covered by existing work: reliability levels and carbon prices. Exploring policy interventions (e.g., factoring in a cost for poor reliability) we see a huge expansion in the use of off-grid PV as the best option. In addition, introducing a carbon price scheme (relevant for thinking about carbon credits as well as a carbon tax) sees a much greater uptake of off-grid PV in some parts of the continent.

In our work, acknowledging that there is a significant heterogeneity between countries, and regions within countries, we use our methods to identify the thresholds at which policies might be effective in different parts of the continent.

Read the paper here.