The cost of electrifying all households in 40 Sub-Saharan African countries by 2030.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 37604808.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-40612-3 and PMC identifier 10442407.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Electrifying sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) requires major investments and policy intervention. Existing analyses focus on the levelized cost of electricity at aggregate levels, leaving the feasibility and affordability of reaching Sustainable Development Goal #7 - access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all - by country unclear. Here, we use the electrification model OnSSET to estimate granular and spatially explicit levelized costs of electricity and costs per person per day (pp/d) for 40 countries in SSA. We find that solar-powered mini-grids and standalone systems drastically lower the cost of electrifying remote and high-cost areas, particularly for lower tiers of electrification. On average, least-cost electrification in SSA at Tier 3 (ca. 365 kWh/household/year), can be provided at 14c USD/kWh or 7c USD pp/d. These results are sensitive to demand assumptions, for example, misguided electrification planning or oversizing due to overestimated demand can lead to substantial cost increases. Our results highlight large variances within countries, which we propose to visualise using electrification cost curves by country. Policymakers should consider such cost curves and use a tailored approach by country and region to reach SDG7 in SSA.