Though Africa accounts for less than 3% of global renewables capacity, renewables deployment has grown substantially over the last decade, indicating huge potential for renewables in the coming years and decades.
New analysis from Zero Carbon Analytics shows that renewable energy capacity in Africa is set to double between 2012 and 2022 to almost 59GW, with wind capacity alone expected to grow by more than 900% based on projects announced to date.
The report highlights the scale of the investment opportunities available in the continent’s renewable energy sector, despite the fact that annual investment in fossil fuels will be double that of renewables between 2015 and 2022. This gap remains critical for Africa’s energy future, say the report’s authors.
According to the report, renewable energy investment in Africa grew at an average rate of more than 96% per year over the period 2010-2020, outpacing the global rate of 7%. Over the period 2010-2020, 86% of private energy investment in Africa went to renewables in Southern Africa, 82% in East Africa and 67% in North Africa.
Despite growth in solar and wind capacity, gas accounted for more than half of all capacity additions (renewable and fossil) between 2011 and 2021. Africa’s Energy Transition: Solar and Wind Powering Energy Security” is the fourth in a series of reports assessing the pace of growth in the clean energy transition. It builds on a series of research papers on exponential systems change published this year by IGR, the Systems Change Lab and others, which show that change is happening faster than we think.
