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Countries in the Global South could meet all their energy needs with less than 0.1 per cent solar panel land coverage.
- While total electricity generation will double by 2030, fossil fuels will lead power generation in Africa.
- Wind and solar would likely generate under 10 per cent of total electricity in 2030
According to a new report by the International Energy Agency, achieving Net Zero emissions by 2050 will require quite a lot of effort. The report indicates that to reach the lofty target of net-zero emissions, oil exploration will need to be stopped this year, while clean energy investments will need to be tripled by 2030. The report, however, noted that recent advancements in renewable energy technologies are making this more likely. Solar power has become the cheapest form of electricity, with the price declining by 82 per cent over the past decade. One region that has huge untapped solar potentials is the Global South.
Read also: Floating Solar Panels Could Double Africa’s Hydropower Capacity.
According to the Carbon Tracker Initiative, countries in the Global South could meet all their energy needs with less than 0.1 per cent solar panel land coverage. For comparison, most Western European nations require about 5 per cent of solar panel land coverage. Increasing the efficiency of solar panels means that less space is required indicating a huge opportunity for harnessing solar energy.
Despite this potentials, solar energy deployment in countries of the global south is lagging. A study of power generation in Africa over the next decade by researchers from the University of Oxford and RWTH Aachen University predict that while total electricity generation will double by 2030, fossil fuels will account for two-thirds of all generated electricity across Africa. The share of wind and solar in African electricity generation is likely to remain below 10 per cent in 2030, the research added.