MONITORING FRAMEWORKS
2.3 THE ROLE OF ENERGY ACCESS TARGETS
Measuring and monitoring energy access requires a policy pre-set: the existence of an energy policy, vision or strategy that lays down a clear target. Targets offer the finish-line on the basis of which interim progress can be measured and monitored. Energy access targets in the Eastern Africa sub-region are complemented by continental and intra-country policy targets. At the continental level, NEPAD lays a vision for the energy sector in measurable and qualitative terms:
Increasing the access to reliable and affordable commercial energy supply in Africa from 10% to 35% within 20 years.
Improving energy reliability and lowering its cost to sustain a 6% economic growth.
Reducing the environmental impact of traditional biomass use.
Integrating grid and gas pipeline infrastructure to facilitate cross-border energy trade.
To harmonize regulations and legislations.
Subsequently, the Forum of Energy Ministers of Africa in 2006 advised on a set of targets (see Brew-Hammond, 2010), including:
Doubling the consumption of modern fuels to expand energy access for productive uses.
Increasing rural access to modern coking energy by 50%.
Increasing electricity access to 75% for urban and peri-urban areas.
Increasing electricity access to schools, clinics and community centres by 75%.
Making motive power for productive uses available in all rural areas, along with the use increased use of bio-fuels.
These continental initiatives set the policy tone at the regional level. In the Eastern Africa sub-region, unilateral and Regional Economic Community (REC) driven targets are also advanced. The EAC member States have advanced a common targeting of energy along the following policy benchmarks for the Community:
Access to modern cooking energy for 50% of biomass users.
Access to energy to all schools, clinics, hospitals and community centres
Access to energy services for 100% of urban and peri-urban residents.
Access to mechanical power for 100% of communities for productive use.
Energy access measurement and monitoring initiatives can use these regional benchmarks to monitor progress. Comparison of particularly renewable energy policy
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evolution, with the potential to enhance access, in 2005 and 2011 (see Fig. 29) demonstrates that Africa, and particularly the Eastern Africa sub-region, has made progress as the sib-region introduces new policy tools to expand access, particularly in Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. Target setting is, however, more complex, as countries also engage in unilateral energy access targets and benchmarking, offering different layers of benchmarks to monitor and evaluate progress. Whether or not intra-country or regional targets carry proper evaluation weight, or the degree to which they reference to each other is an open question, requiring broader energy policy cooperation and coordination.
Figure 29: Energy policy evolution: comparative view of 2005 (panel 1) and 2011 (panel 2).
Source: REN21. 2012. Renewables 2012 Global Status Report (Paris: REN21 Secretariat).
Benchmarks for energy access in the Eastern Africa sub-region are more dynamic, with the setting of benchmarks in intra-country policy environments. For example, Ethiopia has set a 75% electricity access by 2015, from the current level of 45%.9 Rwanda has targeted a national
9 Ethiopia’s articulation of what energy access means for policy purposes is discussed earlier. It refers to access at community and village levels where households would have the opportunity to connect, and not necessarily actual number of connected households.
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70% access rate by 2012.10 Rwanda also targets a 70% access rate by 2017.11 As part of its Vision 2020, it foresees 35% of the population with access to electricity by 2020. Tanzania sets a target for rural electrification of 30% of the population by 2015, from the current level of 2%.
South Sudan set a 70%-80% target for electrification.12 On the transportation fuel side, Ethiopia remains the only country in the sub-Region with a bio-fuel blending mandate (E10) through the experimental program in Addis Ababa, with plans to expand it to more cities.
Energy sector targets are not only related to energy access, but also deal with the way energy itself is produced. To ensure the sustainability of the energy system, to source more indigenous energy sources and to reduce dependence on imported energy fuels, some member States in the Eastern Africa sub-region have set targets for increasing the share of renewable energy in electricity production. Small and Island States have taken the lead in setting policy goals to scale-up renewable energy integration into the electricity system. Rwanda’s plan is the most ambitious that plan to realize 90% share of electricity production to come from renewables, and to achieve it by 2012.
Table 5: Eastern African Countries’ target for integrating renewable energy into electricity production.
Country Renewable Energy
Source: REN21. 2012. Renewables 2012 Global Status Report (Paris: REN21 Secretariat).
In some member States in Eastern Africa, renewable energy targets are also set at the energy source level. Eritrea, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Uganda have such specificity. Eritrea’s 50%
renewable energy in the electricity production portfolio is expected to come from wind energy.
Ethiopia targets wind energy (770 MW by 2014), hydro-electricity (10,642 MW by2015), geothermal (75 MW by 2015, 450 MW by 2018, and 1,000 MW by 2030) and bagasse (103.5 MW) (REN21, 2012). The Rwanda renewable energy target is reliant on small-hydro projects, expected to bring 42 MW by 2015. The Uganda strategy targets 188 MW from small hydro, biomass and geothermal by 2017, 30,000 m2 installed solar water heaters by 2017 and 100,000 biogas digesters by 2017 (REN21, 2012).
These advances in prioritizing and setting clear policy targets for energy access and integration of sustainable forms of energy into the electrify generation portfolio are
10 Rwanda’s “energy rollout” targets to provide energy access to 350,000 households, and to 100% of health and administrative centers and more than 500 schools by the end of 2012 (REN21, 2012).
11 See http://www.mininfra.gov.rw/index.php?id=88&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=34&cHash=76786f8e21177530e 9df931c700ac7c4.
12South Sudan electrification target from: http://www.goss-online.org/magnoliaPublic/en/Business-and-Industry /Infrastructure.html.
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encouraging. Given the multiple layers of targets for energy access from continental, sub-regional and country-level, coordination and harmonization will be key to effectively measuring and monitoring progress towards established targets.
Similar targets are not common in the improved cookstoves policy space. However, there are significant advances in integrating cookstoves into the energy access implementation framework. In Rwanda, more than 50% of households already own improved cookstoves by 2008, with much progress since then. Development partners play a valuable role in enhancing access to improved cookstoves. For example, “…more than 550,000 improved cookstoves have been disseminated in Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Senegal, and Uganda since 2009 with support from Germany’s GIZ; … the ongoing project in Kenya, which is jointly implemented with the Ministries of Energy, Agriculture, and Education, has disseminated approximately 850,000 stoves since it was established in 2005; … with support from Dutch agency SNV, 8,432 new biogas plants had been installed in nine African countries, and production rates of biogas plants were up 100% compared to 2010… In Uganda, another joint venture of private companies aims to provide low-income communities with access to energy-efficient household cookstoves; at an estimated cost of US$ 20 million, representing one of the largest carbon-finance commitments made to clean cookstoves in the sector’s history” (REN21, 2012). The Rwanda National Domestic Biogas Programme aims to bring biogas technology to the household-level, at least 15,000 biogas digesters, to rural households with cows.
A number of Eastern African member States have set energy access targets of different intensity and target year, prioritized the integration of renewable energy into the electricity generation portfolio, and set fuel source targets as a pathway to meet the renewable energy targets. Dissemination of improved cookstoves is also part of their energy access enhancement strategy.