How fair transition to clean energy can be achieved — SEforALL CEO

Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO of Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL), has said that the only way for a fair transition to clean energy by developing countries was “to ensure that countries have the resources they need to transition equitably.”

She said this in a recent interview with the International Science Council.

The former pioneer female Managing Director of the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) was responding to the question on what she considers to be the most significant barriers to transitioning to clean energy.

She said, “Transitioning for countries like Rwanda, Nigeria or Pakistan is going to look very different than for a country in Europe.”

“The barriers are quite stark for most developing countries. First and foremost, there is the notion of fairness and how that impacts the whole conversation around a just transition.

“This statistic will put the issue of a just transition into context: Excluding South Africa, the remaining 1 billion people in Sub-Saharan Africa are serviced by a power generating capacity of around 80 gigawatts and have contributed less than 1 per cent of cumulative CO2 emissions. This is roughly the same capacity consumed by a single European country like Germany, for instance.

“We have a situation where many countries are trying to develop to a level where their citizens have universal energy access, and they can industrialize – so this is about economic development. And conversely, you have other countries that have become rich from decades of fossil fuels now telling these countries that they need to transition at the same pace as them, without the resources needed to get there. In this scenario, developing countries are being asked to pay the most when they have contributed the least to the problem.

“The only way we are going to create fairness in this scenario is to ensure that countries have the resources they need to transition equitably. Financial and technical resources are a hurdle, and it is something that we at SEforAll see as a priority.”

Ogunbiyi said SEforAll has mobilised solutions such as Results-based financing (RBF), which is a funding mechanism proven to deliver connections faster and more efficiently.

“We are advocating for scaling RBF and have also launched our own RBF to help the speed and scale access to energy in Africa, the Universal Energy Facility (UEF). The UEF is a multi-donor RBF facility that provides incentive payments for verified end-user electricity connections. The UEF is currently operating in Benin, Madagascar and Sierra Leone to incentivize mini-grid developments.

“But it aspires to be a USD 500 million pan-Africa facilities by 2023 (USD 100 million by the end of this year) and to deliver approximately 2 million new electricity connections and 300,000 clean cooking solutions by 2023.

“This can only be possible with the support of partners, which is the cornerstone of everything we are doing to achieve SDG7 by 2030.”

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