Is the expansion of renewable energy the key for securing water, food and energy in Sub-Saharan Africa?: Water access (Part 1)

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has published an article called "Renewable Energy in the Water, Energy and Food Nexus" explaining the benefits of using renewable energy given the worrying situation we are living.

The extensive gives a summary of the benefits for each area of the water-food-energy Nexus and this are the ones related to water exclusively:

Water-Energy Nexus:
- Reduce water intensity of the power sector
- Improve access to water
- Enhance reliability of the water supply
- Bridge water gap in the arid regions

Water-Food Nexus:
- Improve access to and sustainability of the water supply for agriculture

In this entry I am going to look at whether the increase of the use of renewable energy is actually the solution for the challenge of improving the access to water. When assessing how to do so, it is often found that accessing groundwater is the most suitable way. The reasons why this is like this are described in the paper written by the British Geological Survey and the UK Overseas Development Institute

In this article, the author declares that communities that rely on surface water are very vulnerable to changes in climate and normally experience a reduction or complete scarcity of this resource during the months of the dry season. With the increase of extreme events due to climate change, surface water is becoming less and less reliable. Moreover, when available, surface water and shallow groundwater sources are very susceptible to contamination affecting the population’s health.

The solution to tackle this problem is to make groundwater more accessible for the communities. In order to reach deeper groundwater to try to avoid contamination, mechanised pumps are needed. There are different sources from which the energy can come from. Until now, petrol, biomass and diesel motors are the ones that have been mostly used.  

This article from Oxfam comments on many different problems that come with petrol generators. Firstly, these fuels are normally very costly and maintenance almost doesn't exist. Secondly, the processes to generate these fuels are very water intense. Hence, this worsens the problem regarding the availability of water resources in the future, as more water would be used to generate energy. Lastly, as communities need to reserve a large share of their income for fuel, they cannot spend it in other activities that will help them develop.

In this entry I am going to analyse a paper written by Clutier, M. and Rowley,

P. on the feasibility of renewable energy sources for pumping clean water in sub-Saharan Africa by which I will explore the ways by which energy can improve water access without worsening the situation of water resources and climate change in the future partly due to burning of fossil fuels. 

Summary: In this research paper, the authors compare the feasibility of using generation based pumps, solar and wind motorised pumps in three different communities on Central Nigeria. These regions are characterised by strong rains during the wet season and serious scarcity problems during the dry season. The paper clarifies before starting the comparison that “the potential of a renewable energy system is highly dependent on the available resource, which can greatly from region to region”.

When comparing the three different options, the article considers:

·      - The initial capital costs

·      - The cost of water (with a project life of 20 years)

·      - An annual inflation rate of 24,8% (average of Nigeria’s rate 1987-2006)

·      - Discount rate of 5%

When only looking at the initial capital costs, the petrol systems is much more attractive as its costs is a small fraction of the initial costs of installing a solar or wind system. Nevertheless, when you look at the cost of water over the life of the project (20 years), the cost of the petro systems are three to five times larger than for the other two systems. The reason behind this difference is mainly the cost of the fuel.

The authors then explore the effect of the inflation and discount rate. The interest rate chosen for the calculation is “very optimistic” and therefore, the article admits that if this was higher, then the water cost using the petrol system would be even higher. Moreover, if the discount rate would be 0 instead of 5, the petrol system would still be more costly than the other two systems.

Discussion: The article clearly achieves its goal of pointing out the enormous benefits that renewable system have as oppose to fuel systems to pump water from groundwater boreholes. The point I want to make here is about the discount rate. To begin with, the article does not give any supporting argument for why 5% is the discount rate chosen. There are lots of articles out there that prove that renewable energy systems are more feasible in the long term, but the truth is that there are more petrol pumps installed than renewable energy ones. My question is, does this occur because of an actual higher discount rate?

The article shows the following graph that represents the costs of water versus the discount rate. 

It can be observed that a higher discount rate will decrease the gap of the price between the renewable energy systems and the petrol ones. Therefore, further research should be done on the calculation of the discount rate when choosing one of the systems. There are different aspects that need to be taken into consideration. Availability of investment is an important one since the initial capital costs for renewable energy systems are very high. The main question we would have to ask would be: what do the population worth more, the cost of installation now or the cost of water in the future?