Powering a Brighter Future for Nigeria. Interconnected solar minigrids are powering homes and businesses with reliable, affordable, clean energy in Africa’s largest country. RMI Laurie Stone October 14, 2024  Alheji Gembo runs a small shop with cold drinks out of his home in Zawaciki, a housing settlement in Northern Nigeria. In the past, the unreliable power from the national grid made his business challenging. Now, Gembo, along with the 1,000 other homeowners and businesses in Zawaciki, gets his power from an interconnected solar minigrid. “Before we had this minigrid, we suffered in our work given the quality of the light,” he says.  Most Nigerians refer to electricity as “light,” and Gembo says on average he had about four hours of light each day. “Sometimes we even spent two days without light. But now that we have this minigrid... they give us at least 16 to 20 hours of light a day, every day.” With more reliable power, Gembo has grown his small business from one fridge to four, serving cold drinks to this hot arid community. Zawaciki — sited on the verge of northern Nigeria’s sunny savannah region — is one of soon to be five interconnected solar minigrids in Nigeria,

Africa’s most populous country with over 200 million people. An interconnected minigrid supplies an underserved rural, semi-urban, or even urban community that is already connected to the conventional electricity grid but that has unreliable power. Interconnected minigrids consist of a renewable energy source such as solar panels, and sometimes battery energy storage and a backup generator. They are connected to the main electrical grid and can buy energy from the main grid when needed, especially at night to reduce the cost of battery backup.Like much of sub-Saharan Africa, this oil and gas-rich country struggles to provide its growing population with sufficient electricity. Electricity demand far outstrips the supply, meaning constant power outages. Yet, located just north of the equator, Nigeria’s potential to generate solar power rivals or exceeds the best conditions in Europe and the United States. So RMI, along with the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP) as well as Nigerian partners, have implemented five pilot interconnected minigrids, three of which are operational and two of which are still in development......read on  https://rmi.org/powering-a-brighter-future-for-nigeria/

 China adds new clean power equivalent to UK’s entire electricity output. Data shows continued surge in wind and solar power amid hopes Chinese greenhouse gas emissions may have peaked. Guardian Fiona Harvey  Fri 16 Aug 2024  China added as much new clean energy generation in the first half of this year as the UK produced from all sources in the same period last year, data shows, as wind and solar power generation continued to surge in the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. Electricity generation from coal and gas dropped by 5% in China in July, year on year, according to an update from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) thinktank, basing its analysis on data released by the Chinese government on Thursday.

According to CREA, carbon dioxide emissions from energy use and cement production, which account for more than 90% of China’s total carbon emissions, began to decline in March. CO2 output fell by about 1% in the second quarter of this year, according to the thinktank, marking the first quarterly decline since the country’s economy was reopened after the zero-Covid policy lockdowns. Within this overall reduction, CREA estimates that power sector emissions dropped by about 3% and cement production emissions by about 7%, while oil consumption fell by 3%. “If renewable energy continues to displace coal power generation, 2024 emissions could continue to decrease, potentially making 2023 the peak year for China’s emissions,” said Qi Qin, an analyst at CREA. However, calling the peak of China’s emissions can only be a tentative conclusion, as some of the factors behind the shift could reverse. Problems in the Chinese property market have led to a slowdown in China’s construction sector, meaning less concrete poured with its associated high emissions, and the carbon-intensive iron and steel sectors have also faltered.........read on   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/16/china-generating-enough-clean-energy-match-uk-entire-electricity-output

 RENEWABLES SLIDE INTO NON-RENEWABLE TO SUPPORT AI Google’s emissions climbed nearly 50% in five years due to AI energy demand. Tech giant’s goal of reducing climate footprint at risk as it grows increasingly reliant on energy-hungry data centres. Guardian Don Milmo Tue 2 Jul 2024    Google’s goal of reducing its climate footprint is in jeopardy as it relies on more and more energy-hungry data centres to power its new artificial intelligence products. The tech giant revealed Tuesday that its greenhouse gas emissions have climbed 48% over the past five years. Google said electricity consumption by data centres and supply chain emissions were the primary cause of the increase. It also revealed in its annual environmental report that its emissions in 2023 had risen 13% compared with the previous year, hitting 14.3m metric tons. The tech company, which has invested substantially in AI, said its “extremely ambitious” goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2030 “won’t be easy”. It said “significant uncertainty” around reaching the target included “the uncertainty around the future environmental impact of AI, which is complex and difficult to predict”.   Google’s emissions have risen by nearly 50% since 2019, the base year for Google’s goal of reaching net zero, which requires the company removing as much CO2 as it emits.

The International Energy Agency estimates that data centres’ total electricity consumption could double from 2022 levels to 1,000TWh (terawatt hours) in 2026, approximately Japan’s level of electricity demand. AI will result in data centres using 4.5% of global energy generation by 2030, according to calculations by research firm SemiAnalysis. Data centres play a crucial role in training and operating the models that underpin AI models like Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s GPT-4, which powers the ChatGPT chatbot. Microsoft admitted this year that energy use related to its data centres was endangering its “moonshot” target of being carbon negative by 2030. Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, admitted in May that “the moon has moved” due to the company’s AI strategy.Microsoft’s co-founder, Bill Gates, said last week that AI would help combat the climate crisis because big tech is “seriously willing” to pay extra to use clean electricity sources in order “to say that they’re using green energy”. Big tech companies have become major purchasers of renewable energy in a bid to meet their climate goals.However, pledges to reduce CO2 emissions are now coming up against pledges to invest heavily in AI products that require considerable amounts of energy for training and deployment in data centres, along with carbon emissions associated with manufacturing and transporting the computer servers and chips used in that process. Water usage is another environmental factor in the AI boom, with one study estimating that AI could account for up to 6.6bn cubic metres of water use by 2027 – nearly two-thirds of England’s annual consumption.......read on      https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/02/google-ai-emissions       

Renewable energy passes 30% of world’s electricity supply.. Report says humans may be on brink of cutting fossil fuel generation, even as demand for electricity rises. Guardian Renewable energy accounted for more than 30% of the world’s electricity for the first time last year following a rapid rise in wind and solar power, according to new figures.

A report on the global power system has found that the world may be on the brink of driving down fossil fuel generation, even as overall demand for electricity continues to rise. Clean electricity has already helped to slow the growth in fossil fuels by almost two-thirds in the past 10 years, according to the report by climate thinktank Ember. It found that renewables have grown from 19% of electricity in 2000 to more than 30% of global electricity last year. “The renewables future has arrived,” said Dave Jones, Ember’s director of global insights. “Solar, in particular, is accelerating faster than anyone thought possible.”Solar was the main supplier of electricity growth, according to Ember, adding more than twice as much new electricity generation as coal in 2023. The first comprehensive review of global electricity data covers 80 countries, which represent 92% of the world’s electricity demand, as well as historic data for 215 countries.

The surge in clean electricity is expected to power a 2% decrease in global fossil fuel generation in the year ahead, according to Ember."The decline of power sector emissions is now inevitable,” said Jones. “2023 was likely the pivot point – peak emissions in the power sector – a major turning point in the history of energy. But the pace of emissions falls depends on how fast the renewables revolution continues.” Although fossil fuel use in the world’s electricity system may begin to fall, it continues to play an outsized role in global energy – in transport fuels, heavy industry and heating. A separate study by the Energy Institute found last year that fossil fuels including oil, gas and coal made up 82% of the world’s primary energy.....read on         https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/08/renewable-energy-passes-30-of-worlds-electricity-supply