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Renewable Energy and Its Implications in the African Context

Received: 25 January 2022    Accepted: 10 February 2022    Published: 16 February 2022
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Abstract

The environmental implications of energy systems in developing countries have significant impacts on the daily and long-term life quality of the population. These implications include mitigating impacts of climate change, deforestation, improving food security and the multidimensional energy security concerns. Increasing accessibility of reliable and cost-effective renewable energy streams, creating sustainable and profitable businesses that improve living standards and create economic opportunities, which co-create social and environmental values are necessary and essential markers for transitions towards a flourishing society. Energy is essential to sustain modern life. Here, security implies the economic, social, and environmental impacts of energy on the wellbeing of a society. The energy regime that a country chooses has wider implications on its national security strategy and foreign relations. It affects the economic and technological pathways it takes and impinges on overall developments, which include industry, education, environment, and the way of life. Selecting the optimal innovation strategy that includes appropriate renewable energy technologies which meet the needs and harness the available energy resources is one of the primary variables that impact the performance renewable energy projects. Cost, reliability, maintenance, and cultural orientation need to be considered for innovation & technology selection. In the African context, our research indicates addressing the environmental implications of energy systems necessitates whole system wide change that is underpinned by transitions from utilizing conventional energy sources to renewable energy streams. Furthermore, it requires re-configuration of research & development to applied research, re-constitution & focus on incubating enterprises & entrepreneurs, re-configuration of education from abstract education to education that enables solutions development to address local challenges, development in the energy & other sectors to address climate change, health impacts, job creation, energy & food security in concert with developing synergistic and symbiotic shared vision and paradigm shift towards a flourishing future. Our research findings inform us that the meaning and application of energy affordability has a significant difference from what is in the current literature. Energy affordability is defined as the financial capability of a household to pay for basic energy services. In other words, it could be expressed as the monthly energy expenditure of a household divided by its monthly income. Expenditure substitution, digital/electronic payments for energy services, which are configured as “pay-as-you-go” have changed the affordability landscape. While affordability is an important factor, its meaning and application is more nuanced from what is reported in extant literatures.

Published in Journal of Energy and Natural Resources (Volume 11, Issue 1)
DOI 10.11648/j.jenr.20221101.12
Page(s) 7-17
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Environmental Implications, Distributed Renewable Energy, Co-creation, Paradigm Shift Flourishing, Complexity

References
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    Yohannes Haile. (2022). Renewable Energy and Its Implications in the African Context. Journal of Energy and Natural Resources, 11(1), 7-17. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jenr.20221101.12

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    Yohannes Haile. Renewable Energy and Its Implications in the African Context. J. Energy Nat. Resour. 2022, 11(1), 7-17. doi: 10.11648/j.jenr.20221101.12

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    AMA Style

    Yohannes Haile. Renewable Energy and Its Implications in the African Context. J Energy Nat Resour. 2022;11(1):7-17. doi: 10.11648/j.jenr.20221101.12

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  • @article{10.11648/j.jenr.20221101.12,
      author = {Yohannes Haile},
      title = {Renewable Energy and Its Implications in the African Context},
      journal = {Journal of Energy and Natural Resources},
      volume = {11},
      number = {1},
      pages = {7-17},
      doi = {10.11648/j.jenr.20221101.12},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jenr.20221101.12},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.jenr.20221101.12},
      abstract = {The environmental implications of energy systems in developing countries have significant impacts on the daily and long-term life quality of the population. These implications include mitigating impacts of climate change, deforestation, improving food security and the multidimensional energy security concerns. Increasing accessibility of reliable and cost-effective renewable energy streams, creating sustainable and profitable businesses that improve living standards and create economic opportunities, which co-create social and environmental values are necessary and essential markers for transitions towards a flourishing society. Energy is essential to sustain modern life. Here, security implies the economic, social, and environmental impacts of energy on the wellbeing of a society. The energy regime that a country chooses has wider implications on its national security strategy and foreign relations. It affects the economic and technological pathways it takes and impinges on overall developments, which include industry, education, environment, and the way of life. Selecting the optimal innovation strategy that includes appropriate renewable energy technologies which meet the needs and harness the available energy resources is one of the primary variables that impact the performance renewable energy projects. Cost, reliability, maintenance, and cultural orientation need to be considered for innovation & technology selection. In the African context, our research indicates addressing the environmental implications of energy systems necessitates whole system wide change that is underpinned by transitions from utilizing conventional energy sources to renewable energy streams. Furthermore, it requires re-configuration of research & development to applied research, re-constitution & focus on incubating enterprises & entrepreneurs, re-configuration of education from abstract education to education that enables solutions development to address local challenges, development in the energy & other sectors to address climate change, health impacts, job creation, energy & food security in concert with developing synergistic and symbiotic shared vision and paradigm shift towards a flourishing future. Our research findings inform us that the meaning and application of energy affordability has a significant difference from what is in the current literature. Energy affordability is defined as the financial capability of a household to pay for basic energy services. In other words, it could be expressed as the monthly energy expenditure of a household divided by its monthly income. Expenditure substitution, digital/electronic payments for energy services, which are configured as “pay-as-you-go” have changed the affordability landscape. While affordability is an important factor, its meaning and application is more nuanced from what is reported in extant literatures.},
     year = {2022}
    }
    

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  • TY  - JOUR
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    AB  - The environmental implications of energy systems in developing countries have significant impacts on the daily and long-term life quality of the population. These implications include mitigating impacts of climate change, deforestation, improving food security and the multidimensional energy security concerns. Increasing accessibility of reliable and cost-effective renewable energy streams, creating sustainable and profitable businesses that improve living standards and create economic opportunities, which co-create social and environmental values are necessary and essential markers for transitions towards a flourishing society. Energy is essential to sustain modern life. Here, security implies the economic, social, and environmental impacts of energy on the wellbeing of a society. The energy regime that a country chooses has wider implications on its national security strategy and foreign relations. It affects the economic and technological pathways it takes and impinges on overall developments, which include industry, education, environment, and the way of life. Selecting the optimal innovation strategy that includes appropriate renewable energy technologies which meet the needs and harness the available energy resources is one of the primary variables that impact the performance renewable energy projects. Cost, reliability, maintenance, and cultural orientation need to be considered for innovation & technology selection. In the African context, our research indicates addressing the environmental implications of energy systems necessitates whole system wide change that is underpinned by transitions from utilizing conventional energy sources to renewable energy streams. Furthermore, it requires re-configuration of research & development to applied research, re-constitution & focus on incubating enterprises & entrepreneurs, re-configuration of education from abstract education to education that enables solutions development to address local challenges, development in the energy & other sectors to address climate change, health impacts, job creation, energy & food security in concert with developing synergistic and symbiotic shared vision and paradigm shift towards a flourishing future. Our research findings inform us that the meaning and application of energy affordability has a significant difference from what is in the current literature. Energy affordability is defined as the financial capability of a household to pay for basic energy services. In other words, it could be expressed as the monthly energy expenditure of a household divided by its monthly income. Expenditure substitution, digital/electronic payments for energy services, which are configured as “pay-as-you-go” have changed the affordability landscape. While affordability is an important factor, its meaning and application is more nuanced from what is reported in extant literatures.
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Author Information
  • Department of Management & Industrial Engineering, Behrend College, The Pennsylvania State University, Erie, USA

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