Liberia Finds Role for Renewables
Monrovia, 17.04.2008 - written by: Marianne Osterkorn
War-torn Liberia lacks many typical barriers to clean energy
Regime collapse will sometimes throw up a new world of possibilities that eventually lead to greater prosperity as old ideas are thrown out for good. That was experienced in Germany after the second world war and parts of Eastern Europe after the end of Soviet rule, where standards of living improved once the chaos created by criminal governments had been swept away. Today, the end of African dictator Charles Taylor’s government in Liberia after years of ethnic division and warmongering could also open up new roads to a happier future. But will Liberia’s present day democratic government, led by the liberal and Harvard-educated elected President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, find the international support to realise its vision?
Many of the usual obstacles to clean energy, such as vested interests in oil, are absent, because the status quo has been abolished. Instead, a series of enormous holes has opened up from under the rubble of this impoverished country on Africa’s Atlantic coast, sandwiched between Sierra Leone and Cote d‘Ivoire. One of the country’s widest splits occurred in the business sector when most of Liberia’s managers escaped, taking most capital and know-how with them. Ministers now desperately want to entice them back.
Despite the historic instability, there are numerous attractions. Liberia is a nation with strong business potential, well supplied throughout with water due to high rainfall levels and benefiting from abundant mineral resources and forests while enjoying a farm-friendly climate. Nevertheless, only a few businesses are in operation today, restricted mainly to the capital city Monrovia and powered by the little fossil fuel that is available in the country. Few enterprises have developed in recent years outside the capital. In years gone by, Liberia played a role in several international commodity sectors, including raw timber and rubber. A thin trail of shipments still links this industry to the outside world, alongside exports in iron, cocoa, coffee and diamonds.
Liberia is peppered with all sorts of other holes, both physical and conceptual. There is very little infrastructure as well as limited finance. The policies that would allow the country to start operating normally again have not all been developed yet and are keeping the financial community away There is no electricity, oil or gas, apart from a small 20 MW network that has been under construction since 2006 in the capital - enough to power a few thousand buildings. “We’re trying to provide power to the capital - it will help small and medium sized enterprises and stimulate economic activity,” says Augustus Goanue, an activist who has been campaigning for a fresh and radical new vision of the nation’s energy future.
The amputation of the country’s power grid during the civil war laid bare one of the country’s biggest infrastructural scars. A national and reliable telephony system is also absent: “In most of Monrovia there is no landline phone available,“ says Augustus Goanue, who relies on mobile communications.
To kick start the economy, building blocks need to be put in place, not least the energy infrastructure that is one of the essential lifelines of commercial activity. “There is no coal, and although there is some evidence of offshore oil and gas, it is not sufficient to start exploration activities,” explains Goanue, whose passion is to sidestep the expensive construction of a new electricity grid by building a series of decentralised renewable energy projects. These are more economically viable due to the absence of the conventional electric grid.
There is also plenty of potential for renewable heat, as gas sources only look likely if Liberia is connected to the West African gas pipeline that runs through several neighbouring countries, and that pipeline has only recently been constructed. Instead, 90% of households rely on charcoal, especially within rural communities. A few traders benefit from their own small 1-5 kW diesel generators, but most people do not enjoy even this minor advantage. Liberia, with most of its soil stripped of fossil fuel power and heat, must be one of the planet’s strongest candidates for an economy powered using major renewable energy resources. That, at least, is Goanue‘s view: “there is very little competition with fossil fuel and that makes the job easier,” he argues.
He is no longer a voice in the wilderness. The creation of Liberian renewable energy policy, previously ignored by the government, is one of Goanue’s achievements, funded by a global network of policy and finance experts, the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP). It now has several backers within the Liberian government and other related organisations,partly because its use avoids heavy dependence on expensive fossil fuel imports, and it prompted a major renewable energy input into the government‘s energy white paper, also published last year. “Since renewable energy technologies use fuels that are indigenous, they may reduce balance-of-payments problems. Less dependence on fuel imports reduces vulnerability to currency fluctuations and fuel price instability,” stated lands, mines and energy minister Eugene Shannon in June 2007.
While hydrocarbons are still the government’s priority, clean energy now has a firm place in the government’s plan. The development of the renewable energy policy is a major step allowing the government, which wants to see the development of public-private partnerships (PPPs), eventually to sell the concept of renewable energy to private investors outside the country in a financial environment in which capital flows to the easiest and least risky places. It is one of the first of its kind in the region, and the country is eager to demonstrate to finance experts that the government’s statements are underpinned by a serious framework.
For Liberia, the most obvious way forward is hydropower. Three hydropower stations were functioning in the 1970s and 80s, but two of these have been destroyed. The smallest of the three, a 4MW plant located at Harbel, about 15km from the coast, is still working. Past studies have shown the potential for another 40 small or large hydropower stations, but the cash has not been forthcoming. But Goanue believes that the situation has changed. “A hydropower station will be operating in Liberia within the next three years, and will encourage large industry to come in”, he asserts, alluding to government plans.
Solar power is also a strong possibility, although solar radiation is not as high in Liberia as in some African countries. But following Goanue’s campaign, the government now foresees the potential for both solar photovoltaic and solar thermal applications, especially for organisations in the health, education, farming sectors and in small businesses. Planners are also now considering windpower, which looks plentiful along Liberia‘s shoreline, while biomass plants would replace the current unsustainable use of charcoal. Goanue‘s work has got people thinking outside the ‘business as usual‘ box. “Without his REEEP project, renewable energy wouldn’t have been discussed. It was this study that inserted the idea into the government’s dialogue,” states Peter Richards, REEEP communications director.
Like 33 others in Africa, Liberia is classified by the United Nations as one of the world’s Least Developed Countries. Only Botswana has managed cast away that label and step up to the next developed grade. The nature of Liberia’s plan shows that enterprising ideas are reaching a government crying out for innovation. Perhaps these will attract the progressive investors it so badly needs to move up.