Jun 2, 2014 - South Africa, Morocco and Kenya each climbed by two places in the latest “all renewables” country attractiveness index by Ernst & Young, while Nigeria was highlighted as a “market to watch”.
Thanks to new tenders under its Renewable Energy Procurement Programme, South Africa occupied the 17th position in the quarterly index, released today, as compared to 19th previously. Details on the Round 3 tenders are not yet available, but multinational consultancy Ernst & Young said that the country is now projected to add 2.5 GW of wind and 9 GW of solar capacity in total.
Morocco rose to the 29th spot in the ranking from 31st before, mainly due to the recent launch of a government tender for 850 MW of wind projects. This capacity translates into investments of some USD 1.7 billion (EUR 1.25bn).
Kenya now ranks 37th in term of renewables attractiveness, up by two spots, as the 300-MW Lake Turkana wind scheme obtained USD 870 million in financing from investors from no less than eight countries. Also, the government recently rebuffed reports saying it planned to stop issuing wind and solar project lincences until 2017.
Even though Nigeria is not yet present in the 40-country index, its renewable energy sector is “well and truly on the map”, Ernst & Young said. In May SkyPower FAS Energy, a joint venture of Canadian solar developer SkyPower and Saudi Arabia's FAS Energy, said it would construct 3 GW of utility-scale solar farms in Nigeria in five years. This ambitious plan calls for an investment of USD 5 billion.
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s government has launched a 5- to 10-year Transitional Electricity Market (TEM) to liberalise the sector step by step and eventually establish full wholesale and retail competition. By 2030 the country aims to source from renewables 20% of its energy and is already devising a feed-in tariff (FiT) mechanism.
The US, China, Germany, Japan and Canada were the five most appealing renewable markets in the first quarter of 2014.
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