Joel Nana, program manager at Sustainable Energy Africa and Hub fellow, joins the show to talk about climate action planning, the importance of energy planning at a subnational level, and Africa’s solar revolution.
Joel Nana is a Fellow at the Energy for Growth Hub and a PhD candidate with the Energy Systems Research Group at the University of Cape Town. He is also the Project Manager at Sustainable Energy Africa. Joel’s research focuses on urban energy profiling, scenario modeling, electric mobility and energy poverty in the cities of the global South. Over the last 5 years, he has worked closely with over a dozen African municipal governments, spearheading innovative approaches in developing inclusive city-wide energy and climate strategies. Joel holds a BEng in Electrical Engineering from Buea University (Cameroon) and a Masters in Applied Physics from the University of Fort Hare (South Africa).
Show Notes
- Joel has written for the Hub on electric vehicles, mini-grids, and the urban energy transition in sub-Saharan Africa.
- Joel on LinkedIn.
Transcript
[00:00:00] KATIE AUTH: I’m Katie Auth.
[00:00:07] ROSE MUTISO: And I’m Rose Mutiso. Welcome to Season Four of the High Energy Planet, which is the podcast from the Energy for Growth Hub about new ideas to solve global energy poverty and the people behind them.
[00:00:16] KATIE AUTH: We are so excited today to kick off our new season, Season 4, with Joel Nana, a Cameroonian energy expert currently based in South Africa. Joel is a program manager at Sustainable Energy Africa, where he focuses on energy transition planning and implementation at the urban, national, and regional levels across all of Africa. And he’s also simultaneously pursuing a PhD at the University of Cape Town, exploring equitable energy transition pathways in African cities. We are also very lucky to count Joel among our colleagues because he’s a fellow of the Energy for Growth Hub.
[00:00:54] ROSE MUTISO: Joel’s work is super interesting because it challenges the conventional wisdom about energy transitions in Africa by zooming in on the grassroots level. So from his work, exploring the role of African cities in driving energy and climate action to how African consumers are driving a surprising solar revolution from the ground up, his approach reveals insights that top down policy often misses. And in this episode, we’ll explore how this perspective is, is truly reshaping our understanding of Africa’s energy future.
[00:01:22] KATIE AUTH: So Joel, welcome to High Energy Planet. How are you?
[00:01:33] JOEL NANA: Thank you for the warm welcome.
[00:01:35] ROSE MUTISO: It’s great to have you.
[00:01:36] KATIE AUTH: Of course. So you’re joining us from beautiful Cape Town. Rose and I have already expressed how jealous we are for the sunlight that’s streaming through your windows behind you. Um, but you’re not originally from South Africa. So I want to start by asking you to tell us just a little bit about where and how you grew up and how that shaped the person that you are today.
[00:01:57] JOEL NANA: Right. Thank you for the question. Uh, I was born, I am born and bred, in Cameroon. I was born in this small village, maybe now a small town called Nangai Boko, which is just a few kilometers away from the capital city Yaounde. So I was born there and went to school there and only moved to the capital city later on in life, probably when I was about 12 years old, where I grew up for the rest of my life until I moved to South Africa. Now the, the chapter in between that really forged me was when I had to move to the East, English speaking side of Cameroon, which is called Oya, to complete my undergraduate study.
[00:02:46] KATIE AUTH: Cause some people might not realize that Cameroon is actually kind of split into two
[00:02:50] JOEL NANA: exactly, yes. So the French-speaking, which is where I’m coming from, is the majority, and then the English
[00:02:56] JOEL NANA: speaking side is like one quarter of the population, so the minority there. But then I went there to complete my studies because, uh, I don’t know for what reason my parents decided that I was going to study in English.
[00:03:10] JOEL NANA: So out of all my siblings, I’m the only
[00:03:12] JOEL NANA: one that studied in
[00:03:13] KATIE AUTH: Just to give you an added challenge.
[00:03:16] JOEL NANA: Or maybe I was too brilliant and he said, okay, this guy needs another challenge.
[00:03:20] JOEL NANA: So then I went there and completed my studies and I was lucky to be among the top of my class. That’s where I got the bursary to come and study in South Africa. Yeah, And that is when I got exposed to the energy sector by working as a measurement identification technician while I was completing my master’s study. And then finally, a beautiful romance story that led me to where
[00:03:48] JOEL NANA: I am now.
[00:03:51] ROSE MUTISO: So what’s, what would you say was one really pivotal moment? One thing that from your childhood that has really, really shaped who you are?
[00:04:01] JOEL NANA: Right, it was, uh, the first thing, maybe it was music.
[00:04:04] JOEL NANA: Um, when I was still, I think,
[00:04:07] JOEL NANA: about 10 years old or we are 10 or 11 years old, my father just decided out of nowhere that he was going to register me for piano lessons. And I remember asking
[00:04:18] JOEL NANA: him,
[00:04:18] JOEL NANA: like, who told you that I wanted to learn piano? I’ve never, we’ve never
[00:04:21] JOEL NANA: discussed this.
[00:04:23] JOEL NANA: So, but then
[00:04:24] JOEL NANA: I went and studied piano. And after the
[00:04:27] JOEL NANA: first two classes. I remember coming
[00:04:30] JOEL NANA: back and telling him, I
[00:04:31] JOEL NANA: love it so much. And since then I have been exposed
[00:04:37] JOEL NANA: to piano, uh,
[00:04:38] JOEL NANA: to music in general. and
[00:04:40] JOEL NANA: that has really, I think, fundamentally shaped. Who I am and even how I see life today.
[00:04:48] KATIE AUTH: Yeah, and one of my favorite memories of knowing you is we were at an event. um, hosted in this beautiful location. And, uh, there was a piano sitting in the corner and we were all just chatting, having a happy hour. And Joel just goes and sits down at the piano and starts playing.
[00:05:04] KATIE AUTH: And it was like this hidden talent that none of us realized you
[00:05:07] KATIE AUTH: had.
[00:05:08] KATIE AUTH: It
[00:05:08] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah, I mean, that that was pretty amazing. But you know, I, I also know that you’re you have an engineering background. And actually, I was trying to tease I was trying to set you up in that question to talk about how being an engineer is what has transformed your life. But you know what, as a fellow engineer, that’s what I was hoping that was the answer I was hoping for.
[00:05:24] ROSE MUTISO: But
[00:05:24] KATIE AUTH: Womp Womp
[00:05:25] KATIE AUTH: Rose.
[00:05:26] ROSE MUTISO: Music can have the spotlight for this moment. moving on. Um, Let’s talk about your PhD research on the hidden consequences of climate action on equity in African cities. So, what’s the question you’re trying to answer and how are you going about It
[00:05:42] JOEL NANA: Right, okay. So I think the way I’ll frame the question is, um, I was trying to understand how will climate or local climate action planning look like if there was more emphasis on climate change? on glaring inequalities at the local level. So in a way, I was wondering if you present to the local policymakers the much evidence about how wide the inequalities are, will the final local climate action plans look different or not from what they are today?
[00:06:14] JOEL NANA: And that is what I set myself to invest in.
[00:06:18] KATIE AUTH: And when you’re talking about inequality, it’s just to give people a sense of what that means. Like, is it economic inequality? What are the different factors
[00:06:27] KATIE AUTH: by which you’re measuring
[00:06:28] KATIE AUTH: inequality?
[00:06:29] JOEL NANA: Uh, I’m measuring inequality mostly in terms of energy use. So, like, just talking in terms of absolute value. Like, what is the difference between what I use versus what a high income household will be using? Or maybe also on other developmental factors, like, um, um, how, what’s the energy burden, uh, because of this, um, that I’m using, what can I offer myself as energy services, so like the ramifications So when you combine that together, all those metrics together, um, like, yeah, how, how is that impacting someone’s life?
[00:07:06] JOEL NANA: But specifically for my PhD, I was looking at the, I was trying to quantify the inequalities using the Gini coefficient, which is a well known metric of income inequality. It’s been used in the income milieu for a long time. And I tried to borrow that into the energy space. Put a value to the energy
[00:07:26] JOEL NANA: inequality in African seed.
[00:07:29] KATIE AUTH: Interesting.
[00:07:30] ROSE MUTISO: where did the idea for this research question come from? Wow.
[00:07:36] JOEL NANA: involved in the previous years, in the past seven years or so. in climate action planning across a dozen African cities. From, like, throughout the process, from? um, designing the surveys for data collection, collecting the data itself, analyzing the data, developing the model, even drafting some of the climate action plans, to engaging the stakeholders around the finalization of the vision and the plan itself. So just from the data analysis, the more geeky side of the process, I was able to see all these some patterns or trends in terms of inequalities. For example, you’ve seen a place like Kampala where the lowest, uh, the lowest or the poorest household will be using like five times or ten times, uh, um, Uh, lower energy than the high income households. and then where I was a bit disappointed, or maybe disappointed is not, um, the right word, where I thought the climate actions fell short was that The final PUDOX didn’t really have that lens on the granularity of inequalities. It was more setting broad targets like this. emission reduction by 2030 will be 30 percent or blanket approaches like 100 percent electricity access.
[00:08:59] JOEL NANA: But then I kept on wondering what do you do about these inequalities that already exist in the base year as of today? Don’t, wouldn’t you want to have actions that have differential impacts on the various social classes based on where they are today and where you want them to
[00:09:16] JOEL NANA: tomorrow?
[00:09:17] JOEL NANA: So
[00:09:17] JOEL NANA: in a way, the climate action plans had a lot of equity jargon, which is great
[00:09:22] JOEL NANA: already. But then in
[00:09:23] JOEL NANA: terms of the actual, um, actions, it wasn’t very clear how a particular action will lead to, uh, reducing or narrowing that inequality gap, or even lifting up people of energy poverty to get them maybe to a decent amount of energy consumption. So that was the, uh, that was the shortfall which I’m trying to explore now in my PhD, or which I was trying to explore in
[00:09:47] JOEL NANA: my PhD by, um, diving into the data
[00:09:50] JOEL NANA: and trying to flesh that
[00:09:52] JOEL NANA: out a little bit, so that I can give something to the policy makers in terms of quantifying the inequality.
[00:10:02] KATIE AUTH: Is there anything, I know you’re still in the middle of your PhD, so you don’t have kind of final conclusions, but is there anything that has really surprised you about this research as you’ve
[00:10:13] JOEL NANA: Yes, a lot. I’m actually at the end of the PhD,
[00:10:16] JOEL NANA: hopefully, crossing my fingers.
[00:10:19] ROSE MUTISO: Uh, I know, I know, I personally know both of his PhD advisors. So
[00:10:24] ROSE MUTISO: I can confirm the progress, uh, from separately. I can, uh, fact check.
[00:10:30] JOEL NANA: Exactly, Yeah, but there are very interesting findings that came out of, that have already come up from the PhD. The first one, So there’s no low energy rich city. That is like very, uh, very obvious. There is a very strong correlation between the total energy consumption and the city’s GDP. And that is even more glaring for electricity. When you single out electricity, there’s even a much stronger correlation between Electricity consumption and, uh, uh, and GDP.
[00:11:06] JOEL NANA: And you will be surprised to see that small cities like, uh, Sevier, which is a small town of about 100, 000 people in, uh, in the middle of Togo, the average electricity consumption is about 10 kilowatt hour versus Cape Town, where the average electricity consumption is about 3, 000 kilowatt hour.
[00:11:28] JOEL NANA: And so you wonder, like, how do you get people in Togo from 10 kilowatt hour to about a thousand kilowatt hour, which maybe would be that decent level for economic productivity.
[00:11:41] JOEL NANA: So at least for me, that was like a huge opportunity, shows a huge opportunity for innovation. Imagine you have 9, 000 opportunities to get them from. And 10 kilowatt to 1000 kilowatt. So it opens wide, like the, the sort of options that we have on the plate to get them to that particular so on the inequalities itself that I was trying to, uh, quantify, uh, I came to realize that, uh, energy inequality, surprisingly, are lower than income
[00:12:15] JOEL NANA: inequalities.
[00:12:18] JOEL NANA: Yeah, which Is which is interesting, uh,
[00:12:20] JOEL NANA: but I,
[00:12:22] KATIE AUTH: Yeah. Can you unpack that a little bit? Kind of explain
[00:12:24] KATIE AUTH: what
[00:12:24] KATIE AUTH: you
[00:12:24] JOEL NANA: okay, so in, um, if you remember I said that, I am looking at the Gini coefficient to quantify the inequalities.
[00:12:31] JOEL NANA: So the income inequalities are usually around 0. 4, 0. 6, um, that’s the coefficient. And, um, for your listeners, maybe, uh, the higher the number, the more unequal the city is and the lower it is, the more equal it is. So when I quantify the inequalities in terms of energy use, the, the, the, uh, coefficient, the Gini coefficients were much lower, sometimes even half the income inequality.
[00:13:03] JOEL NANA: So
[00:13:03] JOEL NANA: it’s half the, Gini
[00:13:04] JOEL NANA: coefficient. for example, in a place like, uh, Dakar, the where the income inequality was about
[00:13:10] JOEL NANA: 0. 6. The Gini
[00:13:12] JOEL NANA: coefficient of energy.
[00:13:13] JOEL NANA: use will
[00:13:14] JOEL NANA: be about 0. 3, so half that. And I,
[00:13:18] ROSE MUTISO: driving that. Is it just everyone
[00:13:20] ROSE MUTISO: is in energy poverty? Or what do you think is driving that, that
[00:13:23] JOEL NANA: I
[00:13:24] JOEL NANA: asked myself the same
[00:13:24] JOEL NANA: question. And the, obviously there are a lot
[00:13:28] JOEL NANA: of um, uh, factors in place, economic factors, lifestyle, and so on.
[00:13:33] JOEL NANA: But the main point was that
[00:13:36] JOEL NANA: the, it points to the
[00:13:37] JOEL NANA: fundamental nature of
[00:13:38] JOEL NANA: energy as a basic need. So energy consumption
[00:13:42] JOEL NANA: up to a certain level, uh, is essential for
[00:13:45] JOEL NANA: well being, which is one of the first needs being met. But then, on the other
[00:13:50] JOEL NANA: hand, income is
[00:13:51] JOEL NANA: more dependent on the social economics, on the
[00:13:54] JOEL NANA: status, economic
[00:13:55] JOEL NANA: status, and even the opportunities. So it makes sense that
[00:13:58] JOEL NANA: the energy side of things, yes, is
[00:14:01] JOEL NANA: more,
[00:14:02] ROSE MUTISO: the so the floor, so I was thinking that maybe the
[00:14:04] ROSE MUTISO: ceiling is, low for everyone, but you’re saying the floor is there’s a kind of high for everyone because you need energy.
[00:14:12] JOEL NANA: Yeah, Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Of course, the energy inequalities are still high compared to other places in the world, but compared to income, I think, um,
[00:14:24] JOEL NANA: the interesting thing was that it’s lower.
[00:14:26] ROSE MUTISO: So bringing this back full circle to climate, because this, the genesis of
[00:14:30] ROSE MUTISO: this work was helping cities, your day job, helping cities work on climate action plans, which you felt had this emissions first.
[00:14:39] ROSE MUTISO: lens that missed this inequality. So what is, what is the link? Like, is there a way that climate action through your research, is there a way that you saw that climate action can coexist with reducing these inequalities or are these goals at cross purposes?
[00:14:53] JOEL NANA: no, exactly. So, well, for the better part of a decade, I think, uh, the understanding was that climate action planning would be that big umbrella under which the cities will be addressing almost every single goal you can think of from sustainability to, uh, economic growth and even equity and so on. So. The climate action plan, as you see them now, or if you read through them, you’ll see it embraces quite a lot of the challenges that the cities are exposed to, including energy poverty and so on.
[00:15:24] JOEL NANA: But I think the main issue was that because of the lack of clarity or evidence on the inequalities as they are today, it probably reduces the leverage that the city has, or even reduces the, uh, the, uh, depth. to which the cities can go in terms of fleshing out the actions to address those issues. So I’m quite hoping that through this PhD and through these findings, that it will provide at least some evidence base to support even more inclusive and, uh, more inclusive climate action plan for the future,
[00:16:03] KATIE AUTH: So moving on to a related, but slightly different topic, you’ve talked a little bit about uncovering what you call a silent solar PV revolution happening across Africa, which is really, really interesting. Can you describe briefly kind of what you mean by that and the specific evidence that you’re seeing that.
[00:16:23] JOEL NANA: all right? Actually, our slogan with my team is, it’s happening. So I’m happy you use that. Uh, so yeah, we are supporting with grant funding from GIZ, uh, the, the, uh, chairman at
[00:16:40] JOEL NANA: HNC, um, utilities and regulators across the sub Saharan, across sub Saharan Africa and facilitating the connection of distributed, what we call distributed generation, but it’s essentially, uh, distributed solar or rooftop solar for the most part of it.
[00:16:56] JOEL NANA: So in our first interactions with the utilities, we obviously tried to scope, uh, the local context and understand what’s happening on the ground. If there’s any uptick at all, and if there was any uptick, what are the reasons for that uptick? And what we were able to find, which is quite amazing to us, was that in Namibia, for example, you have, as of now, about 96 megawatt of electricity. That might not seem a lot, but when you compare it to this, um, system size or the Namibia’s national, uh, peak demand, which is about 600 and so
[00:17:39] JOEL NANA: megawatt, that represents about 15 percent of Namibia’s installed capacity. When you look at. Yeah, exactly. You look at South Africa, we’re sitting today with about 5.
[00:17:51] JOEL NANA: 7 gigawatts of rooftop solar or distributed solar in general, which represents about 11 percent or so of South Africa’s installed capacity. If you only compare it even to the peak capacity, it would be about 16%. So it’s also quite a lot. You look at a very small country that probably, um, few people have heard of, Eswatini, it’s in the, it’s right there at the corner of South Africa.
[00:18:17] JOEL NANA: That’s a very small country with a small capacity, national capacity of about 234 megawatt, yet they already have about 30 megawatt of rooftop solar PV, also making up about 13 percent of the country’s installed capacity. So, uh, for me, maybe, uh, to your listeners, uh, to give them some perspective, in California, which is the solar capital of the world, if you single out just rooftop solar PV, they have about a 15 or 16 gigawatts of rooftop solar
[00:18:48] JOEL NANA: PV, which is a
[00:18:49] JOEL NANA: lot. But then when
[00:18:51] JOEL NANA: you
[00:18:51] JOEL NANA: compare to California’s installed capacity or even peak demand, you see that the
[00:18:56] JOEL NANA: contribution is just about 6%. Same when you look at Spain, when you look
[00:19:02] JOEL NANA: at
[00:19:02] JOEL NANA: France, they sit at about 6%, 7%, 8%. So it immediately tells you that Africa is actually not behind in terms of, um, deployment of rooftop solar PV actually might be leading relatively speaking in terms of our share of national capacity, we might be leading on the rest of the world in terms of deployment of this technology.
[00:19:26] JOEL NANA: And what is more surprising is that This hasn’t happened over, uh, 10 years like it has done in, in, in California or over a decade like it’s happening in developed countries. It’s happened over just three to four years. Just three to four years. So we’re talking of like a very exponential growth. ,
[00:19:48] ROSE MUTISO: This is super interesting. So clearly it’s happening, as per the, , the, the, the tagline, and it’s happening fast, but is there anything else that’s unique about this deployment pathway in Africa versus say what’s happening in other mature economies?
[00:20:03] JOEL NANA: Yes, definitely. Uh, the one thing that I wanted to articulate on the, uh, the, the growth rate, Namibia, if you take the case of Namibia, for example, as of September last year, they had about 70 megawatts of in store capacity. Fast forward to May, the, now had 96 megawatts. So basically they added 26 megawatts in just about nine months.
[00:20:30] JOEL NANA: So you remember I talked about 15 percent total in terms of share of Namibia’s capacity. Actually that 5 percent at the top has been added. in just nine months.
[00:20:42] KATIE AUTH: So I’m super struck by this timeline because I didn’t realize that, that, that you were seeing such dramatic shifts just in three years, because if you think about that three year window, that’s post COVID. And so the growth that you’re seeing kind of flies in the face of. This broader narrative that you see and you read about that, you know, COVID was really hard on the off grid industry.
[00:21:05] KATIE AUTH: Energy markets in Africa are still really struggling. Interest rates are high. There’s very little to invest in. And then you’re actually seeing evidence that counters that in a lot of exciting and unexpected ways. What do you think explains the gap between those
[00:21:21] JOEL NANA: think because it’s very organically
[00:21:23] JOEL NANA: driven, um, these customers putting up this rooftop solar PV mostly in the commercial and industrial sector are not doing so
[00:21:31] JOEL NANA: because they depend on incentives, because the, the economy is
[00:21:36] JOEL NANA: doing, is not doing well. It’s mostly because they are trying
[00:21:40] JOEL NANA: to solve an issue which
[00:21:41] JOEL NANA: they are dealing. And the issue they are dealing with
[00:21:44] JOEL NANA: is high electricity prices,
[00:21:46] JOEL NANA: mostly for the commercial segment, and energy security, like in South Africa, that has been battling with a big energy crisis for several years, although things have gotten better. So because it’s very organically grid driven, So you have a proliferation that
[00:22:02] JOEL NANA: beats literally all the odds,
[00:22:04] JOEL NANA: compared to California, where that growth has been heavily dependent on subsidies, even in other mature markets.
[00:22:12] JOEL NANA: We’re heavily dependent on subsidies, so when something strikes the national government in terms of provision of these subsidies, it obviously affects the chain, uh, downward. But here
[00:22:21] JOEL NANA: it’s like from the bottom up, literally.
[00:22:24] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah, and actually just this is probably a good time to try and clarify for the listener. So what you’re describing here is not the off grid solar that people typically think of in Africa, like totally off the grid, small systems. This is rooftop grid tied solar. Sometimes self standing, but like, you know, great tide, like, uh, what would sit on an office building or a mall or some kind of industrial, um, plant.
[00:22:51] JOEL NANA: Yeah, exactly. This is mostly grid tied, uh, grid tied, um, rooftop solar PV systems. Could be ground mounted as well, but essentially it’s, uh, designed or it’s installed to
[00:23:02] JOEL NANA: meet the on site energy needs.
[00:23:05] ROSE MUTISO: So, this bottom up revolution is
[00:23:07] ROSE MUTISO: Truly exciting.
[00:23:08] ROSE MUTISO: Um, but it clearly will pose challenges, particularly for
[00:23:12] ROSE MUTISO: the
[00:23:12] ROSE MUTISO: utilities. This has been a talking point for years now about how utilities may suffer and enter death
[00:23:19] ROSE MUTISO: spiral if people are self generating.
[00:23:22] ROSE MUTISO: Um, and this has been a conversation elsewhere in the world. How do you see this playing out in Africa? Like, what are the biggest risks for African utilities? And are there any specific utilities you’ve seen successfully adapting to this trend?
[00:23:35] JOEL NANA: Successfully adapting to the trend. Maybe it’s, uh, uh, you might not find
[00:23:39] ROSE MUTISO: Too, too optimistic. Mm
[00:23:42] JOEL NANA: quite early in this process or in this transition, but in terms of what people are doing or what utilities are doing, definitely. There are lots of lessons, but to come to your question about how this potentially play out for the utilities.
[00:23:57] JOEL NANA: the context is that it’s happening in a context where we have some of the most financially unsustainable utilities in the whole world. So most utilities are running at the loss, not being able to charge cost reflective tariffs because that would be, uh, if not, people will not be able to afford them. So they have to charge much lower, uh, below cost reflectivity. And obviously they are already losing a lot of revenue even before this, technology arrived. Now you have this technology arriving and everyone doing what they like mostly your biggest customers. So where those who have been a constant source of revenue.
[00:24:37] ROSE MUTISO: hmm.
[00:24:38] JOEL NANA: And then these are installing these systems and reducing their, um, their consumption or purchases from the utility. The obvious effect is that it’s going to have a serious impact on the utilities revenue. First of all, because the utility, , unfortunately some of our utilities are operating in a model where they make
[00:24:59] JOEL NANA: money through the sale of kilowatt hour. Although they very well supply other
[00:25:05] JOEL NANA: services like electricity.
[00:25:07] JOEL NANA: the grid infrastructure, balancing and so on, but they bundle
[00:25:10] JOEL NANA: all those into a kilowatt
[00:25:12] JOEL NANA: hour unit.
[00:25:13] JOEL NANA: So for a customer to reduce his kilowatt hour consumption from those purchases from the utility means
[00:25:21] JOEL NANA: he is not paying his fair share of those other services which were bundled into the kilowatt hour of volumetric charge. And
[00:25:30] JOEL NANA: So you end up in a situation where we might have , a perverse cross subsidy happening, whereby instead of the high paying customer to be, , to be charged more so that we can provide subsidies to the low income customers, instead now the low income customer is paying for the share of the high income customer because he is no more paying his, uh, his
[00:25:54] JOEL NANA: fair share of becoming a searcher.
[00:25:56] JOEL NANA: Yes.
[00:25:57] ROSE MUTISO: So this, from, from an equity perspective, so going back to your PhD research, so this exciting solar revolution could have really negative consequences for equity in the cities where this is happening. So how are you reconciling that in your mind?
[00:26:10] JOEL NANA: right. Well,
[00:26:10] ROSE MUTISO: your PhD and your, on one hand, you’re
[00:26:13] ROSE MUTISO: like promoting the, you know, a hashtag, it’s happening solo world.
[00:26:18] ROSE MUTISO: On the other hand, you’re talking about inequality in the cities. How are you combining these two sides of your work? And
[00:26:25] JOEL NANA: the best approach to that is to put in place measures, um, to prevent that service cost subsidy from happening. And the easiest way is to have the utilities. pivot into a different thinking or business model, first of all, by unbundling their, uh, current electricity tariffs. So it’s no, it shouldn’t be a simple parametric charge going on.
[00:26:50] JOEL NANA: It should be a, tariff or an electricity tariff that reflects indeed all the services, be it the demand component, the fixed component, the energy component, so that if something happens on the energy component because of this technology, at least they still do recover the fair share for the other services that they pay.
[00:27:10] JOEL NANA: And, uh, South Africa is probably at the forefront of it, whereby municipalities have been doing what we call cost of supply studies, uh, for the, uh, better part of, uh, last two years or so, where they are indeed trying to move into a system that better reflects the utilities through cost, uh, electricity provisions.
[00:27:32] KATIE AUTH: So one of the things as we’ve discussed today that we really love about your work? and we find very interesting and kind of very different than what a lot of other people are doing is the focus on urban energy transitions. And
[00:27:44] KATIE AUTH: so looking ahead, maybe over the course of the next decade, what’s one aspect of urban energy transitions in Africa that you think isn’t getting enough attention?
[00:27:57] JOEL NANA: I would say it’s, uh, the building of the capacity, building of the capacity of the municipalities that needs a lot more attention than it’s, uh, than is happening at the moment. And the reason why I say that is because it has also been the biggest achievement of the work
[00:28:15] JOEL NANA: that we’ve been doing in this space
[00:28:16] JOEL NANA: for the last 20 years.
[00:28:18] JOEL NANA: more years. When we, when we started, there was a very little attention to
[00:28:25] JOEL NANA: the energy
[00:28:26] JOEL NANA: lens at the municipal level. And here you see 20 years after that, a lot
[00:28:32] JOEL NANA: of um, subnational governments have institutionalized these across their various departments to the point of creating, uh, like energy directories or energy offices or climate change department.
[00:28:46] JOEL NANA: So the implication of this is that. There is now a constant or dedicated, dedicated resources?
[00:28:53] JOEL NANA: going to support energy planning at sub national level because of this institutionalization. If it hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have been here.
[00:29:02] KATIE AUTH: so it’s interesting because you use the word capacity, but it actually sounds like you’re talking about capacity plus kind of a recognition that municipalities need to have agency and leadership responsibilities when it
[00:29:15] KATIE AUTH: comes to energy as well.
[00:29:16] JOEL NANA: Yeah, exactly.
[00:29:18] ROSE MUTISO: some of this will, I guess,
[00:29:19] ROSE MUTISO: come from devolving some mandates and resources from the national level to empower these municipalities.
[00:29:27] JOEL NANA: Yes.
[00:29:28] ROSE MUTISO: Where, where in Africa do you think that they’re really municipalities that are because of the kind of the national policy framework are more empowered, both In terms of mandate and resources?
[00:29:39] JOEL NANA: In our studies we haven’t found municipalities that are more empowered than the South African municipalities. They are probably because of the national frameworks that allow them to distribute
[00:29:51] JOEL NANA: electricity. So maybe
[00:29:53] JOEL NANA: that was the channel through which energy planning could could spur and and become like a
[00:29:59] JOEL NANA: whole beast on its own. But Uh, in South Africa, you do have, municipalities that have part, uh, mandates of, electricity distribution, uh, of, uh, energy planning, but it may be even other buildings and the transport sector, which you don’t have, even in big cities like Dakar, for example, the, the, by far the biggest, uh, city of Senegal, but they don’t have any mandate of a transport, and even in the building sector, it’s very limited.
[00:30:28] JOEL NANA: So you see, like, a huge spectrum of what municipalities or subnational governments can achieve in one jurisdiction versus the other. And I think, to your question as well, I think, um, mandates of, um, the capacity of local governments to be able to, um, to implement is by far the second, I would say,
[00:30:50] JOEL NANA: maybe the second biggest area of attention that is.
[00:30:53] ROSE MUTISO: Has this, has this been useful to South Africa that the municipalities are empowered in the context of the power crisis? Has that been a secret superpower? Has it or has it not made a difference?
[00:31:03] JOEL NANA: It has. It has, uh, and from the rooftop solar PV revolution again. so if you remember, the South African municipalities are also distribution utilities. So, in a
[00:31:15] JOEL NANA: way, they do
[00:31:16] JOEL NANA: have the power to regulate and permit or approve these rooftop solar. PV systems to connect to the network. Because of the energy
[00:31:26] JOEL NANA: crisis, they obviously had to deal with them. with an inflow of demand or
[00:31:31] JOEL NANA: request from their customers to be able to install these systems. and because they had the power or the mandate to do So, they were able to
[00:31:40] JOEL NANA: move through the process quite
[00:31:41] JOEL NANA: quickly and put in place a robust
[00:31:44] JOEL NANA: permitting process
[00:31:45] JOEL NANA: that will take anywhere
[00:31:46] JOEL NANA: between a few days to maybe a few months so that people can.
[00:31:50] JOEL NANA: installed
[00:31:51] JOEL NANA: rooftop solar PV systems. And the reason why I say maybe they had a role to play is because, uh, just recently a very data packed article
[00:32:01] JOEL NANA: was released showing that
[00:32:02] JOEL NANA: rooftop solar PV alone has reduced the country’s demand by a few
[00:32:08] JOEL NANA: percentage points, just over a year, and that
[00:32:12] JOEL NANA: reduction
[00:32:12] JOEL NANA: is in part responsible for the reduced power outages that we’ve been experiencing.
[00:32:17] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah, so I think Eskom has gone 190 days without load shedding
[00:32:21] JOEL NANA: It’s 200 days this, this very solar PV is a big reason
[00:32:24] ROSE MUTISO: why. That’s super, super interesting. All right. So now we’re getting to the end of the interview. And before I ask the last question, I’ve actually been, I just, I just want to say, I’ve been keeping a log of all of the places in Africa you’ve mentioned in this interview, and I think that this is one interview that we’ve really.
[00:32:40] ROSE MUTISO: crisscrossed the entire continent. So, uh, we talked about Togo, a small city called Seville, Kampala in Uganda, Cape Town and South Africa at large, Dakar and Senegal, Namibia, Eswatini, Cameroon, South Africa. Um, this really, really illustrates just how, how much you really know the continent, both the tiny cities and, and the, and the, and the big powerful countries.
[00:33:02] ROSE MUTISO: So I think that’s super, super, super cool, and illustrative of why specificity is so important. on the continent is so important. So thanks for that. I mean, Kenya is missing from your list. So maybe, maybe, before the interview is over, you can work that in. Um, okay. So, our usual final question, before we go into our rapid fire round is, Joel, so looking back, what’s the one thing that has changed the most about you since you started this work?
[00:33:26] ROSE MUTISO: That’s
[00:33:28] JOEL NANA: I think I’ve been
[00:33:29] JOEL NANA: more appreciative
[00:33:30] JOEL NANA: of the local context in each of the places that we’ve worked with. So we got to appreciate that there’s indeed no one, no one size fits all. And in almost all situations you have to deal with not just the energy situation at
[00:33:45] JOEL NANA: play, but
[00:33:46] JOEL NANA: also the cultural context, the economic context. And I think being able to navigate
[00:33:51] JOEL NANA: all those situations in a unique
[00:33:54] JOEL NANA: way uh, has really
[00:33:56] JOEL NANA: changed the way I see
[00:33:57] JOEL NANA: life in general.
[00:33:58] ROSE MUTISO: Okay, Joel. So now it’s time to play short circuit, which is a rapid fire round of questions. Are you ready?
[00:34:06] JOEL NANA: I am
[00:34:08] ROSE MUTISO: okay.
[00:34:08] ROSE MUTISO: I know, I know that you’re a loyal listener. So you know what to expect.
[00:34:12] KATIE AUTH: Uh, okay. We put this question first. I think I already know The answer, but if you weren’t an energy expert, what career would you have
[00:34:20] JOEL NANA: a
[00:34:21] JOEL NANA: musician.
[00:34:23] KATIE AUTH: Duh,
[00:34:24] KATIE AUTH: duh.
[00:34:24] KATIE AUTH: We
[00:34:25] ROSE MUTISO: you have been in a band.
[00:34:26] ROSE MUTISO: So you I guess you’ve kind of done that on the side. But okay, so this this could hopefully this will not alienate any of the collaborators you work with. But what’s your favorite African city?
[00:34:39] JOEL NANA: I have two.
[00:34:40] ROSE MUTISO: Oh, okay.
[00:34:41] JOEL NANA: Nairobi, which you said I didn’t
[00:34:43] ROSE MUTISO: Oh,
[00:34:44] KATIE AUTH: Oh, come on.
[00:34:45] ROSE MUTISO: mean, that, I did not, that was, that came from the bottom of his heart. That had nothing to do with,
[00:34:49] JOEL NANA: it’s Nairobi And, Dakar. Those are my two favorite
[00:34:53] ROSE MUTISO: Okay, that’s wonderful.
[00:34:55] KATIE AUTH: I love Dakar.
[00:34:56] KATIE AUTH: Okay.
[00:34:56] KATIE AUTH: this is a two part.
[00:34:57] KATIE AUTH: Fill in the
[00:34:58] KATIE AUTH: blank. When it comes to the energy transition, African cities are leading on, blank. Okay.
[00:35:04] JOEL NANA: Ambition.
[00:35:06] KATIE AUTH: Ambition, and lagging on, blank.
[00:35:09] JOEL NANA: Implementation. That’s a good one. okay, so top tip for getting kids into playing a musical instrument. Which I’m asking for a friend.
[00:35:19] JOEL NANA: You just buy an instrument, you leave it there at home, and hope that your curiosity will draw
[00:35:26] JOEL NANA: them closer to that instrument. I
[00:35:27] ROSE MUTISO: And, what’s a top tip for getting your kid into energy
[00:35:30] ROSE MUTISO: policy? You leave a report, you leave a policy report on the floor
[00:35:33] ROSE MUTISO: and you hope their curiosity will
[00:35:36] JOEL NANA: Exactly. Maybe. Yeah.
[00:35:38] KATIE AUTH: I did send Rose a picture the other week because my toddler built a power station out of blocks and
[00:35:45] KATIE AUTH: was like, This is my power station. And I was like, ah, I’ve
[00:35:48] KATIE AUTH: succeeded.
[00:35:49] ROSE MUTISO: obviously happening in every single,
[00:35:50] ROSE MUTISO: uh, American home. Kids are just, with irrespective of what their parents work on, they’re building power plants
[00:35:55] KATIE AUTH: okay, last one. What’s your go to hack for getting your two toddlers to bed on time? And this time I’m asking for a friend.
[00:36:03] JOEL NANA: You take them to bed very early at
[00:36:06] JOEL NANA: 6pm.
[00:36:07] ROSE MUTISO: and that works.
[00:36:08] KATIE AUTH: That’s
[00:36:09] JOEL NANA: Yeah, I don’t
[00:36:11] ROSE MUTISO: Okay. Uh, Joel, thank you so much for being on the show. You know, this conversation has been so full of interesting texture and on the ground insights,
[00:36:20] ROSE MUTISO: and we really appreciate the work that you’re doing. And we can’t wait to see where your work
[00:36:24] ROSE MUTISO: on, , advancing urban energy transitions and, building out the solar revolution
[00:36:29] ROSE MUTISO: will go.
[00:36:30] JOEL NANA: Thank you. Thank you.
[00:36:32] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah, it is
[00:36:33] ROSE MUTISO: happening. Hashtag, it’s
[00:36:33] ROSE MUTISO: happening.
[00:36:34] ROSE MUTISO: Okay, let’s, let’s all make I wish we had a little more time.
[00:36:37] ROSE MUTISO: Well, this is, this is a teaser, but
[00:36:39] ROSE MUTISO: we’re working on a
[00:36:40] ROSE MUTISO: piece together that will, will give more information,
[00:36:43] ROSE MUTISO: that Joel is leading that will go on our website. So we’ll share that with listeners who are signed up for
[00:36:47] ROSE MUTISO: our newsletter, so just look out for it.
[00:36:48] KATIE AUTH: That’s it for today’s show and the kickoff of season four high energy planet is a production of the energy for growth hub, matching policymakers with evidenced based pathways to a high energy future for everyone. Find out more at energy for growth. org and share your questions and
[00:37:12] KATIE AUTH: thoughts with us at, at energy for growth on X and
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[00:37:16] ROSE MUTISO: you liked today’s episode, be sure to rate and review the podcast and tell a friend about us. Audrey Zana is our senior producer.
[00:37:21] ROSE MUTISO: Join us next time for High Energy Planet as we continue to explore new frontiers in energy development this season.