Morocco's Ongoing Success Story with Renewable Energy
Providing reliable, affordable and sustainable access to energy has become a core focus of the international development community and is the seventh goal of the 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Roughly 1.2 billion people, or 17 percent of the global population, are energy poor, meaning that they have no access to electricity. Meanwhile, more than 2.7 billion people, primarily in developing Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, rely on fuelwood and other traditional biomass sources for cooking.
Morocco’s experience with solar power offers key lessons for policymakers elsewhere in Africa who are seeking a robust pathway for addressing energy access challenges.
Although energy use in Africa increased 45 percent between 2000 to 2012, the continent still accounts for only 4 percent of the world’s total energy demand. Satisfying energy demand on a continent experiencing both rapid economic and population growth is an important challenge. In the absence of new energy-related policies and initiatives, more than 70 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s rural population is likely to remain unelectrified by 2030.
Deutsche Welle/Christoph Kober