Top AfDB official rules out nuclear in the mission to electrify Africa

As an ambitious plan to provide 300 million additional people in Africa with electricity by 2030 gets underway, officials are considering a range of energy sources — but nuclear will not be one of them. That’s according to Kevin Kariuki, the African Development Bank’s vice president for power, energy, climate and green growth. “I cannot be an evangelist of nuclear in Africa, because I know it's not practicable. At least not with the level of technology that we have today,” he told Devex last week on the sidelines of AfDB’s annual meetings in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Mission 300 — a joint initiative with the World Bank — was launched last year in response to stagnating energy access across the continent. As part of the process, all African countries will develop national energy compacts, or detailed plans on how they will electrify their populations and the funding needed to do so. So far, 12 have revealed their compacts, and the next group of 20 is set to do so by September. In this conversation, Kariuki discusses the current status of Mission 300, how the bank balances clean energy goals with national energy realities, why nuclear power is not currently on the table, and what to watch in the months ahead as more countries sign on to the compact process. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. What’s the current status of Mission 300? Are we on track to meet its goals? It's still early days to give exact numbers, but I am confident that we will be on track. We are now doing the foundational things. For example, for the 12 compacts that we developed, we are now developing what we call compact delivery and monitoring units, which is the implementation mechanism of those compacts. So now we are saying we need to find ways of capacitating these units that will work with the government to ensure that actions that are agreed as part of Mission 300 are actually implemented. And these CDMUs, as we call them, are very, very high in government. They are either in the Ministry of Finance, or most likely the prime minister, or the presidency. Because we want any actions that are agreed upon to be delivered. How does the African Development Bank balance clean energy goals with the energy needs and available resources of individual countries? We want to ensure that countries have an optimal generation mix. An optimal generation mix looks at the entire horizon of resources that a country has. Be it fossil — we don't do coal, all coal is out of the game — but gas, hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, all sources otherwise. You look at all those sources and ask, “How can I be able to meet demand during this particular period of time? I may need hydro, I may need this, but what will be the least cost?” So we call it the “least cost power expansion planning.” So that fits in the first pillar of Mission 300. So if you do least cost power expansion planning, you look at generation, you look at transmission, you look at distribution, and you look at supply, the entire value chain. And the idea is that if it is optimal, as I just talked about, then what it means is that it will result in the least cost power to a country, which makes it sustainable. So that's how we do it. We are agnostic of technology, except for coal and nuclear. Given recent conversations at the World Bank about nuclear energy — in which shareholders and even President Ajay Banga support removing the ban on it — is the African Development Bank also considering nuclear as part of its energy mix? First of all, we are precluded from doing nuclear energy. Our policy does not allow it. But even if nuclear was allowed, only four African countries' power systems could absorb it because of the construction of nuclear reactors. … If you ask me, that would be South Africa, Egypt, Morocco, maybe Algeria, and maybe Nigeria once they sort things out. In the current technology that exists today, the smallest units are about 300 megawatts. And countries like Burundi, countries like Gambia, their power systems are 50, 100 megawatts. So, such a system cannot absorb 300. There's what they call modular reactors that can come down to 100 megawatts, but still, 100 megawatts for most African utilities is still very high. We normally say that if you want to operate your power system in an optimal and reliable manner, you apply what we call N-1 reliability criteria. This is such that if you lose the largest unit, it does not impair the integrity of the rest of the system. And another factor — nuclear, even in a country such as Finland, which is probably the most advanced as far as nuclear, or France: Almost all the new plants that they've finished have experienced 50 to 100 percent cost overrun. And those countries are rich, they can afford it. But for poor countries, the opportunity cost of losing that is very huge. So if you ask me, I cannot be an evangelist of nuclear in Africa, because I know it's not practicable. At least not with the level of technology that we have today. What upcoming developments should we be watching in the Mission 300 movement? In the first week of June, we are having a private sector engagement in London. We have an event in mid-June in Cape Town. We will also unveil one or two, or three energy compacts, just to keep people excited about what we are doing. It's such a hot topic that even when I was in Norway, I found that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway has a Mission 300 team. It's serious, and the same applies in Germany. And now, today, the AFD, the French, were actually talking about this “Mission 300 movement.” So, it's creating sufficient interest, and so it's great. So that's what we are trying to sustain with these sorts of interim events. And then the next big event will be in New York. The next 20 compacts* will be unveiled at the United Nations General Assembly in September. And then after that, we'll go to the last 32 countries. * Those 20 countries, Kariuki’s team said after the meeting, are: Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burundi, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Republic of Congo, Comoros, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Sierra Leone, Sao tome and Principe, Togo, and Zimbabwe.