Johannesburg, Sept 16 - East Africa should tap its large cogeneration potential, burning waste from its sugar and tea output to cut reliance on hydro power, which is increasingly hit by drought, an energy analyst said on Wednesday.
Stephen Karekezi, Director of the African Energy Policy Research Network (AFREPREN), said the region was relying on hydropower to meet 80 percent of demand, but more frequent droughts had caused power cuts and forced countries to import electricity at high cost.
"When you have a drought, you lose a large portion of your capacity ... and very quickly move to load shedding," Karekezi told a cogeneration (cogen) conference in Johannesburg.
He said countries in the region were paying up to 4 percent of gross domestic product for emergency power, but could increase supply by using cogeneration and other renewable projects in their energy mix.
"When you look at the sugar industry alone, you could meet up to 5 percent of the current total power (demand)... and these are relatively conservative figures," he said.
These would jump to 10 percent if forestry and other agricultural sectors invested in cogeneration plants, he said, and would be double that if use was made of surplus heat from the cement, steel and oil industries.
"If you could develop cogen alone, without looking at other renewables... you could deal with much of the power crises in the east African and Horn of Africa countries," he said. Karekezi said new feedstocks for cogeneration were emerging, such as tea.
Governments had been too fixed on using one power source alone, but were trying to diversify.
A success story in Africa is Mauritius, he said, which produces 56 percent of its power from cogeneration plants.
While it initially developed plants of between 1.5 and 5 MW, the latest facility had capacity of 82 MW.
Karekezi said a clear commitment by the government, substantial technical expertise and an adequate feed-in-tariff to provide incentives were key to boost that industry.
The country had also introduced a scheme to offer higher prices to more efficient plants to spur investment.
Karekezi's group, together with the United Nations Environment Programme and the African Development Bank, is steering a "Cogen for Africa" project to promote plants in Africa.
The project aims to stimulate 40 MW in cogeneration initiatives in the six years since 2007, provide advice for an additional 20 MW after that and help install a further capacity of 200 MW in the medium to long term.