African onshore wind is at less than 1% of its potential

Africa has enough onshore wind potential to provide power to the entire continent many times over, but its current capacity remains at less than 1% of these projections, according to a report released by the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

According to the report, Africa boasts a potential annual capacity of 180,000 terawatt-hours (TWh), enough to satisfy the continent's current energy needs 250 times over.

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The IFC also found that at least 27 African nations have enough wind potential on their own to satisfy the entire continental electricity demand.

Algeria currently leads with an untapped total resource potential of 7,700 GW, equivalent to 11 times the current global installed wind capacity, the report claims.

Fifteen other countries have technical a wind potential of over 1,000 GW including Mauritania, Mali, Egypt, Namibia, South Africa, Ethiopia and Kenya.

The combined capacity of these 27 countries could reach as much as 700 TWh.

821 MW of new wind power plant was installed in Africa and the Middle East in 2020, bringing the total capacity in the region to over 7 GW.

This represents significantly less than 1% of Africa's total predicted capacity.

“This shows that Africa has world-class wind potential and that wind can play an important role in bringing clean, affordable electricity to millions on the continent,” said Linda Munyengeterwa, IFC’s infrastructure director for the Middle East and Africa.

“Going forward, IFC is committed to working with the public and private sector to help realize Africa’s remarkable, and largely untapped, wind potential," she added.

Wind and solar energy made up the majority of the world's new power generation in 2019 and its market share is only going to increase as the energy transition gains more momentum.

Tapping into Africa's huge onshore wind potential could help boost its transition into affordable and renewable energy and it stands to become a renewable energy superpower.

The report finds that one-third of all of Africa's wind potential comes from areas with very high winds, averaging greater than 8.5 metres-per-second.

17 of the countries analysed have particularly strong wind potential, with average productivity (as measured by their “capacity factors”) up to 46%, rivalling the most productive onshore wind sites in the world.  

Africa's varied geography could make generating wind in some areas less viable, but generation from other countries will be more than enough to compensate.

Sean Whittaker, a principal industry specialist at IFC said it surprising how wind as a resource is distributed.

He added: “By using high-resolution mesoscale wind models and assuming the use of tall, large rotor, modern turbines we see great potential in countries not previously considered to be ‘windy’ places, including Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Botswana, Cameroon and Mozambique.”

The current global wind capacity is estimated to be around 650 GW. It is exceptionally cheap to produce, to the point where analysts have predicted it could start paying back consumers.

Read more: Wind power could start paying money back to consumers

The report hints Africa could stand to produce at least 59,000 GW of onshore wind energy - 90 times the amount currently installed.

Ben Backwell, CEO of the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) said: "This demonstrates that the studies which have been published until now have significantly underestimated the opportunity that wind energy represents for Africa. There is a clear need now for governments to enact policies to take advantage of the vast resource that the report identifies and enable large scale investment in wind as a key building block for green economic recovery post-Covid–19."

Companies such as Vestas have pledged to build larger wind turbines, which could make harvesting wind energy even easier.

There is also the matter of converting the generated wind into green hydrogen through electrolysis, which could stand to power other industries outside of the utilities sector, such as mining or travel.

In November, a UK initiative was launched to generate renewable wind turbine blades. If successful, it could mean every aspect of wind generation is sustainable, wind turbines will be finally be fully recyclable.

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