Payne Institute Earth Observation Group Research Associate Tamara Sparks detected the explosion of the Trinity Spirit, a floating oil production, storage, and offloading vessel, which exploded and caught fire off the coast of Nigeria early on Feb 2, 2022. February 4, 2022.
Payne Institute Research Associate Baba Freeman writes about how the directional impact of oil revenues on the performance of governments in sub–Saharan African countries. As a proxy for governance/government performance, this study uses scores from publicly available third-party studies for the following measures, Doing Business, Elite Factionalization, State Legitimacy, Public Services, Inequality, Civil Liberties, Political Rights and Group Grievance. January 31, 2022.
Jacob Kincer, Payne Institute Fellow Todd Moss, and Mark Thurber write about how as the US and much of Europe pursue aggressive plans to decarbonize, in part by replacing coal-fired power stations with cleaner sources, the global focus has shifted to coal in emerging economies, like Africa. Several studies have projected a boom in new coal power generation in Africa, more than 30 GW (GW) of new capacity operational by 2030. Such a scenario has been used to justify proposed prohibitions on all new fossil fuel projects, including gas for cooking, power, fertilizer, or industry. We examined two of the most influential studies projecting steep increases in African coal and we independently collected and analyzed government and media reports on each of the 22 potential projects listed in a widely-used public database. December 13, 2021.
Payne Institute Fellow Jamal Saghir, Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez, and Nitin Jain write about how Africa is particularly vulnerable to these extreme impacts of climate change. It is crucial that African climate adaptation finances increase substantially and investments in infrastructure are sustainable and resilient. This requires a fundamental systemic transformation. December 7, 2021.
Payne Institute Fellow Benjamin Attia and Director Morgan Bazilian write about how globally, the top 10% of countries consume 20 times more energy than the bottom 10%. And 1.1 billion sub-Saharan Africans share the same amount of power generation capacity as Germany’s 83 million people. At least half have no access to electricity at all. These stark energy inequalities are fueling thorny debates around financing Africa’s energy future as world leaders and their negotiators prepare for COP26. October 14, 2021.
Payne Institute Program Manager Jordy Lee, Faculty Fellow Rennie B. Kaunda, Thomson Sinkala, Payne Scholar Caleb F. Workman, Director Morgan D. Bazilian, and Deputy Director Greg Clough write about how mining and mineral processing continues to be a source of lasting environmental problems in many developing economies. Phytoremediation has proven to be a viable strategy to remediate contaminated lands and limit environmental damage, but it has not been widely implemented partially due to social and economic challenges. This paper provides a conceptual approach for phytoremediation-based mineral recovery and explores the social and economic challenges related to large-scale deployment. October 6, 2021.
Payne Institute Deputy Director Greg Clough is part of the team of Colorado School of Mines researchers working on the IMPACT project that is transforming natural resource management to empower the artisanal gold mining communities in Nairobi. IMPACT is exploring ways to disrupt the illicit gold supply chain networks. September 13, 2021.
A. Bender, M. Moner-Girona, W. Becker, K. Bódis, S. Szabóc, Payne Institute Fellow A. George Kararach, and L.D. Anadona write about how datasets from the construction of a composite indicator, the Photovoltaic Decentralised Energy Investment (PV-DEI) index, presented in detail. This article consists of a comprehensive energy-related data collected in practice from several sources, and from the outputs of the methodology described in [1]. The PV-DEI was designed and developed to measure the multidimensional factors that currently direct decentralised renewable energy investments. July 14, 2021.
Payne Institute Fellow A. George Kararach, M. Moner-Girona, A. Bender, W. Becker, K. Bódis, S. Szabó, and D.Anadon write about how there are over 650 million people in Africa who have no access to electricity; this is in sharp contrast to the continent’s vast untapped renewable energy potential and due largely to the historical lack of investments in energy infrastructure. They present a comprehensive and consistent analysis of the attractiveness for decentralised photovoltaic technologies at an unprecedented level of detail using both high-resolution spatial data and national reports. We develop and build a new composite indicator that considers the interplay between social, political, environmental and financial factors at a granular regional level for Sub-Saharan Africa and embeds within it the importance of the local production costs at high-spatial resolution. June 15, 2021.
John Ayaburi, Shashwat Sharma, and Payne Institute Director Morgan Bazilian write about how natural gas discoveries in emerging economies have changed the global gas map dramatically over the last 15 years. Understanding these policy dynamics is not only critical to effective resource utilization but also critical as the world commits to ending energy poverty. June 7, 2021.