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At the Summit for a New Global Financial Deal in Paris, France, the President of the Republic of Senegal, Macky Sall, announced an agreement with the G7 to invest in natural gas. The agreement makes gas a transitional energy source in the move toward renewable energies.
At the Summit for a New Global Financial Deal in Paris, France, the President of the Republic of Senegal, Macky Sall, announced an agreement with the G7 to invest in natural gas. The agreement makes gas a transitional energy source in the move toward renewable energies.
The announcement was made recently by Macky Sall at a round table dedicated to private investment and sustainable infrastructure in developing countries. The reason why the President of Senegal is so confident is that the Group of Twenty-Seven most industrialized countries (G7) has just validated his strategy of reinvesting in natural gas as a transition energy towards renewable energies. Over the next few years, Senegal anticipates to produce 40% of its electricity from natural gas.
The question of using gas as a transitional energy is being debated throughout Africa.. Beyond the African continent, some European countries, notably Germany, have bet on this source of energy for their energy transition. But Berlin was finally caught up in the Russia-Ukraine war, which prompted the European Union (EU) to adopt sanctions against Russia. In response, Moscow closed the natural gas taps, driving Europeans to other markets, notably in Africa and the Middle East.
From Nigeria to Algeria, via Egypt and Tunisia, European diplomacy has been very active in recent months, prompting some African leaders to take a stance in favour of integrating gas into the continent’s energy transition or electrification strategies. Technically, a gas-fired power station is an ordinary thermal power station whose fuel is gas. Burning gas emits less CO2 into the atmosphere than a power station running on coal or heavy fuel oil.
The experts favor the development of combined-cycle gas power plants, i.e., plants operating with two types of turbines. A combustion turbine and a steam turbine are connected to an alternator. Using the same amount of fuel as an ordinary gas-fired power station, a combined-cycle plant produces a greater quantity of electricity. According to Électricité de France (EDF), the use of natural gas in this type of power station reduces CO2 emissions by half compared with a coal-fired plant of the same capacity.
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In Africa, economies are paralyzed by load shedding (80% of businesses are affected, according to the IAEA), and several countries are turning to natural gas. This is the case in Togo, which has just commissioned its 65 MW Kékéli Efficient Power plant in Lomé. Ivory Coast is also banking on gas and is currently building the 390 MW Atinkou combined-cycle gas power plant. Neighboring Senegal inaugurated a similar facility a few months ago. It is the Malicounda thermal power station (120 MW) located an hour’s drive from Dakar. It will be converted to natural gas when the country of Teranga begins exploiting its local deposits. The hope of decarbonization also rests on hydrogen, which is not expected to be produced on a large scale before 2030.
