Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Article
  • Published:

Coal and carbonization in sub-Saharan Africa

Nature Climate Change volume 10, pages 83–88 (2020)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Economic development in sub-Saharan Africa has increased carbon emissions and will continue to do so. However, changes in emissions in the past few decades and their underlying drivers are not well understood. Here we use a Kaya decomposition to show that rising carbon intensity has played an increasingly important role in emission growth in sub-Saharan Africa since 2005. These changes have mainly been driven by the increasing use of oil, especially in the transportation sector. Combining investment data in the power sector with economic and population projections, we find that investments in new coal-fired capacity may become a major driver of future carbonization. Our results highlight the importance of making low-carbon technologies available and financially attractive to sub-Saharan African countries to avoid a lock-in of emission-intensive energy use patterns.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Kaya decomposition of emission drivers.
Fig. 2: Effect of carbon intensity on total emission growth decomposed into effects of different energy carriers.
Fig. 3: Historical (1995–2015) and projected (2015–2025) short-term effects of changes in the carbon intensity on absolute emission growth.
Fig. 4: Kaya decomposition of projected carbon intensity in 2015–2025 in the SSA region under various socio-economic and climate policy assumptions.

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

The data used in this study are not publically available (except Shearer et al.22 and Wirth34). Data on emissions and energy are available from the IEA15, and data on power plants are available from Platts16, but fees and restrictions apply to the availability of both databases that we used under license for the current study. Data are available from the authors on reasonable request and with permission of the IEA and Platts, respectively. Data on SSP scenarios rely on peer reviewed publications and are available from the respective modelling teams23,24,25,26,27,28.

Code availability

All code and figures and their underlying data are available at https://github.com/jhilaire/ssawosacarb.git

References

  1. IPCC Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change (eds Edenhofer, O. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014).

  2. Steckel, J. C., Edenhofer, O. & Jakob, M. Drivers for the renaissance of coal. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 112, E3775–E3781 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Davis, S. J. & Socolow, R. H. Commitment accounting of CO2 emissions. Environ. Res. Lett. 9, 084018 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Edenhofer, O., Steckel, J. C., Jakob, M. & Bertram, C. Reports of coal’s terminal decline may be exaggerated. Environ. Res. Lett. 13, 024019 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Peters, G. P. et al. Key indicators to track current progress and future ambition of the Paris Agreement. Nat. Clim. Change 7, 118–122 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Jackson, R. B. et al. Warning signs for stabilizing global CO2 emissions. Environ. Res. Lett. 12, 110202 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Akinlo, A. E. Energy consumption and economic growth: evidence from 11 sub-Sahara African countries. Energy Econ. 30, 2391–2400 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Kebede, E., Kagochi, J. & Jolly, C. M. Energy consumption and economic development in sub-Sahara Africa. Energy Econ. 32, 532–537 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Wolde-Rufael, Y. Energy demand and economic growth: the African experience. J. Policy Model. 27, 891–903 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Wolde-Rufael, Y. Energy consumption and economic growth: the experience of African countries revisited. Energy Econ. 31, 217–224 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Lucas, P. L. et al. Future energy system challenges for Africa: insights from integrated assessment models. Energy Policy 86, 705–717 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Calvin, K., Pachauri, S., De Cian, E. & Mouratiadou, I. The effect of African growth on future global energy, emissions, and regional development. Climatic Change 136, 109–125 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. van der Zwaan, B., Kober, T., Longa, F. D., van der Laan, A. & Jan Kramer, G. An integrated assessment of pathways for low-carbon development in Africa. Energy Policy 117, 387–395 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Leimbach, M., Roming, N., Schultes, A. & Schwerhoff, G. Long-term development perspectives of sub-Saharan Africa under climate policies. Ecol. Econ. 144, 148–159 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. World Energy Balances (IEA, 2017).

  16. World Electric Power Plants Database (Platts, 2017).

  17. Riahi, K. et al. The shared socioeconomic pathways and their energy, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions implications: an overview. Glob. Environ. Change 42, 153–168 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Kaya, Y. in Response Strategies Working Group, Energy and Industry Subgroup (IPCC, 1989).

  19. Tilman, D. et al. Beneficial biofuels—the food, energy, and environment trilemma. Science 325, 270–271 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Cherubini, F., Peters, G. P., Berntsen, T., StrøMman, A. H. & Hertwich, E. CO2 emissions from biomass combustion for bioenergy: atmospheric decay and contribution to global warming. GCB Bioenergy 3, 413–426 (2011).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  21. Summary Statistics: Coal Plants by Country (MW) July 2019 (Global Coal Plant Tracker, 2019).

  22. Shearer, C., Mathew-Shaw, N., Myllyvirta, L., Yu, A. & Nace, T. Boom and Bust 2018: Tracking the Global Coal Plant Pipeline (2018); http://endcoal.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/BoomAndBust_2018_r4.pdf

  23. van Vuuren, D. P. et al. Energy, land-use and greenhouse gas emissions trajectories under a green growth paradigm. Glob. Environ. Change 42, 237–250 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Fricko, O. et al. The marker quantification of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 2: a middle-of-the-road scenario for the 21st century. Glob. Environ. Change 42, 251–267 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Fujimori, S. et al. SSP3: AIM implementation of shared socioeconomic pathways. Glob. Environ. Change 42, 268–283 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Calvin, K. et al. The SSP4: a world of deepening inequality. Glob. Environ. Change 42, 284–296 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Kriegler, E. et al. Fossil-fueled development (SSP5): an energy and resource intensive scenario for the 21st century. Glob. Environ. Change 42, 297–315 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Bauer, N. et al. Shared socio-economic pathways of the energy sector—quantifying the narratives. Glob. Environ. Change 42, 316–330 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Jakob, M. & Steckel, J. C. How climate change mitigation could harm development in poor countries. WIREs Clim. Change 5, 161–168 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. McCollum, D. L. et al. Connecting the sustainable development goals by their energy inter-linkages. Environ. Res. Lett. 13, 033006 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Sun, J. W. & Ang, B. W. Some properties of an exact energy decomposition model. Energy 25, 1177–1188 (2000).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  32. Ang, B. W. Decomposition analysis for policymaking in energy: which is the preferred method? Energy Policy 32, 1131–1139 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Steckel, J. C., Jakob, M., Marschinski, R. & Luderer, G. From carbonization to decarbonization? Past trends and future scenarios for China’s CO2 emissions. Energy Policy 39, 3443–3455 (2011).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  34. Wirth, H. Recent Facts about Photovoltaics in Germany (Fraunhofer ISE, 2018); https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/recent-facts-about-pv-in-germany.html

  35. IPCC 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (eds Eggleston, H. S. et al.) (Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, 2006).

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), funding code 011A1807A (DECADE). We also thank K. Calvin (PNNL), N. Bauer (PIK), D. van Vuuren and M. Hamsen (PBL), S. Fujimori (NIES) and O. Fricko (IIASA) for sharing IAM data with us. We thank L. Montrone and L. M. Puerto Chaves for excellent research assistance.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change, Berlin, Germany

    Jan Christoph Steckel, Jérôme Hilaire, Michael Jakob & Ottmar Edenhofer

  2. Potsdam Institute for Climate Change Impact Research, Leibniz Association, Potsdam, Germany

    Jan Christoph Steckel, Jérôme Hilaire & Ottmar Edenhofer

  3. Department Economics of Climate Change, Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Ottmar Edenhofer

Authors
  1. Jan Christoph Steckel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jérôme Hilaire
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Michael Jakob
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Ottmar Edenhofer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors conceived and planned the project. J.C.S., J.H. and M.J. analysed the data. J.H., J.C.S. and M.J. designed the simulations. J.H. and J.C.S. developed the code and ran the simulations. J.C.S, M.J. and J.H. wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jan Christoph Steckel.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Peer review information Nature Climate Change thanks Fadiel Ahjum, Heli Arminen, Paul Lucas and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–8, Tables 1–5 and detailed descriptions of data and methods.

Reporting Summary

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Steckel, J.C., Hilaire, J., Jakob, M. et al. Coal and carbonization in sub-Saharan Africa. Nat. Clim. Chang. 10, 83–88 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0649-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0649-8

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing Anthropocene

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Anthropocene newsletter — what matters in anthropocene research, free to your inbox weekly.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing: Anthropocene