Planning and prospects for renewable power: North Africa

This report is part of the IRENA series on Planning and prospects for renewable power: Africa, which focuses on renewable electricity generation in African power pools. It represents a key aspect of IRENA’s involvement in the search for energy transition pathways in the region, supporting the eventual development of a regional masterplan for power system expansion in North Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia), which currently does not exist in a format similar to other African power pools. Developing such a regional masterplan is highly significant in the context of the African Continental Transmission Masterplan.

This study shows the importance of regional coordination in long-term planning, by showcasing collective opportunities for North African countries to diversify their electricity generation mixes and reduce their reliance on fossil fuel resources by 2040. The region stands to benefit from falling renewable energy costs and its ample endowments of wind and solar energy, as well as from increased interconnections, more battery storage deployment and, potentially, even green hydrogen production. All of these can help the region decrease the cost of electricity generation by increasing the share of renewables in the electricity mix. Interconnections would also bring flexibility that will complement the more diverse power systems in North Africa with a higher share of renewable energy.

The report’s analysis was conducted using the IRENA MESSAGE-SPLAT modelling framework. The framework was recently endorsed by the five African Power Pools as an official planning tool for the upcoming Continental Power Systems Masterplan Development, an initiative of the African Union Development Agency, in which IRENA is a partner.