India Is Now The World’s Third-Largest Electricity Producer
India now generates around 1,160.1 billion units of electricity in financial year 2017, up 4.72% from the previous year. The country is behind only China which produced 6,015 terrawatt hours (TWh. 1 TW = 1,000,000 megawatts) and the US (4,327 TWh), and is ahead of Russia, Japan, Germany, and Canada.
Total electricity production stood at 1,003.52 billion units in India between April 2017 and January 2018. “Multiple drivers (like industrial expansion and rising per capita income) are leading to growth in power demand; this is set to continue in the coming years,” said a report by the India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), an arm of the Indian government’s ministry of commerce.
The country’s installed power generating capacity of 334.4 gigawatt (GW, or 1,000 megawatts) as of January 2018 is the world’s fifth-largest. Over the last five years, India put up 99.21 GW of additional capacity. Of this, 91.73 GW came from thermal sources, 5.48 GW from hydro, and 2 GW from nuclear sources.
Back in 2016, India became the world’s third-largest power consumer, too. The country’s consumption is now set to go up to 1,894.7 TWh by 2022, the IBEF said.
India also intends to add around 100 GW of power capacity between 2017 and 2022, focusing more on hydro, renewable, and gas – based power, besides looking at the adoption of clean coal technology.
Electricity Generation In Africa
Energy in Africa is a scarcer commodity than in the developed world. More than 500 million people in Africa live without electricity.
Currently, Africa’s total installed power generation capacity is less than 250 gigawatts, that’s the whole of Africa generates less electricity than India.
Overall rates of access to energy in Africa have held constant since the 1980s, while the rest of the developing world has seen electrical grid distribution increase by 20%. Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where per-capita access rates are falling. According to recent trends, over 60% of Sub-Saharan Africans will still lack access to electricity by 2020.
Despite the unreliability, electrical service in Sub-Saharan Africa also costs more than in other parts of the world.
“Africa’s energy deficits reinforce poverty, especially for women and people in rural areas. Africa’s poorest people are paying among the world’s highest prices for energy. On current trends, the region will not achieve the 2030 goals – and in many countries numbers without access to energy are rising as a result of demographic pressures”. – World Economic Forum
This energy deficit has effectively stunted Africa’s development, with an estimated 70 percent of people in sub-Saharan Africa without reliable access to electricity. In Nigeria for example, Currently 95 million Nigerians (55%) do not have access to electricity and those that are connected suffer from extensive power outages. Although Nigeria has 12.5 GW of installed generation capacity, only 3500-5000 MW is typically available. The annual consumption of electricity per capita is among the lowest in Africa, estimated at less than 150 kWh.
This lack of a reliable and affordable supply of electricity impacts every facet of life in Africa. Businesses routinely cite the cost of electricity as the principal drain on profitability and competitiveness. Schools and clinics often go without electricity or rely on costly diesel generators, sicknesses are on the rise etc.
And the very sad thing about all this is – India like most African country was part of the developing world in the 1950s, 1960s, and part of the 1970s, it is now an industrialized economy and the third largest electricity producer. while the whole of Africa is still stuck.
