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[publication]  Regulating a Pluralistic and Decarbonized Electricity Supply through Public Service Principles of Equity and Solidarity

Chaplain, A., Verdeil, E., 2025, « Regulating a Pluralistic and Decarbonized Electricity Supply through Public Service Principles of Equity and Solidarity », Arab Reform Initiative Policy Brief – Environmental Politics Series, En ligne : https://www.arab-reform.net/publication/regulating-a-pluralistic-and-decarbonized-electricity-supply-through-public-service-principles-of-equity-and-solidarity/.

Résumé:

The impressive solar boom that took place in Lebanon in recent years didn’t ensure social justice and it rather increased inequalities of access to electricity. The aim of this policy brief is to reflect on the development of a structurally pluralistic and decarbonized electricity supply, where public infrastructure is the main tool for mutualization and equity. To be effective, it requires the definition and implementation of public service principles. The great heterogeneity in electricity supply — combining the grid, generators, and renewable energies — requires a rethink in public service. It can no longer be based on the principles of a uniform service and equal user treatment that characterize conventional grid-based services. Instead, it should be based on universal and equitable access to a diversified and increasingly decarbonized service. In supplying a public service, solidarity between users is key. Solidarity is socio-technical, involving pooling, sharing, and regulating between a wide range of systems that optimize national supply from an economic, technical, and environmental perspective. But solidarity above all is socio-political, with public services theoretically embodying equity and socio-spatial integration among citizen-users, thereby giving substance to fundamental rights inherent to national solidarity and citizenship in Lebanon. Our proposal is therefore to rethink these principles of public service considering the electrical transformations currently underway in Lebanon. This work is based on the doctoral thesis defended by Alix Chaplain in 2023 and comparative research carried out as part of the Hybridelec project coordinated by Eric Verdeil and Sylvy Jaglin, updated with recent data.

[thèse] Alix Chaplain, Désintégration sociotechnique et territoriale au Liban. Le cas de l’électricité

Alix Chaplain soutiendra sa thèse de doctorat en études urbaines, Désintégration sociotechnique et territoriale au Liban. Le cas de l’électricité, préparée sous la direction d’Éric Verdeil, le 14 décembre 2023. Cette thèse a bénéficié du financement de l’Agence nationale de la recherche dans le cadre du projet Hybridelec.

Jury : Marco Cremaschi, Sciences Po; Mona Harb, Université américaine de Beyrouth (rapportrice) ; Sylvy Jaglin, Université Gustave Eiffel ; Francesca Pilo’, Université d’Utrecht ; Sébastien Velut, Université Paris 3-Sorbonne Nouvelle (rapporteur).

Résumé (english below)

Depuis plus de trente ans, le quotidien des Libanais est rythmé par des coupures d’électricité, qui faute des réformes et investissements nécessaires dans les infrastructures publiques, ne cessent de s’aggraver. Jusqu’en 2021, l’opérateur national Électricité du Liban (EDL), impose un rationnement allant de 3 à 12 heures par jour selon les localités, et atteignant depuis des pics de 22 heures. Le réseau public est pourtant présent sur plus de 99% du territoire national, mais EDL ne s’est jamais totalement relevé de la guerre civile, et sa capacité de production d’électricité est bien inférieure à la demande. Loin d’être passifs face à cette situation, les Libanais mobilisent des dispositifs diversifiés d’approvisionnement pour sécuriser leur fourniture d’électricité en complément du réseau public intermittent. Dès la fin de la guerre civile, l’usage individuel et solidaire du générateur diesel se développe, pour ensuite devenir l’objet d’un commerce lucratif, des opérateurs privés de mini-réseaux fournissant des abonnements mensuels d’électricité. En parallèle, depuis une dizaine d’années, les consommateurs investissent dans des dispositifs photovoltaïques en complément du générateur. Dans ce contexte, le réseau conventionnel n’est plus le mode dominant de fourniture : usagers et fournisseurs développent des modèles diversifiés, et de plus en plus complexes, pour pallier les coupures d’EDL et optimiser leur accès à l’électricité.

Le point de départ de cette recherche est donc celui d’une hétérogénéisation structurelle des pratiques, des acteurs, et des dispositifs d’accès à l’électricité au Liban. Or, non seulement cette diversité coexiste avec le réseau, mais elle transforme son système sociotechnique. Ce processus est caractérisé dans ce travail par le concept d’« hybridation », qualifiant les interactions et les interdépendances croissantes entre une diversité de dispositifs sociotechniques et le réseau conventionnel. En croisant la littérature des Science and Technology Studies (STS), de l’écologie politique urbaine, et un corpus de travaux sur la politisation des infrastructures au Liban, la thèse démontre que les hybridations électriques sont façonnées par deux principales variables. D’un côté, en articulant différents dispositifs sociotechniques (générateurs, batteries, panneaux solaires), et en modulant leur relation avec le réseau conventionnel, les usagers régulent les interdépendances entre ces systèmes diversifiés. De l’autre, différents acteurs ayant leurs propres objectifs et rationalités instrumentalisent les dispositifs électriques à des fins politiques, selon des modalités et échelles différenciées.

Ces arrangements sociotechniques et politico-territoriaux contribuent à différencier les conditions d’accès à l’électricité, et à aggraver les inégalités entre des usagers multi-connectés, car disposant de ressources politiques, économiques, sociales, territoriales, etc., et les autres consommateurs, dépourvus de solutions alternatives au réseau défaillant. Avec un phénomène de dislocation, de fragmentation, et d’atomisation, non régulé des pratiques électriques, dans leur forme actuelle les hybridations mettent en tension les interdépendances et solidarités associées au réseau. Ainsi, à travers le cas du Liban, cette recherche pose une question à l’intersection entre le défi de décarboner les mix électriques et celui de garantir un accès équitable à l’électricité : quelle « transition énergétique » dans un contexte de crise chronique d’électricité ?

Sociotechnical and territorial disintegration in Lebanon. The case of electricity.

PhD supervised by Eric Verdeil, Professeur des universités, IEP de Paris

Abstract

For the past thirty years, the daily lives of the Lebanese people have been punctuated by power cuts, which are continually getting worse in the absence of the necessary reforms and investments in public infrastructure. Until 2021, the national operator, Électricité du Liban (EDL), resorted to rationing from 3 to 12 hours a day depending on the area, reaching peaks of 22 hours. Although the public grid covers more than 99 % of the national territory, EDL has never fully recovered from the civil war, and its electricity production capacity is well below demand. Far from being passive, the Lebanese are mobilising diversified systems to secure their electricity supply to supplement the intermittent public grid. Since the end of the civil war, individual use of diesel generators has been growing, and has become a lucrative business. Private operators of mini-grids provide monthly electricity subscriptions. At the same time, over the last ten years or so, consumers have been investing in photovoltaic systems to supplement their generators. In this context, the conventional grid is no longer the dominant mode of supply: users and suppliers are developing diversified and increasingly complex models to compensate for EDL power cuts and optimise their access to electricity.

The starting point of this research is the structural heterogeneity of practices, actors, and systems for access to electricity in Lebanon. This diversity not only coexists with the grid, but also transforms its socio-technical system. This process is characterised in this research by the concept of ‘hybridisation’, which describes the growing interactions and interdependencies between a diversity of socio-technical devices and the conventional grid. Combining the literature of Science and Technology Studies (STS), urban political ecology, and a body of work on the politicisation of infrastructures in Lebanon, the dissertation demonstrates that electrical hybridisations are shaped by two main variables. On the one hand, by articulating different socio-technical devices (generators, batteries, solar panels), and by modulating their relationship with the conventional grid, users regulate the interdependencies between these diverse systems. On the other hand, various actors with their own objectives and rationales instrumentalise electrical devices for political purposes, in different ways and on different scales. These socio-technical and politico-territorial arrangements contribute to the differentiation of access conditions to electricity and exacerbate inequalities between multi-connected, users who have political, economic, social, and territorial resources, and other consumers, who have no alternative solutions to the failing grid. With the unregulated dislocation, fragmentation and atomisation of electrical practices, hybridisation in its current form is placing a strain on the interdependence and solidarity associated with the national grid. Through the case of Lebanon, this research raises a question at the intersection between the challenge of decarbonising electricity mixes and that of guaranteeing equitable access to electricity: which “energy transition” is possible in a context of chronic electricity crisis?

[new publication] Solar Rooftop Systems and the Urban Transition: Shall the Twain Ever Meet? Interrogations from Rewari, India

We are happy to announce the publication of this article, part of the theme issue “Electrical Hybridizations in Cities of the South: From Heterogeneity to New Conceptualizations of Energy Transition”:

M. Zérah, S. Das, Solar Rooftop Systems and the Urban Transition: Shall the Twain Ever Meet? Interrogations from Rewari, India, Journal of Urban Technology. 30 (2023) 103–125. https://doi.org/10.1080/10630732.2023.2172305.

Abstract:

India is facing two major transitions. In 2040, its energy demand will double while 800 million Indians will live in cities by 2050. Situated at this intersection, this article contributes to the field of urban energy research by looking at Solar Rooftop Systems (SRS) in a district located in the extended periphery of Delhi. Using a multi-pronged qualitative methodology in a corridor made of villages and small towns, we argue that public policies are framed applying a rigid territorial grid opposing urban and rural, ignoring the motivations of both residential and professional users, which are not bounded by the rural/urban binary. This disjunction explains that renewable energy does not lead to a new imagination of urban and energy systems. These two fields remain disconnected while solar energy fuels consumption and the city expansion in its peripheries. Finally, the observed variegated urban energy landscapes (UEL) embody a land and energy intensive form of urban growth.

[new publication] Electrical Hybridizations in Cities of the South: From Heterogeneity to New Conceptualizations of Energy Transition

We are happy to announce the publication of the introduction to the theme issue in the Journal of Urban Technology, under the above mentioned title.

The full quote is: É. Verdeil, S. Jaglin, Electrical Hybridizations in Cities of the South: From Heterogeneity to New Conceptualizations of Energy Transition, Journal of Urban Technology. 30 (2023) 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/10630732.2023.2172301.

Abstract:
This issue addresses the hybridization of urban electricity configurations in cities of the Global South. The hybridization process is shaped by the interplay of two infrastructural trends that transform cities, the patchy and limited extension of the conventional grid and the widespread socio-technical heterogeneity that recent research has highlighted. The case studies presented in the issue vary according to two main criteria. First, they straddle a wide variety of urban settlements, from city-center and relatively wealthy districts to poor areas and urbanizing peripheries. They also take into consideration various stages in the development of the grid and their uneven levels of service, between dynamic deployment pushed by state techno-politics and situations of regress or even collapse, forcing users to adapt. Two cross-cutting results emerge. First, the widespread and ever extending heterogeneity does not eliminate the grid but transforms it through various material and institutional interfaces and intermediations aiming at securing energy supply and operations. Second, the process makes way for an increased presence of private actors. These trends leave a twofold question unanswered. How and with which policies and tools to govern the hybridized energy configurations in order to promote energy justice and to enable clean energy transitions?

[English translation of] Negotiations, mobilisations and everyday reproduction of electricity infrastructures in Ibadan (Nigeria)

We are happy to announce the publication of the English translation of Mélanie Rateau’s article “Negotiations, mobilisations and everyday reproduction of electricity infrastructures in Ibadan (Nigeria)” in Flux, 2023. Online at https://www.cairn-int.info/journal-flux-2022-3-page-44.htm

Abstract

This paper explores the everyday and negotiated reproduction of electricity infrastructures in Ibadan (Nigeria) in the midst of a deep crisis in the electricity sector. The study focuses not on the activities of the institutions and workers officially in charge of the service, but on the relations and interactions between urban residents and the electricity company, and on the ordinary practices of access to electricity in order to examine how and by whom the infrastructures are maintained in a relatively functional state. The community mobilisations, negotiations and compromises around official norms and the securing practices observed turn out to be ambivalent: they help keep local infrastructures in operation on a day-to-day basis, but threaten the overall economic and technical balance of the sector. Finally, the study demonstrates the importance of paying attention to both the mobilisation and negotiation within the grid and the securing practices, whether on- or off-grid, because of their functional interdependence.

[new publication] Urban Electric Hybridization: Exploring the Politics of a Just Transition in the Western Cape (South Africa)

We are happy to announce the release of Sylvy Jaglin’s article “Urban Electric Hybridization: Exploring the Politics of a Just Transition in the Western Cape (South Africa)” in The Journal of Urban Technology (ahead of press), 2023. Online at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10630732.2022.2111176

Abstract:

Focusing on the adoption of rooftop solar photovoltaics (PV) by high-income households and businesses in the Western Cape, South Africa, the article analyzes its effects on the hybridization of urban electricity systems and the ability of municipalities to drive a just transition in cities where inequality remains very high. By reducing municipal electricity sales, decentralized solar technologies threaten the surpluses generated from charges paid by grid customers, which are essential to subsidize electricity services for the poor and support other municipal services. Based on fieldwork in four Western Cape cities, the paper shows that municipalities are implementing a variety of local arrangements (regulatory, tariff, and technical) to control distributed electricity generation and are seeking, with mixed success, to avoid a post-carbon transition model that undermines grid benefits by creating a new energy divide.

[new publication] Governing Hybridized Electricity Systems: The Case of Decentralized Electricity in Lebanon

Chaplain A. et Verdeil É., 2022, Governing Hybridized Electricity Systems: The Case of Decentralized Electricity in Lebanon, Journal of Urban Technology, ahead of print, https://doi.org/10.1080/10630732.2022.2105587

Policymakers see decentralized electricity supply as a way to both decarbonize energy systems and to fill the gap of electricity access in many countries where strong growth leave the grid lagging behind. This article sheds some light on the case of countries such as Lebanon, where diesel-fueled decentralized electricity systems have existed for years and increasingly coexist with, rather than being replaced by, solar powered systems. It is based on a synthesis of public quantitative data and qualitative information gathered through surveys. The article argues that understanding such dynamics involves an analysis, not only of the technological and socioeconomic determinants of the adoption of decentralized energy technologies but also of the political struggles between the various actors, with a particular focus on corporate actors, and wealthy users. In addition, the article shows how different political temporalities play in reproducing or opening the assemblage of technologies and interests that shape the hybridized energy landscape. The article also shows that hybridization has repercussions on the energy configuration as a whole, both in the evolving market share of each technology but also by deeply fragmenting the access to electricity along social and territorial lines and by pushing essential private actors to disconnect from the grid. As a conclusion, the promises of sustainable transitions need to be critically examined in light of these trends.

[new publication] Mini-Grids at the Interface: The Deployment of Mini-Grids in Urbanizing Localities of the Global South

Mini-grid observed in Senegal (Keur Madiaye Fatim)
Source: Authors

We are happy to announce the latest article from our Hybridelec research: Guillou, Emmanuelle, and Bérénice Girard. 2022. « Mini-Grids at the Interface: The Deployment of Mini-Grids in Urbanizing Localities of the Global South ». Journal of Urban Technology 0 (0): 1‑20. (Online first)

https://doi.org/10.1080/10630732.2022.2087170.

Abstract

Based on fieldwork conducted in Senegal, Tanzania, and India, this article argues for a territorialized approach to mini-grids. One of the most sought-after solutions to electrification and transition to renewable energies in the Global South, mini-grids can be defined as decentralized collective systems of electricity supply. Whereas the academic and grey literature has mostly focused on their presence in rural areas, this paper looks at their development in urbanizing localities. It documents access to electrical service in these spaces and shows that, behind the rather uniform vision associated with the mini-grid object, the service provided takes different forms depending on the environment in which it is deployed. The presence of mini-grids also raises issues of social and territorial equity of access to essential services. A territorialized approach to mini-grids, therefore, furthers our understanding of the complex energy changes at work in cities of the Global South.

[New Publication] Urban transition and domestic electrification in East Africa

We are happy to announce Rémi de Bercegol’s publication of

Urban transition and domestic electrification in East Africa: The diversification of energy in the peripheries of Dar Es Salaam

in Territoires en Mouvement, https://journals.openedition.org/tem/8479

This is a translation of the already published article in the same journal : Transition urbaine et électrification domestique en Afrique de l’Est: La diversification énergétique des périphéries de Dar Es Salaam

Abstract:

In the remote districts of the Dar Es Salaam periphery, low density and urban sprawl do not facilitate connection to basic urban infrastructures. Through the analysis of the district of Ilala, this article focuses on the modalities and effects of electrification of these areas located at the end of the network. Strongly supported by the inhabitants, TANESCO’s access to electricity is finally made possible, thanks to the subsidized extension of its networks, thus quickly relegating the few off-grid backup electrical systems (generators, solar systems). But counter-intuitively, the arrival of electricity does not mean that other pre-existing energy sources (such as kerosene and coal) disappear. In these intermediate areas between the city and the countryside, there is rather an ‘energy diversification’, resulting from the widening of the available offers: users quickly adopt electricity to access new services more easily (television, refrigerator, light bulb) while continuing to prefer non-electric energy for other domestic uses (cooking and ironing with coal, for example; or occasional lighting and rapid cooking with kerosene). Less expensive, easily available, requiring minimal equipment, these so-called traditional energies will continue to be used alongside new exclusively electrical uses. This diversification is neglected in the country’s energy strategy, which focuses on electricity despite the financial difficulties in implementing it. Documented in the literature, the explanatory factors of household fuel choices are usually centered on user practices, but more rarely placed in a broader perspective of understanding energy governance. By revealing the structural factors of energy diversification in intermediate spaces undergoing electrification, this article contributes to the reflections on the particularities of the energy transition in order to better understand the particularities of African urbanization.

Alix Chaplain and Eric Verdeil contributed to the seminar Models for Tackling Lebanon’s Electricity Crisis

The Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy at the American University of Beirut hosted a seminar about Models for Tackling Lebanon’s Electricity Crisis, in partnership with the SOAS-Anti Corruption-Evidence initiative. The seminar featered two researchers from AUB working on a project about the recent reform of electricty management in the city of Zahle, which allowed a 24/7 electricity supply through a private company. In addition, Dr Hassan Harajli from UNDP CEDRO and Alix Chaplain, PhD candidate at Sciences Po-CERI and a researcher in the Hybridelec project. Their presented were discussed by Eric Verdeil (Sciences Po CERI and Hybridelec project leader), Jamil Mouawad (AUB) and Pallavi Roy (SOAS University).

Read the Briefing paper: Ahmad, Ali, et al. « Models for tackiling Lebanon’s electricity crisis ». The Policy Practice/Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, 2021, p. 1‑12.

To know more, read the working paper on Zahle’s model and Alix’ work:

Ali Ahmad, Neil McCulloch, Muzna Al-Masri, Marc Ayoub, From dysfunctional to functional corruption: The politics of reform in Lebanon’s electricity sector, Working Paper Anti-Corruption Evidence. Making Anti-Corruption Real. (2020) 1–55.

Chaplain, Alix. « L’émergence de mini-réseaux hybrides d’électricité au Liban : vers une différenciation territoriale des dispositifs de fourniture énergétique ». Billet. Les carnets de l’Ifpo (blog). En ligne: https://ifpo.hypotheses.org/10952.

[New article] Electrifying urban Africa: energy access, city-making and globalisation in Nigeria and Benin

Rateau, M., Choplin, A., 2021. Electrifying urban Africa: energy access, city-making and globalisation in Nigeria and Benin. International Development Planning Review. ahead of press

Abstract

Electricity access has become a crucial issue in global South cities. While demand is growing, conventional grids are failing or insufficient, especially in Africa. Urban dwellers therefore have to develop a wide range of (in)formal infrastructures to meet their daily electricity needs. Building on recent studies on urban electricity in the global South, this paper aims to contribute to the debates on hybrid forms of electricity provision by analysing the diffusion of solar panels and generators in two cities, Ibadan in Nigeria and Cotonou in Benin. Although neighbouring and relatively similar, these two cities illustrate distinct daily electrical lives. In Nigeria, an electricity-exporting country, people face daily power outages. In Benin, a country that depends on Nigeria for its supply, there is electricity but it is difficult to connect to the grid because of connection costs. Based on an empirical study, the article shows that Ibadan’s inhabitants use generators as a complement to a conventional grid that is almost universal but unreliable. In Cotonou, solar energy is an alternative until they can connect to the grid. Generators and solar panels have become the material markers of urban Africa, providing information on inequalities in access to electricity.

RGS-IBG panel: Hybrid electrical configurations: from heterogeneity to new conceptualization of energy transition in Southern countries?

We are glad to invite you on Wednesday 28 August 2019, to attend the RGS-IBG Conference panel in London (Skempton Building, Room 163, Imperial College) where the first results of our research will be presented and discussed with other researchers.

Here is the panel’s programme:

Session 1 (09:00 – 10:40 ) Chair : Francesca Pilo’

What happens when grid supply improves? Insights on the evolutions of hybrid electrical configurations in the city of Bhagalpur (Bihar, India)

Berenice Girard (LATTS, Université Paris Est Marne la Vallée, France)
This paper will focus on Bhagalpur, the third largest city in the State of Bihar (India). Though for many years, grid supply was very erratic in the region, it improved in the last few years and most residents connected to the grid in Bhagalpur now get around 18 to 22 hours of electricity a day. Based on extensive fieldwork and interviews with local entrepreneurs who invested in alternative energy systems, such as mini-grid operators and solar panel retailers, this paper will try to decipher how the hybridization of energy systems in Bhagalpur has evolved with the improvement of grid supply. 

Looking at different technologies (batteries, diesel mini-grids, solar) and different markets (households, shops and market areas, public sector), we are able to identify different dynamics. Amongst collective solutions such as diesel mini-grids, while some disappear, others either remain beyond the reach of the grid or are able to adapt by becoming complementary to it. As regards individual systems, while the market for batteries is thriving, the market for solar home systems is slowing down. New perspectives are however emerging for big solar retailers, as government agencies, small entrepreneurs and very well-off urban dwellers are investing in large solar rooftops for different reasons ranging from decreasing the pressure on the grid to being more eco-responsible to reducing one’s electricity bill. Amongst other factors, which favour hybridization, we can underline a general distrust in the conventional network, the resilience of past practices and the social embeddedness of certain systems. Hybrid configurations thus appear as dynamic arrangements, continuously shaped by evolving local, regional and national socio-technical and political contexts.

Lebanon – the emergence of a complex landscape of hybrid electric connexions

Alix Chaplain (Sciences Po CERI, CNRS, France)
Eric Verdeil (Sciences Po, France)
Lebanon, a middle income country, has a devastating record for the performance of the electric grid, as a result from civil war damage but also paralysis of reconstruction plans for more than 25 years. Outages currently amount to more than 8 hours daily in most part of the country. This long lasting situation has given rise to the advent and gradual solidification of a landscape of alternative electric solutions. Mainly based on diesel generators, it also makes room, more recently, for more diversified technologies, conjugating renewable energies such as PV panels, batteries, connected to the grid and to the generators, at various operational scales (individual house, building, plants but also pilot solar villages). The notion of ‘hybrid solutions’ is currently employed by many of these actors, though not always with the same meaning.

While several works have already examined generators in residential contexts (Gabillet 2010; Abi Ghanem 2017; Verdeil 2016), this emerging hybrid landscape has not been documented yet. This paper intends to present the first findings, based on a several months of fieldwork in Lebanon. After summarizing Lebanon’s electricity sector political economy, it explains the recent policy initiatives that have helped to shape the more diverse landscape that is emerging, by focusing on the institutional work done by the Lebanese Center for Energy Conservation. Then it provides a first mapping of the hybrid projects already identified. Then, focusing on two cases with a political economy lens, we will raise questions about the legal and regulatory pending issues. In contrast to many accounts of heterogeneous infrastructure as precarious and always shifting, our contribution highlights infrastructural changes which have a potential of shaping alternative paths for the electric sector on the long run.

Following the panels: A bottom up lens to see urban changes in the peripheries of Delhi

Marie-Hélène Zerah (IRD/Université Paris Diderot, CESSMA (UMR 245), France)
This presentation is based on preliminary field investigations into the deployment of renewable energies, in particular solar energy, in the Southern part of Haryana. This ongoing research focuses on two aspects. The first one traces the genealogy of public policies that promote renewable energy in the State. The second one is based on a “follow solar panels” method that has been used in order to capture the diversity of users across spaces that have hybridized their sources of energy.

The presentation’s objective is three-fold. The first one is to advance a typology of rationales for adopting off-grid or grid-connected solar (ranging from ensuring better access, harnessing existing subsidies, peer behavior, rebound effect). The second one is to give attention to the manner in which the market is constructed. More specifically, it underlines the important role of small locally-based entrepreneurs that are at the forefront of promoting solar energy in the rural – urban frontier. Finally, the third objective is to open up a reflection on the manner in which variety of practices on the ground by users and market players tell us about the nature of the co-evolution of urban space transformation and energy transition in peripheries of large cities.

Distributed renewables and hybrid electrical configurations in South Africa: a bottom-up approach to energy transition processes

Sylvy Jaglin (Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, France)
Since the electrical crisis in 2008 and its aftermath, and the wreckage of Eskom, a public monopoly company whose unbundling was announced by President Ramaphosa in February 2019, the South African energy landscape is changing. Three game changers are essential at the national level: the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Program (REI4P) and a ‘regulatory decompression’ parallel to a ‘PV revolution’ that favors small independent producers.

At the local level, municipalities are struggling to adapt in order to preserve the foundations of their redistributive business model and to regulate processes of change that lead, de facto, to a growing heterogeneity of local electrical systems. Field surveys in the Western Cape Province show both the internal diversity of the emerging socio-technical configurations of electricity supply and the variety of situations from one city to another. Examining the hypothesis of a long-term hybridization, the communication suggests that, in this context, it is necessary to consider the energy transition first as a re-arrangement issue of this diversity rather than as an independent end. This, however, raises key questions in terms of the reorganization of the electricity landscape, of a re-invention of municipal electrical services as a common good and, more generally, of the governance of energy transition processes that are both rooted in local territories and aligned with national objectives.

On citizenship, off-grid: state agents of the post-network city

Jon Phillips (University of Cambridge, UK)

This presentation will explore the relationship between infrastructural change and state-society relations through analysis of hybrid electrical configurations in South African cities. For many African governments, universal electrification now means a combination of grid and off-grid technologies. While urban geographers have noted the significance of ‘networked citizenship’ – including solidarity through use collective use and subscription to collective services – the significance of off-grid technologies for relationships between state and citizen have received less critical attention. Yet, how citizenship is mediated through hybrid electrical configurations has profound implications for the effectiveness and equity of post-network cities. Taking a socially and spatially differentiated perspective, the paper explores what the diffusion of off-grid solar photovoltaics might mean for the infrastructural citizenship of high- and low-income residents in South African cities. It places municipal policy-makers at the centre of analysis, engaging the state as the state engages with the post-network city. Comparative analysis of Johannesburg and Cape Town reveals how municipal actors evoke different notions of citizenship in planning for technological and spatial change – including rights, responsibilities, freedom, entitlement, dependency, participation, empowerment, struggle and sacrifice. It is the interplay of these ideas with the interests of municipal governments that shape how and why the cities are planning for the post-network city in different ways. I argue that analysing how infrastructure can be constitutive of citizenship means recognising that the state is neither absent and impotent nor all-powerful and predatory, but a conflicted and contested set of agents and relations. The paper concludes by reflecting on the explanatory power of different analytical frameworks as they grapple with the relationship between decentralisation and democratisation of urban energy infrastructures.

Session 2 (11:10 – 12:50) – Chair : Marie-Hélène Zérah

Socio-electric lives in Gulu Town, Uganda

Paul Munro (University of New South Wales, Australia)
In this presentation, I build on recent political ecology scholarship relating to heterogeneous infrastructure configurations to examine the dynamic geographies of urban electricity access in the Global South. As a case study, I focus on hybrid electrical configurations in Gulu Town, northern Uganda. I tell the socio-electric stories of five Gulu Town residents, showing how electricity supply is derived from an eclectic range of sources that include the grid, photovoltaic modules, dry-cell batteries and diesel generators, and how access to these sources are negotiated through local socioeconomic dynamics and broader political economy processes. These stories suggest that key to understanding heterogenous electricties is recognising the active role of urban inhabitants in negotiating infrastructure through different movements and connectivities, often within conditions of precarity. As such I argue that the urban poor are best understood as electrical bricoleurs: people who make creative and resourceful use of whatever energy materials and social connectivities that are at hand to realise their electrical needs. And through their stories, nuanced insights can be drawn in terms of into how urban infrastructure, like electricity flows, are entangled with social lives.

Electrifying the urban-rural intermediate spaces in Senegal: a diversity of electricity access providing offers at the heart of market formation?

Emmanuelle Guillou (LATTS, Université Paris Est Marne la Vallée, France)

In recent years, in sub-Saharan Africa, and more specifically in rural areas of Senegal, there has been a gradual electrification through a variety of electricity access offers ranging from connection to the conventional grid to the purchase of small individual solar devices, as well as autonomous collective electrification through diesel or hybrid mini-grids. These solutions are promoted by diverse economic actors through different socio-technical mechanisms. In Senegal, the government has set short and medium-term rural electrification targets, adopting various electrification strategies led by the Ministry of Oil and Energy and the Rural Electrification Agency, that influence the nature of the observed electric landscapes. Beside those top-down initiatives, many households opt for the purchase of photovoltaic solar panels of various sizes, prices and quality, sold by a diversity of private actors through various service relations with users.
The paper is based on field surveys conducted in Dakar and Kaolack region between 2018 and 2019, and analyzes how different electrification processes, involving a diversity of actors and socio-technical arrangements, shape the electricity landscape and participate in the
formation of a local electricity market in specific areas such as the intermediate urban-rural areas in Senegal. To what extent do users take over the diversity of electricity access modes? What is role of public action in the form of the electric landscape as it is shown?
Finally, to what extent does the electricity supply meet a heterogeneous and growing demand in these areas of diffuse urbanization?

Towards Urban Resilience? Coping with blackouts in Accra and Dar es Salaam

Joyce Angnayeli Eledi Kuusaana (TU Darmstadt, Germany)
The seamless and ubiquitous supply of infrastructure services such as electricity is usually seen as a critical backbone of modern urban societies. Yet, electricity supply in Accra and Dar es Salaam, like many other infrastructure services in cities in the global South, is commonly characterised as unreliable, unstable and unpredictable with power cuts being everyday occurrences. In both cities, major shortages in the generation of electricity have resulted in severe crises situations leading to a spatially uneven rationing of electricity supply. In the midst of such insecurities however, the criticality of such infrastructure services, and the shortfall thereof, is met with innovation, ingenious maneuvering and building of adaptive systems that allow cities to function. Based on debates on critical infrastructures and postcolonial urban studies, this paper seeks to understand the coping mechanisms of urban residents with electricity blackout situations in the cities of Accra and Dar es Salaam. It seeks to understand the criticality of electricity as a necessary component of the routines of different groups of urban dwellers and identifies the different energy constellations that function either complementary to or as alternatives to networked services. Pointing to the adaptive capacities that enable urban dwellers to prepare for power cuts but also to their unequal access to critical services, it argues for a more critical reassessment of debates on urban and infrastructural vulnerability and resilience.

Sociotechnical arrangements and delivery configurations for a multiscalar reading of a transition by hybridization?

Melanie Rateau (LATTS, Université Paris Est Marne la Vallée, France)

The presentation seeks to capture the impacts of the diversification of sociotechnical arrangements on inequalities of access to electricity in specific urban contexts. In Ibadan, Nigeria, access to electricity is characterized by failures of the conventional grid supply service. Households are equiping and organizing themselves to cope with uncertainty, while in Cotonou (Benin) the arrangements allow a « bricolé » connection to a network wich is too far away. From a fieldwork of more than eight months, in precarious, but also popular and favored neighborhoods of these two West African cities, the first objective is to look through what sociotechnical devices, households access to electricity, and what are the specific arrangements in each neighborhood and then, what are the characteristics of urban electrical configurations. The second objective is to propose a typology of socio-technical arrangements to better understand their impact on inequalities of access to electricity. And finally, it deals with questioning more generally the urban processes at work that seem to mark the electrical energy transition through diversification and increasing heterogeneity.

Off-grid Electricity in sub-Saharan Africa: from rural experiments to urban hybridisations

by Sylvy Jaglin

The following is the introduction of this paper. The full reference is: Jaglin, S., 2019. Off-grid Electricity in sub-Saharan Africa: from rural experiments to urban hybridisations. Hybridelec Background research paper1 January 2019 . Available at:
https://hal-upec-upem.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-02078148v1

Will the electricity revolution in Africa come from the deployment of decentralised solutions? With their capacity to decarbonise the energy mix and to use off-grid solutions now available everywhere on the continent, are local renewable resources capable of meeting demand from some 600 million Africans that the dominant industrial systems have failed to meet, and if so under what conditions? That is the challenge targeted by policies developed in response to the delayed awareness of energy gaps and their role in the (mis)-development of the continent,[1] which are now priorities for Agenda 2063 and for the African Development Bank (AfDB 2017).[2]

Continuer la lecture de « Off-grid Electricity in sub-Saharan Africa: from rural experiments to urban hybridisations »

Call for papers at the RGS-IBG (28th-30th August 2019): Hybrid electrical configurations: from heterogeneity to reconceptualizing energy transition in Southern countries?

Solar panels on a school roof, Beirut (2019)

Royal Geography Society / Institute of British Geographers Annual Conference 28th-30th August 2019 (information here)

Panel Convenors: Eric Verdeil (Prof. of Geography and Urban Studies, Sciences Po-CERI, CNRS, Paris eric.verdeil@sciencespo.fr); Sylvy Jaglin (Prof. of Geography, Université Paris Est-Marne la Vallée, LATTS sylvy.jaglin@enpc)

This panel is sponsored by the Energy Geographies Research Group.

Session format: This double panel intends to gather 8-10 scholars enrolled in the French Research Agency funded Hybridelec, as well as other researchers from other countries investigating similar issues.

Argument: While emerging and developing countries account for 95% of the expected global urban growth by 2050, many of them are experiencing major electrical supply problems. They result from an inadequate coverage by the grid (such as in low-income Sub-Saharan African countries), from a rationed supply, power cuts and load shedding (as in major cities with growing demand), and from disconnections related to sharp increases in prices. These failures have rising socio-economic and political costs and public authorities’ priority is to increase electricity generation capacity and secure distribution. But, in many countries, results are lagging behind targets in terms of grid connection and they remain insufficient to meet demand.

Therefore, alternative responses are emerging at different scales. They are collective (eg decentralized production and isolated mini-grids) and individual (eg diverse off-grid electrification and grid-tied solar solutions); they are driven by a multiplicity of actors (cooperatives, NGOs, large and small private operators, manufacturers and entrepreneurs, households); they rely on a variety of technologies and sources, the market of diesel generators growing at the same time as the use of renewable primary energy. To reflect the multiplicity of socio-technical arrangements and forms of organization that, all together, contribute to providing electrical services in urban areas, we analyze them in terms of “hybrid electrical configurations”.

Questions:

These hybrid configurations raise important questions. How are new socio-technical arrangements actually initiated and organized in practice to supply electricity? In which urban spaces are they to play a sustainable role and in what relation with the conventional network (complementarity, competition, substitution)? To what extent can this supply be sustained, expanded and scaled up to meet the diversity of users’ demands? What are their consequences for energy transition goals?

This panel has two main goals. First, to gather papers documenting the diversity of electric configurations that are emerging, not only by stressing their technological content but also their geographical and social embeddedness and effects, as well as the political struggles they face to sustain themselves. Secondly, to conceptualize this diversity and its role in the transformations of electrical systems and in energy transition trajectories in the South. Beyond the various local configurations, can we identify common trends? And if so, what is the value of the main frameworks used in socio-technical studies (such as splintering urbanism, post network cities, urban political ecology) to analyze the processes of emergence and the effects of these hybrid configurations, and what are their limits?

Interested scholars must send a 200-300 words abstract with title, author, affiliation and email address to Eric Verdeil (eric.verdeil_at_sciencespo.fr) and Sylvy Jaglin (sylvy.jaglin_at_enpc.fr) by the 10th of February at the latest.