Promoting a climate-friendly electricity market in West Africa

Context

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) aims to operationalise a regional electricity market and promote renewable energies. A common electricity market allows cross-border electricity trading. This improves the quality of the energy supply, reduces costs and lowers investment risks.

Despite significant improvements, only limited amounts of electricity have so far been traded across borders. The energy sector is poorly equipped for electricity trading due to structural deficits, economic weaknesses, and a lack of operational performance capacity. The institutional, technical, legal and regulatory conditions for a climate-friendly regional electricity market are still insufficient.

Objective

The institutional, technical, legal and regulatory conditions for the energy sector in the ECOWAS member states have improved and facilitate a functioning, climate-friendly regional electricity market.

Approach

The project supports the partners in operationalising the regional electricity market. The aim is to improve the operational performance capacity of the electricity utilities to facilitate participation in the electricity market.

Moreover, the project is developing tools – based on international standards – that optimise the technical, legal and regulatory conditions for the expansion of regenerative power plants and grid-connected battery energy storage systems.

The project enables experts from regional training providers to develop practical and solution-oriented training courses for energy stakeholders through systematic capacity development. A particular emphasis is on digital and gender-responsive implementation.

The project is run in cooperation with the consulting firms Estudios Energeticos Consultores S.A., ARGE GFA Consulting Group GmbH and ARGE INTEGRATION Umwelt und Energie GmbH.