Author Archives: Grace

  1. Paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

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    “Strategic siting and regional grid interconnections key to low-carbon futures in African countries”

    Our peer-reviewed paper details siting strategies that reduce the economic costs, risks, and environmental impact of wind and solar deployment in Eastern and Southern Africa. It finds that ‘no-regrets’–highly accessible, low-cost, and low-impact–sites are plentiful, and international interconnections needed to encourage their development across the region. The study encompasses and builds on our earlier work with IRENA by exploring wind site selection scenarios in Southern Africa.

    The paper is open access (free to non-subscribers) and can be viewed and downloaded on the PNAS webpage here.

    The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley issued press releases about the paper. Check them out here:
    LBNL: The Economic Case for Wind and Solar Energy in Africa
    UC Berkeley: Renewable energy has robust future in much of Africa

  2. Updates to ‘Renewable Energy Zones for the Africa Clean Energy Corridor’ report

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    We’ve uploaded a corrected version of the Africa_RE_Zones_LBNL_2016.pdf (11450 downloads) , correcting for minor errors in the capacity value estimates of wind zones. Please see the erratum page of the updated report for more details. Additionally, we’ve updated all the spatial data (zones) and the interactive PDF maps to reflect these changes.

  3. India Renewable Energy Zones page is live!

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    We’re excited to share that the India renewable energy zones project page is live!

    The report is currently under external review, so the web content is likely to change after revisions. We hope to have the report out and the content finalized either by end of the 2016 or beginning of 2017. In the meantime, check out the draft outputs of the study:

    • [draft] India wind, solar PV, and CSP zones can be viewed via the interactive webmap on the IREZ page
    • [draft] interactive PDF map and excel spreadsheet tools are available for download
    • [draft] spatial zone and project outputs are available for download
  4. MapRE launch!

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    We launched the mapre.lbl.gov on 29 September 2015 in order to distribute data for the technical workshop held in Nairobi, Kenya (more about this in another post). However, it is a work in progress and many pages are still under construction. Please check back for updates to the website, which will also be announced on this News page. If you would like to be kept updated on major developments, please contact us directly.