De-risking investment into concentrated solar power in North Africa: Impacts on the costs of electricity generation

Abstract

A low-carbon energy transition on the basis of renewable energy sources (RES) is of crucial importance to solve the interlinked global challenges of climate change and energy security. However, large-scale deployment of RES requires substantial investments, including the participation of private capital. Scientific evidence shows that the economic feasibility of a RES project hinges on the availability of affordable project financing, which itself depends on risk perceptions by private investors. Since financing costs tend to be particularly high for capital-intensive RES projects and in developing countries, we investigate the impacts of addressing these perceived risks on electricity prices from semi-dispatchable concentrated solar power (CSP) in four North African countries. By employing a levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) model we find that comprehensively de-risking CSP investments leads to a 39% reduction in the mean LCOE from CSP. However, this reduction is still not sufficient to achieve economic competitiveness of CSP with highly subsidized conventional electricity from fossil fuels in North Africa. Hence, our results suggest that de-risking reflects an important strategy to foster the deployment of CSP in North Africa but additional measures to support RES, such as reconsidering fossil fuel subsidies, will be needed.