Introduction

This study echoes the importance of renewable energy (RE) infrastructure and domestic technology capacity building to the provision of adequate power supply without compromising the environment and future use of energy resources in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It orates that domestic R&D in RE technology is a key in curtailing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the region and, therefore, identifies contemporary areas of R&D in RE, CO2 capturing and storing that will facilitate increase in RE deployment and CO2 emissions mitigation in SSA. The article presents salient information vital to postgraduate studies, RE investors, guide the government, and policymakers to implement realistic and sustainable policy in the region. The study is intended to create awareness on the underlying nexus between CO2, gross domestic product (GDP), and energy consumption. In addition, the study will outline some steps policies that can be integrated into national policies, planning, and strategies towards climate change mitigation in SSA. To achieve a sustainable environment and energy system, countries in SSA need to develop a robust and sustainable economy domestically. As a developing region, the governments have to establish similar national energy and environmental policies to align economic development to secure and sustain clean energy supply and the environment.

Access to reliable and stable electricity supply in most countries in SSA is challenging for both urban and rural dwellers. The available power supply is characterised by chronic undesirable, and insufficient supply, long downtime, obsolete facilities, inadequate skilled personnel, exploitative billing system, and so on. Consequently, the region accommodates the highest percentage of people without access to electricity, living in abject poverty. About 40% of the SSA population lack access to safe drinking water sources; 68% lack access to improved sanitation facilities; 600 million people lack access to modern energy in 2018 (IEA 2019), relying on traditional biomass for heating, lighting, and cooking. This inadequate power supply limits the socio-economic growth of the region. As a result, the economies of countries in SSA, excluding South Africa (SA), survive on self-provide power generating scheme. The use of dedicated (off-grid) petrol and diesel generating sets by factories, service firms, shop clusters, and homes to generate electricity has become a norm in the region. Besides, estimated 900 million Africans are expected to primarily use solid fuels, such as charcoal, wood, and solid waste to cook, and 7% with kerosene (Kammila et al. 2014). It was reported in 2019 that SSA has the largest populations that cook with traditional biomass (Corfee-Morlot et al. 2019). These traditional practices and the use of fossil fuel emit carbon dioxide (CO2) and particulate matter (PM), which are dangerous to health, into the biosphere (Agrawal and Yamamoto 2015; Amegah and Jaakkola 2016; Das et al. 2017). The noxious fumes released into the atmosphere are connected to about 2.8 million premature deaths annually (IEA 2017b).

The environment and human health are continually sacrificed for energy, needed for socio-economic activities. Despite this compromise, access to energy is still inadequate and challenging, about 50% of the population in 41 countries in SSA have no access to electricity, and 650 million people are expected not to have access to modern energy by 2030 (IEA 2017b). The use of fossil energy has been reported as the highest source of greenhouse gases (GHG) due to CO2 emission, a by-product of combustion of fossil fuel (Nachmany et al. 2014). The CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has reached dangerous levels—increased from 280 parts-per-million (ppm) during the pre-industrial era to 403 ppm in 2016, with the growth rate of 2 ppm annually (IEA 2017a). The problem of global warming is caused by high CO2 concentration in the atmosphere resulting from quest for energy. The consequences of the use of fossil fuels and some other human activities (Aljazeera 2019; FloodList 2019a, b) that are inimical to the biosphere are evidenced in the increasing events triggered by climate change. These events include storms and ice melts, droughts, floods, cyclones, high temperatures, and migration. The call to end fossil fuel economy due to its consequential effects should be given urgent attention in the region. Subsequently, the Paris Agreement, which aims to mitigate climate change and keep temperature increase below 2 °C, considerably 1.5 °C, was established by united efforts of all countries (IPCC 2015). This goal with sharply cutting anthropogenic CO2 emissions will require the implementation of negative CO2 emissions technologies (NETs) to remove CO2 (Rogelj et al. 2018).

Adequate energy supply is a panacea to socio-economic development and is amongst the critical issues in the global spotlight. Increasing efforts towards improving access to electricity in SSA is compounded and deterred by the world’s stand on the utilisation of fossil fuel, which is the main driver of the region’s economy. However, harmful gas emissions, GHG, are often associated with fossil fuel extraction and consumption. Energy and economic growth have proportional relations; high fossil energy consumption translates to high-volume CO2 emissions. This correlation has attracted the world’s attention, since the 1990s because of the potential threats of CO2 to the ecosystem and human health. Apart from the consumption of fossil energy, there are other human activities (cement production, and deforestation) and natural sources (decomposition, ocean release, and respiration) of harmful gas emissions. However, the energy sector contributes the highest to global CO2 emissions, and fossil and biomass fuels are the most exploited energy sources in SSA. About 90% of the households in 25 countries of SSA depend on wood, charcoal, and waste for cooking. These practices result in GHG emissions, climate change, increased morbidity, and mortality (Baloch et al. 2020; Ebhota 2019; Hickman et al. 2014; Inglesi-Lotz and Dogan 2018; Maji 2019).

Before industrialisation, there existed a natural balance of CO2 in the ecosystem, such that the emitted gas is used up for other beneficial activities and continuously recycled to maintain the balance. These activities include plant photosynthesis, reforestation, soil improvement, fossil formation, and ocean intake, as shown in Fig. 1. The sources of CO2 then were mainly through animal respiration, direct human-induced impacts on forestry and land use, for instance, deforestation, land clearing for agriculture, decay and decomposition of organic matter, and degradation of soils. Other atmospheric air components and their expected volumes by percentage are presented in Table 1.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Ideal carbon cycle

Full size image
Table 1 Atmospheric gas components and their volumes (%) (Curry and Webster 1998; Glueckauf 1951)
Full size table

However, over the years, CO2 and other GHG have been heavily released into the biosphere through direct and indirect human socio-economic activities since 1900. These activities include the increased use of automobiles (transportation), heating and cooking, production and consumption of energy, agriculture, and production of cement, as shown in Fig. 2. It has been reported that between 1850 and 2011, global CO2 emission increased by over 15 times due to human activities (Friedrich and Damassa 2014). The highest amount of CO2 released to the environment reported was 49 Gt between 2000 and 2010 and industry and the combustion of fossil fuels contributed 78% of this amount. The recorded amount of CO2 released in 2014 only from coal uses was about 16 Gt (Abd et al. 2020).

Fig. 2
figure 2

Total annual anthropogenic GHG emissions (1970–2010) (PCC 2014)

Full size image

Studies have shown that the concentration of CO2 in the biosphere is increasing at a 286 parts per million (ppm) annually since 2016 (Barua et al. 2020; Watanuki 1997). The rise started at the beginning of the industrial era (1750), from about 277 ppm to about 414.7 ppm in 2019 and predicted to reach 500 ppm in 2050, as presented in Table 2 (Joos and Spahni 2008). This increase was originally attributed to deforestation and other land-use activities. However, this is mainly due to the unprecedented CO2 emissions due to the consumption of fossil fuels witnessed during the industrial era.

Table 2 Concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere
Full size table

Between 1970 and 2010, fossil fuel usage and other industrial processes contributed about 78% of the total GHG emissions while deforestation, agriculture, and other land-use released the second largest emission. The total annual anthropogenic GHG emissions from 1970 to 2010 are shown in Fig. 2.

Carbon dioxide emission accounts for the largest portion of GHG emissions and is a major source of environmental and health challenges. Therefore, this study examines and discusses the causal relationships between energy consumption (EC), economic growth (EG), and environmental pollution (EP); role RE plays in zero-CO2 economy in SSA, significance of research and development (R&D) to sustainable RE deployment and climate change mitigation, and identifies research areas to boost the use of RE and reduce CO2 emissions in the region. In addition, several steps and methods advanced, taken, and used to reduce CO2 emissions and/or limit its consequential effects that are not adequately deployed in SSA will be briefly discussed, while the effects of domestication of RE technology on CO2 mitigation will receive much more attention.

The rest of this study is structured as follows: Sect. “Materials and methods” presents research methodology; Sect. “Econometric techniques” provides the relationship between economic growth, CO2 emissions, and energy consumption; 4—Climate change outlooks in SSA, while Sects. “Climate change outlooks in SSA” and “The role of domestic research and development in RE and CO2 capturing and storing” deal with the role of domestic RE technology in curtailing CO2 emissions in SSA and conclusion, respectively.

Materials and methods

A broad review was performed considering the literature relevant to this research published most in the last five years to the present date. This study was conducted in the following manner: secondary data gathering via such platforms as Scopus, ScienceDirect, verified official websites of companies, published feasibilities, reports, and investigations by global organisations on energy and CO2 emissions—the World Bank, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the United Nations (UN) and its subsidiaries, and online energy and CO2 data applications, such as Worldmeter and Climatewatch. Other sources of data include national energy departments and international energy organisations, such as the national governments' reports in the region under investigation, International Energy Agency (IEA), World Energy Council, (WEC), and International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENE). The information obtained will be used to establish CO2 emissions in SSA, the relationships that exist between economic growth, environment, and CO2 emissions, the correlation between fossil energy and CO2 emissions, and determine the type of energy for SSA and its development approach.

Econometric techniques

The relation existing between CO2 emissions, energy consumption (EC), and gross domestic product (GDP) has been studied by several researchers employing diverse data set and econometric methods (Halicioglu 2009; Zaidi and Ferhi 2019). To understand the perceived correlation between these variables, a system that cointegrates the variables has been established to test the link between several time series in the long term. A variety of econometric methods and processes have been deployed by studies to test and analyse the actual nexus between economic growth, output-energy, and output-environmental pollutants. This concept, which is often called cointegration test, was first used in 1987 by Nobel laureates, Robert Engle and Clive Granger (CFI 2020). The studies relied on data frequency, underlying variables, and the development stages in arriving at conclusions and implications. Scenarios where two or more non-stationary time series are cointegrated in such a way that they cannot depart from equilibrium in the long term are identified by cointegration tests. The degree of sensitivity of two variables to the same average price over a stated period is recognised by the tests.

Based on the literature, the discussion on energy consumption, economic growth, and environmental pollutants can be categorised into two research components—first component tests to validate the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis, which focuses on environmental pollutants and output nexus. In 1955, Kuznets predicted that the varying correlation between per capita income and income inequality is a reversed U-shaped curve (Jovanovic 2018; Le et al. 2020; Olale et al. 2018), while the second component is a more recent and an emerging research approach that examines the dynamic correlation between energy consumption, economic growth, and environmental pollutants (Ito 2017; Muhammad 2019; Munir et al. 2020; Wasti and Zaidi 2020). Several studies have shown the causality between energy consumption and economic growth, and their outcomes can be categorised into four:

Neutrality hypothesis

Absence of causality between energy consumption and GDP; it is supported by the absence of a causal relationship between energy and real GDP.

Conservation hypothesis

Existence of unidirectional causality running from GDP to energy consumption.

Growth hypothesis

Existence of unidirectional growth.

Feedback hypothesis

Existence of bidirectional causality between energy consumption and economic growth.

In the past two decades, several econometric techniques have been developed, modified, and deployed to investigate and test energy consumption, economic growth, and environmental pollution functions. These include univariate cointegration approaches, such as Engle and Granger, and the fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) procedures of Phillips and Hansen, and multivariate methods, such as Johansen (1988), Johansen and Juselius 1990, and autoregressive-distributed lag (ARDL) (Halicioglu 2009; Johansen 1995; Johansen and Juselius 1990). Despite these efforts, there still exist worrisome high degree of research results discrepancies, weakness, and flaws as studies have shown diverse results of GDP, environmental pollution, and energy consumption nexuses for same country at the period. Table 3 presents diverse outcomes of studies on the economic growth-energy-pollution nexus in some selected countries, deploying different econometric techniques.

Table 3 Outcomes of studies on economic growth-energy-CO2 emission nexus in some Asia countries
Full size table

Where E → Y depicts causality running from energy consumption to income; Y → E depicts causality running from income to energy consumption; Y ↔ E depicts bidirectional causality between income and energy consumption; ARDL is autoregressive distributed lag; GDP is gross domestic product per capita; CO2 is carbon dioxide emissions per capita; E and EC are energy and electricity consumption, respectively; → is the unidirectional causality hypothesis; ↔ feedback hypothesis; and ≠ neutral hypothesis.

Results and discussion

Simplified energy consumption, GDP, and CO2 emissions nexus

This study has come to the terms with the significance of nexus of energy consumption, GDP per capita, and CO2 emissions in the contemporary national and regional sustainable development. The perceived relation must be treated with kid gloves to avoid misinformation because of its sensitivity and importance, as it involves economic growth, environment, and scarcity of resources. Subsequently, the drawbacks and gap created by the academic-based econometric techniques in describing the correlation between energy consumption, GDP, and CO2 emissions can be surmounted and simplified, using mostly time series data. Several credible and up to information data on energy consumption, GDP, and CO2 emissions are available in the databases of reliable international organisations, such as World Bank, UN, IEA, and IPCC.

Around 1950, the use of fossil fuel dominated the sources of anthropogenic emissions to the biosphere and there has been a rise in the consumption fossil energy since then. Relatively, fossil fuel shares in the global CO2 sources have continued to rise due to its significance in the growth and sustenance of the economy. The results from the study and analysis of data obtained from Worldmeter (2019b) and the World Bank (2019) databases have clearly shown that the relation between energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and GDP is unidirectional, causality running from energy consumption to GDP and CO2. Quite often, the amount of fossil energy consumed controls and kick-starts the direction of the nexus. The persistence increase in population, civilisation, and industrialisation is responsible for the continue rise in CO2 emissions due resulting from the rise in the energy consumed. The desire to create higher tax revenues by the government for economic growth will always be there due to inadequate fund to meet the onerous needs of the citizens. The economic growth required to build a comparative competitive GDP and reduce government borrowing will lead to more fossil fuel consumption with the consequential CO2 emissions. The trend of annual global growth rate of GDP against energy consumed and CO2 is presented in Table 4. Averagely, the annual global growth rates of fossil energy, CO2 emissions, and GDP from 1990 to 1999 increased by 80%, 1%, and 2.66%, respectively; the three variables have the same direction trends. However, global recession occurred in 2009, having global GDP and CO2 emission annual growth rates of − 1.73 and  − 1.10, respectively; the negative sign shows a decline, which means economic retrogression. In 2010, both the global CO2emission and GDP recorded 5.9% and 4.32%, respectively, depicting increase and a rebound. In the same vein, the trends between GDP and CO2 emissions in SSA follow the same form, as depicted in Fig. 3a and b, and a rise in GDP corresponds to an increase in CO2 emissions, vice versa. It was observed that the annual growth rate of 1% of global CO2 emissions is associated with an increase in GDP growth rate. However, in 2009, the global growth rate for both CO2 emissions and GDP declined by − 1.3% and − 1.73%, respectively, due to recession, while in 2010, both the global emission of CO2 and GDP rebounded by 5.9% and 4.32%, respectively (Worldmeter 2019b, c).

Table 4 Annual global growth rate of GDP and CO2
Full size table
Fig. 3
figure 3

(a) Global GDP growth and (b) global CO2 emissions rates (1980–2016)

Full size image

In the climate change discourse, large economies, such as the USA, China, and Japan, are sometimes referred to as fossil economies because they are products of fossil fuels. The key components of large economies—transport (automobiles, trains, and planes), energy (power plants), and industrial sectors, are virtually run by fossil fuels—diesel, gasoline, natural gas, and coal. Figure 4 shows sources of fossil CO2 emissions by sector.

Fig. 4
figure 4

Global share of fossil CO2 emissions by sector (Worldmeter 2019a)

Full size image

Developing economies, such as SSA and India, are not exemptions of this scenario; they need affordable and adequate energy supply for socio-economic growth. The capacity of the deployed RE in SSA is grossly inadequate to the required energy for the rapidly growing population, urbanisation, and industrialisation. This implies that more CO2 will be produced and released to the biosphere, as the region’s main source of energy that is being enlarged is fossil energy. Available data (IMF 2019; OECD 2020; Worldbank 2020; Worldmeter 2019d) have shown that the top ten countries with the highest nominal GDP in 2017 produced the highest CO2 (IEA 2020; Worldmeter 2019a) in the trend with GDP, as depicted in Fig. 5. Although the decision has reached to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, SSA still needs a breakthrough in the energy sector that includes abundant fossil fuel energy to surmount poverty. In 2014, it was reported by IEA that fossil fuels contributed about 74% of SSA’s power generation sources, with coal and oil accounting for 54% and 9%, respectively. According to the report, a leading scenario for 2040 has envisaged fossil fuels to contribute over 50% (coal 27%, gas 25%, and oil 4%) to the region’s electricity. The CO2 emissions from oil and gas are predicted to double, although those from coal will decrease (IEA 2014). South Africa the most developed African country generates electricity 77% coal. Available data (IMF 2019; OECD 2020; Worldbank 2020; Worldmeter 2019d) have shown the top ten countries with the highest nominal GDP in 2017 that produced the highest CO2 (IEA 2020; Worldmeter 2019a) in the trend with GDP, as depicted in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5
figure 5

Leading global share of GDP and CO2 by Country

Full size image

Carbon dioxide emissions in SSA

Despite being home to 14% of the world’s population, the region accounts for only 7.1% of the world’s GHG emissions. Some countries in SSA are amongst the poorest countries in the world, and they do not emit a significant amount of CO2 gas due low economic activities, although there are some notable exceptions. South Africa (SA), which is rich in coal, emits more CO2 than Britain, despite having one-eighth of its economy size and 10 million fewer people than its population. The CO2 emissions of selected countries in SSA are presented in Fig. 6. A big energy and chemicals firm, Sasol petrochemical, in Secunda, SA, is one of the world's largest sources of GHGs. South Africa has the largest share of CO2 emissions in SSA, followed by Nigeria and Zambia consecutively, Zambia land-use-related emissions surpass that of Brazil, and in Nigeria, households and businesses depend on old and dirty diesel and gasoline generators for about 14 GW of power, which is more than the country’s grid installed capacity of 10 GW (Economist 2018).

Fig. 6
figure 6

Emission of CO2 by selected countries in SSA (Economist 2018)

Full size image

However, Africa has been flagged vulnerable to climate change due to low economic growth, low technological improvement, and high dependence on natural resources for agricultural production (Adzawla et al. 2019). Currently, the region is witnessing a wide range of direct and indirect impacts evidenced in the increase in natural disasters attributed to climate change. These include flooding, rising sea levels, drought, cyclone, temperature increase (global warming). Interestingly, there is an increasing consensus with the view of the transition to renewable energy (RE) systems, as a key scheme to address the climate change crisis. The continuous rise of CO2 emissions in the region, as depicted in Fig. 7, should be of interest, considering the increase in the occurrences of climate change propelled extreme conditions in recent times. Presently, the region’s economy, society, and civilisation run primarily on fossil fuel, which gives out dangerous emissions to the biosphere that aid anomalous climate change. As a heed to clarion calls, the United Nations (UN) in 2015 assembly resolved to decrease the consumption of fossil fuels and increase the deployment of RE (UN 2015). Since energy is what powers economic growth, the development or use of alternative energy sources to fossil fuels is now a necessity.

Fig. 7
figure 7

Sub-Saharan Africa CO2 emissions (1960–2016) (Worldbank 2019)

Full size image

Ways of curtailing and mitigating CO2 emissions in SSA

Currently, there are national initiatives on CO2 mitigation and adaptation but they are simply not enough or inadequately implemented to keep the temperature below the limits in accordance with Paris Agreement. Certainly, limiting global warming to 1.5 °C will require a much more than transitions in carbon intensity of fuels, energy efficiency, electrification source, and land-use change, which are either put in place or underway in many countries. Several other steps and methods have been advanced, taken, and used to reduce CO2 emissions and/or limit its consequential effects that are not yet inadequately deployed in SSA. These include the application of CO2, domestication of technology and CO2 taxation method, GHG emissions assessment, carbon capping, promotion of green transport sector, and increase in the deployment of RE, carbon offsetting, sustainable building, expanding, restoring, and managing forests. In this section, some of these initiatives will be briefly discussed, while the effects of domestication of RE technology will receive much more attention.

Carbon capping

The cap-and-trade system involves the obtaining of specific amount of allowances of CO2 to emit by parties, such as fuel refiners or electricity generators, responsible for these emissions. Surpassing these allotted allowances by a participating member of the cap and trade will require purchasing more of allowances from members who did not exceed all of their allowances; these members are at liberty in selling off their remaining allowances within the emission trading system (ETS). Although this approach is beneficial to the regulation of emissions to a specific level, critics are of the opinion that cap system is comparatively less transparent and requires huge administrative support to implement.

A green/sustainable building

This is an outcome of a design ideal, which aims at increasing the efficiency of resource used, such as energy, water, and materials. They are planned and operated, such that during design, construction, operation, maintenance, and removal they do not impact on human health and the environment negatively. This system ensures the protection of human health and enhancement of employee’s productivity: pollution, waste, and environmental degradation reduction and efficient use of resources, such as energy and water.

Encouraging demotorisation and decarbonisation

Rewarding both transporters and commuters of clean energy vehicles and users of energy-efficient appliances can have tremendous effects on CO2 emissions. This can be achieved through carpooling, biking, telecommuting, use of electric vehicles, switching to public transportation, and other environmentally friendly commutes.

Harnessing new opportunities

Despite the deleterious effects of CO2 to human health, it equally serves as essential ingredient to many processes and raw material to products, as shown in Fig. 8. Five key categories of CO2-derived products and services are fuels, building materials from minerals, building materials from waste, and biological processes yielding improvement. Carbon dioxide in solid and liquid forms is used in fire extinguishers, for refrigeration, and cooling. Others uses include in the manufacture of casting moulds, as a pressurising gas in air guns and oil recovery, chemical feedstock and supercritical fluid solvent in decaffeination of coffee and supercritical drying, and addition to drinking water, carbonated beverages, beer, and sparkling (Roberts 2017; UIG 2016). Efforts are being made through research and development to create new products from CO2, a development that is receiving a tremendous attention in the global north including India and China. The main primary driver of this increased interest is climate change mitigation. This is prompting massive research on bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) (Kumar and Kumar 2016; Stephenson 2018) and CO2 direct air capture (DAC) (Fasihi et al. 2019) (Drechsler and Agar 2020; Rodríguez-Mosqueda et al. 2019; Sanz-Pérez et al. 2019) technologies to aid humankind to control and mitigate climate change. In this regard, global south, which SSA belongs, is lagging behind greatly. The exploitation of CO2 applications will strengthen industrialisation while mitigating climate change in the region.

Fig. 8
figure 8

Uses of CO2 (Roberts 2017)

Full size image

Incentives for RE: soft loan, subsidy, tax waiver for standalone clean energy, and CO2 exploitation

Government policies and schemes, such as soft loan and tax waivers on RE, CO2, and use projects, should be designed to support incentives on RE electricity generated from RE should have tax privileges as this will encourage energy companies, investors, and end users to sustain and increase the utilisation of clean energy and the emitted CO2. The RE resources to be considered are solar, biomass, wind, hydropower, and geothermal. However, more attention of these incentives should be given to PV, wind, and small hydropower technologies, since the region is hugely endowed with these renewables. A sizeable population will capitalise on this to take the advantage of rapidly declining costs of PV.

Climate change outlooks in SSA

Understanding climate change outlooks and how the impacts affect the region directly or indirectly is critical to appropriate mitigation responses. Several studies (Abid 2016; Acheampong et al. 2019; Al-mulali and Binti Che Sab 2012; Chakamera and Alagidede 2018; Ebohon and Ikeme 2006; Hickman et al. 2014; Inglesi-Lotz and Dogan 2018; Maji 2019; Tiwari et al. 2016) and EU funded Research Framework Programmes, both past and ongoing projects, are aiding African institutions to make up-to-date decisions for future climate change mitigation (UNEP 2012). Global warming of about 0.5 ℃ and the alteration of the behaviours of extreme climate events have been observed across Africa for the past 50 years. The anthropogenic global warming has reached between 0.8 and 1.2 °C locally, and this is continuing at the rate of 0.2 °C per decade (Diedhiou 2019). If this continues, the global warming of 1.5 °C will be reached between 2030 and 2053. The occurrence of the intensity of extreme temperatures will be experienced all over SSA if the mean temperature of global warming gets to 2 °C (Shepard 2019). Climate change varies across Africa, and possibly, Sahel is the most affected in the world, a region characterised by rapid population growth (about 2.8% yearly) amid shrinking natural resources. The predictions of climate change in SSA by several studies, as presented in Table 5, are worrisome and challenging (IPCC 2014; Steynor et al. 2020). Conversely, the negative impacts of climate change will be curtailed to acceptable levels if the rise in temperature is kept at 1.5 °C rather than reaching to 2 °C.

Table 5 Dangerous predictions of climate change in SSA (AfDB 2012; Bunn et al. 2019; Clay and King 2019; Mason-D'Croz et al. 2019; Matewos 2019; Mueller et al. 2020; Shepard 2019; Stanzel et al. 2018; Steynor et al. 2020)
Full size table

The role of domestic research and development in RE and CO2 capturing and storing

This paper argues that the needed transformation in RE and CO2 applications requires advancements in engineering and investment. Continues advances are the key to further exploit the already achieved and continuing cost decline of renewables, as well as other recent advances in energy efficiency, smart grids to connect generation, storage, and PV cell materials. Development of domestic capacity in RE technologies and CO2 applications is a sustainable way of salvaging the huge problem of power deficit and continuous deterioration of power infrastructure in SSA without compromising the safety of the environment and human health. The capacity development should centre on CO2 emission, capturing and applications, and RE components and systems design, development, and maintenance (Ebhota et al. 2014; Ebhota and Inambao 28,29,2017). This will involve massive research and development R&D activities of new and improved adaptive CO2 and RE devices, systems, capturing, and production technologies. Hence, well-coordinated, adequate, and sustainable R&D investments in CO2, alternative energy, and transformation are required. The expected R&D outcomes include reduction in CO2 emission, increase in the applications of CO2, affordable, environmentally friendly, and sustainable energy. New RE products and processes based on the region's peculiarities need to be developed for appreciable sustainable energy transition to occur. In addition, RE manufacturing capacity built simultaneously with R&D. Manufacturing infrastructure is critical to the transformation of the advances in R&D into end user’s demand products. Global warming discovery, analysis, and predictions are products of science, engineering, and technology and equally same serve as solution platforms to the issue.

Presently, a lot is going in the deployment of energy storage technologies, smart grids, and general purpose technologies, such as information and communication technology (ICT) in the combat of CO2 emissions and limiting warming to 1.5 °C (Bastida et al. 2019; Bruun et al. 2014; Kamal 1997; Lau et al. 2012; Loha et al. 2020; Mori 2012). However, every promising approach for CO2 removal, capturing, and storing as part of climate change strategy to avoid dangerous levels of global warming has challenges. Hence, SSA should investment in domestic-based research, development, and demonstration on CO2 removal, capturing, and storing approaches and other ways of reducing and using of CO2. The identified areas that the region should consider for R&D include energy materials and storage, demand management, and conservation. It also includes the impact of price, technical improvements, physical and legal controls, and education and promotion on energy demand. The region should take advantage of on RE and CO2 capturing emerging technologies and invest in R&D areas, as presented in Table 6. Considering the consequences of inadequate energy supply, the use of fossil fuel, and climate change in SSA, the region should play a leading role in the R&D and manufacturing of CO2 and RE devices, systems, capturing, and production technologies.

Table 6 Identified R&D areas to boost RE and mitigate CO2 emissions in SSA
Full size table

Conclusion

The pathway towards energy sufficiency in SSA is compounded by the global quest for a zero-CO2-driven economy. The disproportionality in the volume of CO2 in the biosphere now and during the pre-industrial era is wide. The environment and health consequences of this occurrence have been established, and these include drought, extreme rainfall, flooding, high temperatures, cyclones, etc. Although SSA contributes insignificantly to global emissions, the region is vulnerable to climate change due to its low economic and technological advancement, and high reliance on natural resources. The increase in climate change triggered events in the region attest to this vulnerability claim. The study and analysis of energy reports, research articles, and several other sources of energy information and tools show that:

  1. i.

    Low economic activities in SSA resulted in a 7.1% global share of CO2 emission.

  2. ii.

    Despite the low CO2 emission, the region is highly vulnerable to climate change due to low economic and technological growth and high dependence on natural resources for agricultural production.

  3. iii.

    South Africa and Nigeria are the highest emitters of CO2 in the region; health and environment are always traded off for energy.

  4. iv.

    The energy sector has the highest share of CO2 emission.

  5. v.

    CO2 outlook shows that CO2 emission is on the increase.

  6. vi.

    Global warming of about 0.5℃ and anthropogenic global warming of between 0.8 and 1.2 °C locally.

  7. vii.

    Global warming is continuous at a rate of 0.2 °C per decade.

  8. viii.

    The global warming of 1.5 °C will be reached between 2030 and 2053.

  9. ix.

    That the relation between energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and GDP is unidirectional; causality running from energy consumption to GDP and CO2.

In conclusion, this study sees the deployment of R&D and infrastructural capacity development in RE as the key ways of salvaging the huge energy deficit and continuous deterioration of power infrastructure in SSA. These sustainable CO2 emissions mitigating steps are devoid of environmental safety and human health compromise characteristic of fossil-driven economy thus can stimulate a zero-CO2-driven economy.