Renewable energy readiness assessment for North African countries

Abstract Energy is an important input for national socio-economic development. The current trends of energy supply and demand are not sustainable because of the expected huge gap between demand and supply in the future. The fossil fuels resources are limited and use of these fuels has a negative impact in the environment. Holding energy at a secure level and global climate at a safe level require integration of renewable energy technologies (RETs) in the energy supply-mix. Development of RETs in a country depends on its renewable energy readiness (RE-Readiness) that indicates the gaps and strengths of their development. In light of the various initiatives proposed to turn North Africa into a renewable energy producer and extend its electricity supply to its neighboring European counties, it demands to assess the RE-Readiness. The main object of this paper is to develop and disseminate an assessment framework to find North African countries RE-Readiness for deployment of RETs. This framework is adopted in which the paper applies a consistent methodology across all the North African countries׳ to assess the present state of infrastructure, institutions and human capital factors to adopt and deploy RETs. Each of the factors is assigned a weight and a score between 1 and 7, with 1 being the lowest and 7 the highest score. From this developed assessment framework, it is found Morocco received the highest RE-Readiness score means that the country is more ready to invest in RETs than the other countries in North Africa. This assessment identifies the gaps and strengths for the deployment of RETs in these countries and serves as a first step towards proposing renewable energy diffusion strategies that will contribute to their environmental, social and economic development.