Carbon footprint of solar based mini-grids in Africa: Drivers and levers for reduction

The massive development of mini-grids (MGs) is seen as a promising alternative to the extension of national grids to achieve universal access to electricity. MGs based on solar photovoltaic are often recognized fully consistent with net-zero CO2 emissions objectives. However, if they have low or even no direct emissions from diesel consumption, they embed indirect carbon emissions due to solar panels and batteries manufacturing. Electrification policies, mainly based on the levelized costs of electricity (LCOE), should likely account for the carbon footprints (CFP) of possible electrification strategies. In this work, we assess the CFP of hybrid MGs (solar, battery, diesel) for rural electrification in Africa. We consider a large number of MG configurations for many locations across the continent. For each location, we identify the lowest CFP and LCOE, and estimate their dependency to meteorological and socio-economic factors. Our results show that: (i) the lowest CFP depends on location and is around 200gCO2/kWh; (ii) it can be higher than the CFP of certain African national grids; (iii) the CFP of hybrid MGs can be lower than the CFP of MGs relying only on solar PV; (iv) for most techno-economic and environmental assumptions, moderate LCOE increases allow significant CFP reductions.