Description

Liberia ranked 35th in Climatescope 2014, scoring 0.91 overall.

It fared best on Enabling Framework Parameter I, mainly due its extremely high power prices, very low electrification rate and high dependency on expensive fossil fuels. All suggest opportunities for alternative sources of generation and distributed energy.

When civil war took hold of the country in 1989, the Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC) had an installed capacity of 191MW, comprising the 64MW Mount Coffee large-hydro plant and an assortment of heavy fuel oil and diesel generators.

When peace resumed in 2003, this capacity had been almost entirely destroyed. As the country now seeks to rebuild, its national grid consists nearly entirely of 22.6MW of oil and diesel capacity, with retail power prices upwards of $0.53 per kWh.

In 2009, the government adopted a National Energy Policy establishing targets, a new institutional framework, and a Rural and Renewable Energy Agency. However, Liberia has yet to adopt new legislation liberalizing the power sector.

Liberia’s key power project today is the rehabilitation of largehydro project Mount Coffee, which once operating should allow the country to quadruple current capacity. The ebola epidemic poses a new challenge of as yet unknown scale and impact.