The role of renewable energy in energy transition in West Africa: a short- and long-run analysis

In Africa, per capita energy consumption remains stable, despite long-standing recognition of the importance of energy to economic development. The primary aim of this research was to determine the impact of economic level, FDI, CO2 emissions, unemployment, urbanization, and trade openness on renewable energy consumption in West African regions. This study identified the factors that drive energy transition in West African regions and analyzed the importance of renewable energy in the energy transformation in West Africa, and the renewable energy source that should be prioritized to speed up the energy transition. To investigate the relationship between variables, this research employed a simple panel regression. An Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) panel estimation through a pooled mean group and an ARDL estimation of all countries as a group is run to analyze the importance of the different renewable energy sources in the energy transformation in West African countries. This study finds evidence that increasing urbanization level and trade openness and acting on unemployment increase the consumption level of renewable energy in West Africa. On the other hand, an increase in renewable energy consumption will accompany a decrease in the DFI and CO2. In order of importance, photovoltaic, fossil fuel, hydroelectricity, and electricity produced from biomass and wind are significant in the energy mix in the short term. But in the long term, fossil energy is at the forefront, followed by hydroelectricity and photovoltaic electricity. Toward achieving the goal of access to affordable, sustainable, modern, and reliable energy for all by 2030, governments in West Africa should actively invest in hydroelectricity and photovoltaic energy generation and encourage trade openness and urbanization while using unemployment for renewable energy promotion.