TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Friday Feb 15, 2013
This note sheds light on renewable sources used for electricity production in Tunisia during the first decade of the twentieth century. Alternative green sources for electricity harnessing are solar, wind, hydropower and biomass & biofuel. Hydropower for electricity generation or hydroelectricity consists of producing electrical power through the use of gravitational force of falling or flowing water. It is the most widely used form of renewable energy in the world. Comparing to the other forms of renewable energies, the cost of hydroelectricity is relatively low. An accurate assessment of the investment in "green" electricity production should look separately into hydroelectricity source and other renewable sources.
As it clearly appears from the first chart, Tunisia's electricity production from renewable sources has been overwhelmed by hydroelectricity until 2007. Between 2000 and 2007, the electricity production from renewable sources did not exceed 2% from the total production. Starting from 2008, Tunisia has used less hydropower and more solar and wind to generate electricity. However, the total contribution of renewable sources to generate electricity remained a little more than 1% of the total production. Among 20 countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, only half use hydropower to generate electricity in 2010. Tunisia is the least producing country with 0.31% of the total electricity production. Sudan is the MENA country that uses the most hydropower to generate electricity with 48.99% of the total production. Other renewable sources are used by only 5 countries as of 2010. Tunisia is ranked third with 0.86% of the total electricity production after Egypt (1.01%) and Morocco (2.95%).
In a report published by Ernest & Young in November 2011 entitled "Renewable energy country attractiveness indices", Tunisia was ranked among the top 40 countries for attractiveness of renewable energy. It was ranked 34, after Morocco (30) and Egypt (27) from the MENA region. The top three countries were China, USA and Germany. The report mentions that the Tunisian government's goal is to reach 11% of electricity generated by renewable sources by 2016 and 25% by 2030.
(Chart prepared by TUNESS Research Team), Data source: World Bank and Ernst & Young