The highlights of the renewable in 2017
The year 2017 was marked, in Algeria and in the World, by several important facts in the fields of environment, climate change, renewable energies and energy efficiency. As the articles we published in previous years, this article is intended to be a retrospective of the year 2017 and returns to the most significant facts.
In the world
The climate change issue continues to mark the news in 2017, despite the announcement by the US President of the withdrawal of his country from the Paris Agreement concluded in Paris in December 2015 and entered into force in November 2016. An alarming report on the state of the Earth’s climate has been prepared by several UN organizations, including the World Meteorological Organization, where records of several indicators of climate change have been achieved in 2017. The period 2013 to 2017 is the five hottest years in history. In spite of the absence of El Niño, a temperature rise of the surface of the earth of the order of 1,1 ° C since the preindustrial era was recorded.
After three consecutive years of stability, carbon dioxide emissions have rebounded in 2017 and are expected to reach 36.8 billion tonnes of CO2 by the end of the year, a 2% increase over the previous year. 2016. This increase in carbon emissions is a negative sign for the ecological transition and the implementation of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. The COP24 on climate change of 2018 will have to look into this situation in the context of "Global Stocktake" or Global Balance Sheet.
On the other hand, Renewable Energies have continued the upward trend since 2009 with annual growth of 8-9% and record levels towards the end of 2016. With a growth rate of 8.7% in 2016, installed capacity in renewable energy has reached a record of 2006 GW, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), driven mainly by solar with 32% and wind power. with 12%. According to forecasts by the International Energy Agency (IEA) published in 2017, the installed capacity of renewable energy will grow by 43% in 2022, thanks to new photovoltaic solar installations in China and India. According to the same report, solar photovoltaic will enter a new era in the next five years thanks to the reduction of costs, market dynamics especially in China and the improvement of policies favoring the large scale deployment of solar energy.
In Algeria
For the first time in Algeria, a Ministry of the Environment and Renewable Energies was created in 2017. A Solar Energy Cluster composed of 15 entities, including economic companies and entities of the research and development sector was created in 2017.
This year was distinguished by the completion of the program of realization of the 22 photovoltaic plants by SKTM company, SONELGAZ subsidiary in the highlands and in the south, with a total capacity of 343 MW. A private status unit, "Aurès Solaire", producing photovoltaic panels with a capacity of 30 megawatts was commissioned in 2017.
The energy efficiency program has experienced a dynamic in the construction sector as well as in the transport (conversion to LPG) and industrial sectors, partly thanks to the 2017 finance law which introduced a new tax called Energy Efficiency Tax (TEE) which contributes to the feeding of the National Fund for the control of the energy and for the renewable energies and the cogeneration.
Higher training (Bachelor, Engineer, Master, Doctorate) and professional (Technician and Technician Superior) in the field of renewable energy has been generalized in 2017 in several universities, colleges and vocational training centers.
Conscious that the energy transition must first be initiated at the level of local authorities, the Ministry of the Interior, Local Authorities and Territorial Planning organized training courses and seminars for the benefit of the local authorities of the various wilayas of the country "Renewable Energy Man Training" to support the realization of projects in renewable energy and energy efficiency.
During the COP23 on climate change in Bonn, Germany, in November 2017, Algeria reiterated its commitment to contribute to the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through a series of measures including the deployment of the two renewable energy and energy efficiency programs.
In addition, the Renewable Energy Development Center (CDER) recorded in 2017 a remarkable growth in scientific and technological production resulting in the following key figures; 195 publications indexed in the Scopus database, 41 doctoral dissertations in the field of renewable energies, 14 university habilitations, 08 patents, 07 partnership agreements with the socio-economic sector and many others.
Several inventions have been made in various areas of application of renewable to address issues identified in different sectors of activity such as transport, environment, agriculture, housing and energy.
During the year 2017, the CDER published a new wind atlas that is based on hourly and tri-temporal wind speed data recorded over 10 consecutive years from 2004 to 2014 in 74 meteorological stations of the NOM and 21 additional stations in neighboring countries. It has also developed maps of geothermal resources of Algeria according to a chemical classification and has developed the second version of the RETA 2.0 Application - Algerian Thermal Regulation by integrating the new Algerian thermal building regulations that appeared in 2017.
In another aspect, the CDER has set up an atmospheric observation station at the Mustapha Pacha University Hospital Center in the course of 2017 to measure continuously, in real time, the concentrations of the main pollutants present in the gaseous and / or particulate air and to evaluate their impact on health, the intensity of solar radiation and the production of renewable energies.
As for the national research projects, grant agreements for 28 projects with socio-economic impacts have been signed between the EPST CDER and the General Directorate for Scientific Research and Technological Development in 2017.
In terms of deploying renewable resources in the field, the EPST CDER, through its subsidiary ER2 (Studies and Achievements in Renewable Energies) has carried out solar electrification projects for homes and pumps for drinking water wells in the Tassili N’ajjer National Park (Illizi wilaya) and the Ahaggar National Park (Tamanrasset) and in strategic sites .
Professor N. YASSAA,
Director of the CDER
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