Mr. Minister of Oil and Energy,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Created in 2015, at the end of the historic climate summit in Paris, the Conseil Patronal des Energies Renouvelables du Sénégal (COPERES) was set up to give a voice to renewable energy professionals on all the subjects that concern the sector. We must recall the important role played by the members of the initiative committee grouped at the time around the project company Ten Merina Ndakhar, the club Convergences Plurielles of our friend Abdoulaye Diallo, Enda Energie and other professionals in the sector who organized together, with the support of President Macky Sall, the African Conference on Energy and Sustainable Development which brought together some twenty countries on the theme : “Africa’s Energy Independence: Roles and Responsibilities of State Actors, Private Sector and Civil Society”.
This is an opportunity to recall the very important contributions of ECREEE (Ecowas Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency / Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency of ECOWAS) and the Eiffage Group, which have largely contributed to the success of this important meeting in Dakar opened by the Prime Minister.
The results of this session were delivered to President Macky Sall, in his capacity, at the time, as spokesperson for the Heads of State of the continent at the Paris meeting.
The Dakar Declaration that was submitted to the Head of State took up all the expectations of the national and African private sector in a platform that our General Assembly today must once again update because the context has not ceased to evolve since then.
We just had to remind that it is in this dynamic of in-depth debates on the stakes of climate and sustainable energy that COPERES was born, at the end of the Paris Summit, and in the continuation of this partnership between state and non-state actors, thanks in particular to the personal commitment of the President of the Republic whose role has been decisive in the promotion of renewable energies in Senegal.
Mr. Minister, we also saluted the role that you have played at the head of Senelec and that you continue to play at the head of your ministerial department in favor of an energy mix that gives pride of place to clean energies.
The second edition of the African conference was organized in October 2017 in association with the National Agency for Research and Technological Innovation (ANER), then headed by Minister Sophie Gladima, and with the ANER (National Agency for Renewable Energies). It was an even more striking success, which definitively installed COPERES in the field of sub-regional and African actors authorized to carry the voice of the private sector of renewable energies.
Thus, the ECOWAS agency in charge of the sector (ECREEE) as well as the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI) launched in 2015 by the Heads of State of the continent, and today piloted by President Alpha Condé, as well as all the technical and financial partners of the sector are now integrating our employers’ organization as a partner and privileged interlocutor on all the current issues of clean energy and sustainable development.
It is quite obvious that it is the partnership agreed with our public authorities that has made possible this recognition by the national and international specialized institutions and organizations of the sector.
It is always within this framework that we have also signed a number of agreements with important organizations, among them :
- The agreement with the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) to co-chair, with ASER (the Senegalese Rural Electrification Agency), the technical committee for renewable energies.
- Cooperation with the Ecole Supérieure Polytechnique de Dakar (ESP) for the training of executives and senior technicians in renewable energies.
- The creation of a test center for solar systems in partnership with the Ecole Fédérale Polytechnique de Lausanne, the IDRC (International Development Research Center) and Meridiam for equipment control and label verification.
- The integration of MCC/MCA Copil as a representative of the private renewable energy sector……
As a major player in this booming sector, our ambition is to continue to contribute to the government’s remarkable results in its energy mix policy, which places us among the leading countries in Africa in the ongoing energy transition, a position that our country must consolidate.
It is worth recalling that our national performance in this area has been made possible by strong leadership at the highest level of government, a clear legislative and regulatory framework, a business environment that attracts investors, and a motivated local and international private sector, among other reasons.
We have chosen, Mr. Minister, to convene our Ordinary General Assembly today on the theme :
“Roles and responsibilities of the private sector in achieving the goal of universal access to energy by 2025”.
In the context of the law on local content which enshrines the requirement of the major role of the national private sector in major energy projects, the experience of COPERES member companies having carried out projects on solid financing models can perfectly serve as a reference to justify a beneficial representation in the steering and monitoring bodies of energy policies.
In this respect, the expectations of the operators in the sector are high because you have the advantage of being a privileged witness of the process of structural transformation of the energy production system for having accompanied all the operators in the decisive stages of the realization of the IPP (Independent Power Producer) projects with injection on the grid and for having participated alongside the Head of State in the inauguration of all the solar power plants of the energy park.
This is an opportunity to salute and congratulate ourselves on the recent commissioning of the Taïba Ndiaye wind power plant whose project company Lekela, a member of COPERES alongside the 7 other solar power plants in operation, with its already installed capacity of 50 megawatts, will bring our country even closer to the objective of 30% clean energy in our energy mix.
President Macky Sall has renewed his confidence in you by entrusting you with the strategic oil and energy department. We could not have a better interlocutor to understand our expectations in the sense of a representation of the national private sector of renewable energies in the various organizations and bodies of the sector and energies in general. For we have been reassured by the commitment of the President of the Republic to pursue and intensify his policy of diversifying energy sources and promoting renewable energies in particular, despite the entry of our country into the club of gas and oil producers.
This is why our ambition is to build a solid partnership with your department and the government, which will enable us, in a spirit of co-responsibility, to create an ecosystem that involves all stakeholders, state and non-state actors, in the ambitious project to transform our economy and society through a decentralized energy policy that places the citizen, the producer and the community at the center of innovations.
We have so far succeeded in our energy mix policy by relying mainly on large industrial projects with grid injection.
This option must be consolidated, while at the same time greater attention will have to be paid to the serious tax problems encountered by PPIs in this phase of operation.
Your services, Mr. Minister, are currently examining within their own departments, and in conjunction with the other ministerial departments concerned, the conditions for dealing with these important problems on a concerted basis.
We hope, with your support, that they will be rapidly overcome in the best interests of all parties concerned.
COPERES is more than ever committed to the consolidation of the PPI option in view of the extent of the country’s needs. However, we are convinced that we cannot accelerate and intensify production to move resolutely towards universal access without the mobilization of all the actors of the sector, in particular the operators of mini-grids in isolated sites (outside the Senelec network), the installers of Solar home systems and solar pumps, the firms and experts of all specialties of the sector.
It is in fact in decentralized production that it is possible to provide households, producers and communities with the means to access the various renewable energy technologies to develop productive and domestic energy for a genuine local economy to develop productive and domestic energies to serve a real local economy that generates huge sources of jobs in the region.
Mr. Minister, as you know, this approach will also help our country to inevitably take the path of the sought-after energy transition, which must underpin and enhance the process of sustainable access to clean energy. Senegal, within the framework of the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) required by the Paris agreements, will thus develop appropriate energy policies for mitigation and adaptation that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
COPERES, from this point of view, by its nature of unitary organization, federating the operators of all the fields of renewable energies (IPP, ERILs, Installers, Specialized Firms and Consultants etc), has a huge potential of resources in terms of engineering that it is decided to mobilize to put it at the service of the ambitions of the state for universal access to energy in 2025, as the President of the Republic has the ambition and in accordance with the commitments of our country in the framework of SDOs (Sustainable Development Goals), See4all and the agenda 2063 of the African Union.
Strengthened by the effective membership of 25 companies representing all sectors of the sector, our organization, by the weight of the entities that make it up, is also measured by the investments of more than 300 billion CFA francs made by its members in the sector in recent years.
This is why it will be useful, Mr. Minister, at the end of this General Meeting, that the new team that we are going to set up will meet with you and your collaborators to collect our proposals in order to define together the modalities of a new type of partnership in the perspective of universal access by 2025.
Our platform, which addresses all the concerns of the private sector and non-state actors in general, will also be submitted to you and the other departments concerned so that, within the framework of multi-sectorality and under your authority as supervisor, everyone can contribute to the establishment of an ecosystem that puts all stakeholders in the optimal conditions for an effective partnership at the service of the sector, citizens, communities and the country.
Indeed, we are convinced that just as you have developed good partnership relations with private operators that have enabled you to translate the President of the Republic’s determination into results by successfully taking up the challenge of the solar revolution, which has brought our country resounding success in all the international forums on the climate debate, so we have the capacity to take up the honourable challenge of universal access in 2025 with you, Senelec and your dedicated agencies and services.
It is this shared ambition that COPERES intends to achieve with your department within the framework of a strategy based on GALVANISATING synergies between the public sector, private actors, civil society, elected officials, communities, and with the assistance of the international private sector and technical and financial partners.
We ask you, Mr. Minister, to accept our most distinguished greetings.
Abdou Fall
Former President of COPERES
