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This study is a product of the Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD), a project designed to expand the world's knowledge of physical infrastructure in Africa. The AICD provides a baseline against which future improvements in infrastructure services can be measured, making it possible to monitor the results achieved from donor support. It also offers a more solid empirical foundation for prioritizing investments and designing policy reforms in the infrastructure sectors in Africa. The book draws upon a number of background papers that were prepared by World Bank staff and consultants, under the auspices of the AICD. The main findings were synthesized in a flagship report titled Africa's infrastructure: A time for transformation, published in November 2009. Meant for policy makers, that report necessarily focused on the high-level conclusions. It attracted widespread media coverage feeding directly into discussions at the 2009 African union commission heads of state summit on infrastructure.

Before the current economic crisis hit the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region in 2008, energy security was a major source of concern in Central and Eastern Europe and in many of the economies in the former Soviet Union. Energy importers were experiencing shortages leading to periodic brownouts and blackouts. An energy crisis seemed imminent. This report analyzes the outlook for energy demand and supply in the region. It estimates the investment requirements and highlights the potential environmental concerns associated with meeting future energy needs, including those related to climate change. The report also proposes the actions necessary to create an attractive environment for investment in cleaner energy. Greater regional cooperation for smart energy and climate action is an important part of the World Bank's engagement in Europe and Central Asia.

Though evaporation‐driven electricity generation has emerged as a novel eco‐friendly energy and attracted intense interests, it is typically demonstrated in pure water or a very low salt concentration. Integrating evaporation‐driven electricity generation and solar steam desalination simultaneously should be more promising. Herein, a polyaniline coated metal‐organic frameworks (MOFs) nanorod arrays membrane is synthesized which inherits the merits of both polyaniline and MOFs, demonstrating nice stability, good interfacial solar steam desalination, and evaporation‐driven electricity generation. Moreover, an integrated system based on this hybrid membrane achieves good interfacial solar‐heating evaporation and prominently enhanced evaporation‐driven electricity generation under one sun. Notably, the realization of effective seawater desalination and efficient evaporation‐driven electricity generation simultaneously by the non‐carbon‐based materials is reported for the first time, which provides a new alternative way for cogenerating both freshwater and electricity by harvesting energy from seawater and solar light. The integration of interfacial solar‐heating evaporation and evaporation‐driven electricity generation is achieved based on a rationally designed hybrid membrane with polyaniline coating on the metal‐organic frameworks’ nanorod arrays. This membrane demonstrates effective sea water desalination and efficient evaporation‐driven electricity generation simultaneously under solar light.

The paper describes the possibility of hybrid electricity generation in already existing wind power plants (WPP) by additional installation of photovoltaic power plants (PVPP) on individual wind turbines (WT). Wind turbines have the lowest generation of electricity in the summer months, while PVPPs have the opposite, the highest generation in those months. Connecting the PVPP to the existing WT (hybrid electricity generation) brings a more even generation and a greater degree of use of the infrastructure of the existing wind farms (HV/MV transformer station, medium voltage cable distribution...). This way the variation of generation in relation to the average annual generation is reduced, which reduces the problems of balancing electricity.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been a remarkable success in Africa. Across the continent, the availability and quality of service have gone up and the cost has gone down. In just 10 years dating from the end of the 1990s mobile network coverage rose from 16 percent to 90 percent of the urban population; by 2009, rural coverage stood at just under 50 percent of the population. Although the performance of Africa's mobile networks over the past decade has been remarkable, the telecommunications sector in the rest of the world has also evolved rapidly. Many countries now regard broadband Internet as central to their long-term economic development strategies, and many companies realize that the use of ICT is the key to maintaining profitability. This book is about that challenge and others. Chapters two and three describe the recent history of the telecommunications market in Africa; they cover such issues as prices, access, the performance of the networks, and the regulatory reforms that have triggered much of the investment. This part of the book compares network performance across the region and tries to explain why some countries have moved so much more quickly than others in providing affordable telecommunications services. Chapter four explores the financial side of the telecommunications revolution in Africa and details how the massive investments have been financed and which companies have most influenced the sector. Chapter five deals with the future of the sector. The final chapter synthesizes the main chapters of the book and presents policy recommendations intended to drive the sector forward.

The current examination aims to explore the critical relationship of energy, in the form of electricity with economic growth of Indonesia. Contrary to traditional approach of assessing the impact of energy consumption, the present study analyzes the association from production point of view by assessing the impact of electricity production on economic development. In doing so, the current study has adopted the refined methodology of Auto-Regressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) bound testing approach to examine the dynamic relationship among renewable electricity generation, non-renewable electricity generation and economic growth with amplified understanding of the critical association to support the course of economic planning and policy making. The results of ARDL bound testing approach confirm that renewable electricity generation, non-renewable electricity generation and carbon dioxide emission are solid determinants of economic development in Indonesia. Moreover, the results avow that renewable electricity and non-renewable electricity generation have a useful and beneficial outcome on economic development in Indonesia

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is the principal cause of the greenhouse effect which is due to the excessive consumption of fossil fuels. Several methods have been proposed for reducing CO₂ emissions in the atmosphere but none has been completely successful. Recently, a novel technique called the CO₂-mineralization cell (CMC) technique, based on CO₂ mineralization and utilization (CMU), was proposed by our group. This converts chemical energy from the CO₂ mineralization reaction into electricity while also producing highly valuable chemical products. However, some confusion and doubts still exist about its theoretical feasibility. Herein, a thermodynamics study and analysis of the CMC were conducted and the feasibility of generating electricity by CO₂-mineralization reaction confirmed theoretically. The corresponding theoretical electromotive force and the maximum electric energy production per 1t carbon dioxide completely consumed under standard conditions were also calculated, and their influential factors fully discussed.

Background Extracellular electron transfer (EET) is essential in improving the power generation performance of electrochemically active bacteria (EAB) in microbial fuel cells (MFCs). Currently, the EET mechanisms of dissimilatory metal-reducing (DMR) model bacteria Shewanella oneidensis and Geobacter sulfurreducens have been thoroughly studied. Klebsiella has also been proved to be an EAB capable of EET, but the EET mechanism has not been perfected. This study investigated the effects of biofilm transfer and electron mediators transfer on Klebsiella quasipneumoniae sp. 203 electricity generation performance in MFCs. Results Herein, we covered the anode of MFC with a layer of microfiltration membrane to block the effect of the biofilm mechanism, and then explore the EET of the electron mediator mechanism of K. quasipneumoniae sp. 203 and electricity generation performance. In the absence of short-range electron transfer, we found that K. quasipneumoniae sp. 203 can still produce a certain power generation performance, and coated-MFC reached 40.26 mW/m2 at a current density of 770.9 mA/m2, whereas the uncoated-MFC reached 90.69 mW/m2 at a current density of 1224.49 mA/m2. The difference in the electricity generation performance between coated-MFC and uncoated-MFC was probably due to the microfiltration membrane covered in anode, which inhibited the growth of EAB on the anode. Therefore, we speculated that K. quasipneumoniae sp. 203 can also perform EET through the biofilm mechanism. The protein content, the integrity of biofilm and the biofilm activity all proved that the difference in the electricity generation performance between coated-MFC and uncoated-MFC was due to the extremely little biomass of the anode biofilm. To further verify the effect of electron mediators on electricity generation performance of MFCs, 10 µM 2,6-DTBBQ, 2,6-DTBHQ and DHNA were added to coated-MFC and uncoated-MFC. Combining the time–voltage curve and CV curve, we found that 2,6-DTBBQ and 2,6-DTBHQ had high electrocatalytic activity toward the redox reaction of K. quasipneumoniae sp. 203-inoculated MFCs. It was also speculated that K. quasipneumoniae sp. 203 produced 2,6-DTBHQ and 2,6-DTBBQ. Conclusions To the best of our knowledge, the three modes of EET did not exist separately. K. quasipneumoniae sp.203 will adopt the corresponding electron transfer mode or multiple ways to realize EET according to the living environment to improve electricity generation performance.

Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) are considered to have higher energy efficiency and advantages to better control CO2 emissions compared to Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles (ICEVs). However, in the context that a large amount of thermal power is still used in developing countries, the CO2 emission reduction effectiveness of BEVs can be weakened or even counterproductive. To reveal the impact of the electricity generation mix on carbon emissions from vehicles, this paper compares the life cycle carbon emissions of BEVs with ICEVs considering the regional disparity of electricity generation mix in China. According to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis and regional electricity carbon intensity, this study demonstrates that BEVs in the region with high penetration of thermal power produce more CO2 emissions, while BEVs in the region with higher penetration of renewable energy have better environmental performance in carbon emission reduction. For instance, in the region with over 50% penetration of renewable energy, a BEV can reduce more CO2 (18.32 t) compared to an ICEV. Therefore, the regions with high carbon emissions from vehicles need to increase the proportion of renewable generation as a priority rather than promoting BEVs.