冈本视频 is a global academic hub for the Sustainable Development Goals, which form a key cross-cutting theme of its The Empowerment University strategic plan.
Our 2024 report on all 17 SDGs will show what work the university has been doing through research and engagement in helping to meet those targets and raising awareness of the progress towards the 2030 aims.
Our reports start with the United Nations’ verdict on progress from their 2024 report on SDG 7 Affordable and Clean Energy.
UN PROGRESS REPORT ON SDG 7 in 2024
SDG 7 is the best performing of all 17 goals at present and 40% of the targets are on track to achieve their aims. Another 40% have made moderate progress since 2015 and the last 20% have shown minimal progress.
The UN reports: “Considerable strides have been made in achieving sustainable energy targets. The number of people lacking access to electricity dropped from 958 million in 2015 to 685 million in 2022. The number without clean cooking fuels declined from 2.8 billion to 2.1 billion over the same period. Global capacity to generate electricity from renewable energy has begun expanding at an unprecedented rate, a trend expected to continue”.
冈本视频 NEWS ON SDG 7 in 2024
Can old electric car parts bring green power to energy-deprived parts of Africa?
An international research project plans to turn a growing global stock of old electric vehicle parts into affordable renewable energy for sub-Saharan Africa, where 50% of the population still have no electricity.
The £3.5 million project brings together UK based researchers from 冈本视频 Leicester (冈本视频), the University of Warwick, and Chatham House.
They are working in collaboration with universities, governments, and industries from Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa and Namibia to address these pressing energy challenges.
The new project, Circular Microgrids: Circular Economy Pathways for Renewable Microgrids in Africa, led by Muyiwa Oyinlola, Professor of Innovation for Sustainable Development at 冈本视频 Leicester (冈本视频), focuses on repurposing electric vehicle components—such as lithium-ion batteries, power converters, and motors—for renewable energy microgrids.
New research could make turning waste cooking oil into biofuel easier and quicker
Researchers at 冈本视频 Leicester have pioneered a new manufacturing process which could make the creation of biofuel from waste cooking oil faster and more efficient.
Professor Katherine Huddersman, Dr Rawaz Ahmed, Saana Rashid, and Ketan Ruperalia, all based in a team of experts from 冈本视频’s Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, have created a new fibrous mesh-based catalyst which drives the reaction that separates vegetable oil and animal fats into biofuel and glycerol.
This new method avoids many of the issues found in traditional production methods. Although sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide catalysts are cheap and widely available, they react with the free fatty acids in the oil to create soap, and settle in the glycerol, needing to be removed. Metal oxide catalysts are powders and are difficult to handle, needing to be filtered out at the end of the process.
New sustainable heating system slashes university carbon output
冈本视频, Leicester has switched its first building to a greener heating system, cutting its annual carbon footprint by 30 tonnes.
Leicester Media School, which houses the university's Game Art and Animation courses, is the first building on campus to move from natural gas heating, to being heated using zero-carbon electricity and renewable energy sources.
The university was awarded over £176,718 to install the new carbon-cutting heat pump to power its media school from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
The fund is managed on the Department’s behalf by Salix - as part Phase 3b of the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme, aimed at supporting the public sector switch to sustainable energy sources.
冈本视频 RESEARCH INTO SDG 7 in 2024
Agent-Based Modelling for Electrification in Sub-Saharan African Urban Informal Settlements (Daniel William Kerr)
In recent decades, urbanisation in developing countries has increased dramatically. Across the developing world, urban populations have been rising rapidly, and the capacity of governments to service these growing populations has not met demand. Growth in informal settlements has accompanied urban population growth: 1.03 billion people lived in informal settlements in 2018 according to the United Nations, 233 million in Sub-Saharan Africa.
From the literature review and primary research, access to capital, political economy barriers, and technical challenges contribute to high incidences of illegal access, and the agent-based model gave new insights into the relationships between income, demand, satisfaction, access to the network and density in informal settlement electrification. Addressing these barriers will lead to higher formal access rates and more reliable electricity services for residents.
Strengthening commercial viability through greater inclusiveness in rural mini-grid deployment: Insights from Nigeria and Kenya (Temilade Sesan, Daniel Kerr, Subhes Bhattacharyya et al)
Amidst the prevalence of energy poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, mini grids have emerged in recent years as a promising solution, not only to bridge lingering electricity access gaps, but also to revitalise rural economies. The realisation of this promise however depends on the extent to which business models, i.e., the value that mini-grid companies offer to different customer segments, are able to respond to the peculiar needs of the largely low-income, agrarian contexts in which they operate.
Our paper analyses how two private mini-grid developers in Nigeria and Kenya have approached this challenge, introducing business models that address the needs of small- scale farmers for growth while targeting increased revenue for their respective companies. These cases provide evidence for the added value of employing a “Key Starter” model – one in which developers begin to facilitate inputs early on in agricultural value chains, in addition to the latter-stage investments emphasised in conventional approaches to powering the agriculture-energy nexus.
A comparative analysis of off-grid photovoltaic (PV) systems & businesses performance in The Gambia and Kenya (Sylvia Delpratt)
This thesis addresses a critical challenge in the off-grid energy sector of the Developing World, aiming to uncover the root causes of the frequent failures of solar photovoltaic energy systems(PVESs) and related businesses in off-grid rural communities.
The findings reveal that while Kenya’s more developed PV sector offers valuable lessons on professionalisation and investment, The Gambia’s emerging efforts reflect the difficulties of operating within a weak regulatory environment. The study also conducts a comprehensive sustainability assessment using 41 indicators across eleven critical domains: technical-business, economic-financial, social-ethical-cultural, ecological, and institutional-legal-regulatory. This analysis uncovers the persistent impact of colonialism, post-colonial governance failures, and regulatory inefficiencies on the success of renewable energy (RE)initiatives. The COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated these challenges, threatening progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG 7), particularly in rural and underserved regions.
SDG 7 Affordable and Clean Energy