REPORTS

Liberia is a country of 5.56 million people with about a third of its population living within an 80-kilometer radius of the capital, Monrovia, while the rest is dispersed across 14,000 settlements throughout the country’s 111,000 square kilometers. This makes distributed renewable energy (DRE) the cost-effective solution for many of the settlements outside Monrovia. This National Energy Compact for Liberia aims to accelerate the pace of electricity to 100,000 households per year through grid and off-grid options to achieve a national access rate of 75 percent by 2030 and to develop a national clean cooking strategy to identify the baseline and targets for increasing access to clean cooking solutions. Liberia is committed to increasing its share of renewable energy to 75 percent from the current 67 percent, while the generation base is expected to increase by 150 percent. Liberia aims to mobilize US$70 million of private capital for utility-scale solar and another US$80–100 million for DRE and clean cooking. To achieve these ambitious targets, a time-bound and realistic action plan is included in the Compact. The action plan outlines the various reform actions to be taken across five pillars: (1) rehabilitating and expanding power generation, transmission, and distribution network infrastructure at competitive costs; (2) leveraging the benefits of increased regional integration; (3) embracing DRE and clean cooking solutions as critical elements of the access agenda; (4) incentivizing private-sector participation to unlock additional resources; and (5) ensuring financially viable utilities that prioritize energy security and provide affordable, reliable, inclusive, sustainable, and clean energy.

The development of this National Energy Compact has been enriched by multiple consultative sessions of the technical working group, feedback from the heads of entities and ministries, and engagement with development partners, the private sector, including industry associations, as well as civil society. These collaborative efforts have been instrumental in shaping the strategic direction and ensuring the alignment of objectives with the broader development goals. Recognizing that success requires capacity-building and considerable collective efforts, the government of Liberia calls on development partners, philanthropies, the private sector, and civil society to join this transformative journey in accelerating the pace of access to energy and help in mobilizing US$1.25 billion in financing, including about US$150 million from the private sector. The government is committed to implementing the action plan included in the Compact to address the bottlenecks across the energy value chain and to help mobilize the necessary financing to provide reliable, affordable, inclusive, sustainable, and clean energy and contribute to the economic growth and development of the country and the region