Thesis supervisor:
In cities in sub-Saharan Africa, where the average rate of access to electricity is 60% to 70%, ensuring access to electricity for all remains a challenge. In this context, the development of the "large centralized grid," a priority for public authorities, and the proliferation of decentralized solutions, such as solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, are leading to hybrid urban electrical configurations. The thesis starts from this observation, the consequences of which for electrification policies and urban energy transition are still poorly assessed, and aims to test the hypothesis of a forced adaptation of national electrical systems in cities with high demographic and economic growth.
At the crossroads of work from Transition Studies, urban political ecology, and energy justice, it develops three areas of research. The first analyzes how electrical hybridization is concretely embodied in urban systems (technologies, actors, scales, territories, market mechanisms, regulatory and policy frameworks, etc.). The second explores whether and how forms of governance of this hybridization are emerging and focuses on the socio-technical representations and imaginaries that inspire them. The third questions how the rise of solar PV is shaped by urban socio-environmental inequalities and in turn impacts them, while also leading to a de facto redefinition of an essential service.
Focusing on the socio-technical interfaces between decentralized solutions and large networks as "sites" for observing the transformations at work, the methodology is based on a detailed inventory and mapping of the diversity of solar PV urbanization modes, an analysis of the evolution of legislative and regulatory frameworks, and a study of actual practices in the installation and use of hybrid electricity access devices. Attentive to the power relations that shape these interfaces and the inequalities they generate, it also draws on tools for analyzing the discourses and representations that accompany and influence the transformations at work. The primary field of investigation is the Dakar region in Senegal. This case study will then be put into perspective with other urban contexts on the continent.
Year of enrollment: 2023
Doctoral school: City, Transportation, and Territories (VTT)