LEVERAGING FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION TECHNOLOGIES AND DESIGNS FOR REALISING ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND ENERGY SECURITY IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

The human capacity challenges faced by developing countries regarding energy efficiency and energy security projects will take longer in comparison to obtaining financing and unfortunately cannot be developed overnight. Depending on the extent of the implementation of new technologies (within a specific organisation or the national energy generation scheme of a developing country), changing to technologies that are new to the operating environment may pose a hurdle to implementation due to the business, safety or operational risks that the technical unknowns may present. Another challenge with renewable energy is its intermittency and space requirements which call for energy storage and land availability. Energy storage technology, although has made significant progress requires greater efficiency for attractive payback periods. This makes many renewable energy projects unfeasible. Renewable energy is unlikely to be adopted on a large scale due to it not being able to efficiently serve customers' needs. Energy demand naturally has peaks and troughs according to human and economic activities and requiring a baseload energy capacity, which makes energy generation a challenging and costly task, especially with renewable energy. These challenges ca n be speeded up through innovative thinking and the use of instruments arising from the fourth industrial revolution. This paper presents an approach to leveraging the instruments of the fourth industrial revolution to overcome the challenges faced by developing countries in adopting energy efficiency and making provisions for their energy security.