Africa must embrace renewable energy and give up exploring its potentially lucrative gas fields to avert a climate disaster and give access to clean energy to the hundreds of millions that are missing, the continent’s leading experts have said.
His call came when UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that exploring gas and oil anywhere in the world would be “delusional”.
Several African leaders are considering boosting new exploration investment as gas prices around the world rise. Some European countries are also eager to offer this investment to replace Russian supplies.
Last week, Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, UN Commissioner for Human Rights and UN Climate Envoy, sparked controversy when she supported an expansion, saying African countries should exploit their gas reserves.
He said the gas should be used on the continent for clean cooking and power generation for the 600 million people who did not have access to energy and the 900 million who cooked with biomass or crude oil, instead of exporting with profits.
Mohamed Adow, director of the Power Shift Africa think tank and winner of the Climate Breakthrough 2020 award, said Robinson was wrong.
“In order for Africans to achieve the dignified life that access to energy should entail, we cannot rely on the failed system of the last 200 years. We must make a leap in our thinking and invest in energy systems. distributed renewable energy that does not poison our rivers, pollutes the air, suffocates the lungs and does not benefit only a few, “he told the Guardian.
Distinguishing between the voices of West and Africa, he said: “Climate justice advocates who really live in Africa are very clear that we want access to energy for all, but equally we don’t want to block the climate catastrophe for everyone. “
He was joined by Nnimmo Bassey, the director of the Mother Earth Health Foundation in Nigeria. “Decades of oil and gas extraction on the continent have fueled foreign markets and only darkened the water, generated violence and left people in the cold and darkness,” he said, highlighting Nigeria’s experience. Niger Delta and Mozambique. , characterized by pollution and the exploitation of a few while the local population remained impoverished.
He accused political leaders of ignoring these concerns: “Unfortunately, African politicians acting as intermediaries for transnational corporations are happy to repeat this song despite local resistance and the realities of ecocide in fossil fuel fields.” .
Omar Elmawi, coordinator of the StopEACOP campaign in East Africa, said: “Decades after fossil fuels explode in Africa, we still need to improve energy poverty and countries have continued to drown in loans unsustainable due to the promise of fossil fuel revenues.
“Corporations registered in the global north have continued to benefit from these crude fossil fuels in Africa and we are left with only the impacts on our people, nature and climate.”
The issue of gas in Africa is likely to be a turning point at this week’s UN Cop27 climate summit in Egypt. Robinson’s views, first expressed in an interview with The Guardian, sparked a dispute over UN climate talks in Bonn, where countries have held meetings for the past 15 days in negotiations to prepare for the Cop27.
Several African countries are believed to want to use Cop27 to argue for the continent to exploit its gas, taking advantage of the fossil fuel boom that has followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Egypt is in solidarity with Finance Minister Mohamed Maait, who recently told a hearing in the City of London that poor countries should not be “punished”.
However, Guterres made it clear in a speech Tuesday morning at the Austrian World Summit in Vienna that no new fossil fuel should receive investment.
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He said: “The new funding for fossil fuel exploration and production infrastructure is delusional. It will only further fuel the scourge of war, pollution and climate catastrophe. The only true path to energy security, stable energy prices, prosperity and a livable planet is abandoning polluting fossil fuels, especially coal, and accelerating the energy transition based on renewables. “
He did not specifically address Africa, but said the continent was included, adding: “Renewables are the peace plan of the 21st century. There are already cheaper, more reliable and fairer energy options in the form of wind energy. and this is true for all regions. “
He called for tripling investment in renewable energy, the elimination of bureaucracy that blocked wind and solar projects, and more of the underlying technology to be made available for use in poor countries through the exchange of intellectual property known as technology transfer.