COP27 At Sharm El Sheikh: Africa’s Chance to Break from Climate Colonialism
Reposted from Forbes
Tilak Doshi
I analyze energy economics and related public policy issues.
How refreshing! Africa’s top energy official, Amani Abou-Zeid, the African Union Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy, said earlier this month that African countries will use the UN’s COP27 climate talks in Egypt next month to advocate for “a common energy position that sees fossil fuels as necessary to expanding economies and electricity access”. No longer can it be taken for granted that countries in sub-Saharan Africa – where 600 million people lack access to electricity and use fuelwood and charcoal for cooking and heating indoors with horrendous impacts on respiratory health and mortality — will follow the International Energy Agency’s and the World Bank’s policy advice on pursuing renewable energy which is best described as magical thinking.
Shun fossil fuels, African policy makers are told, since the wind and the sun will power the continent’s quest for industrial development and higher standards of living. This policy advice is backed by coercion via vetoes in public finance and investment in fossil fuel projects by multilateral development agencies including the World Bank. But there is every hope that African countries, like China and India, will not be thwarted in their climb up the very same energy ladder from wood and coal to refined oil and natural gas derivatives that the West used in its ascent to human betterment.
Africa Awakening
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/10/31/cop27-at-sharm-el-sheikh-africas-chance-to-break-from-climate-colonialism/