Today,
headlines like “Africa Rising” and “Africa Ascending” are often used
around the world to describe the unprecedented transformation and steady
economic growth on the continent. Over the past 12 months, I have
attended several conferences in Africa and other parts of the world
where this theme has been sounded. The promising economic prospects for
sub-Saharan Africa is also highlighted in the Africa Progress Panel
2014 report titled, Grain, Fish Money – Financing Africa’s Green and Blue Revolutions.
But, this should come as no surprise, since in recent years, six of
the world’s fastest growing economies are in sub-Saharan Africa. In
spite of the positive economic news, currently 74% of the population has
no access to electricity, and should the current trend continue, over
800 million people could still be without access to power in the next
sixteen years. At the same time, its fast growing population is
projected to exceed 1.5 billion people by 2030. Yet, it is well-known
that to fuel economic growth and meet the growing consumption will
require significant increase in access to energy. This must be done
using ways and means that are both environmentally and financially
sustainable.
Africa has vast and largely untapped endowment of renewables and is
now seeing greater interest in using hydro, solar, wind, and geothermal
to address the vexing problem of lack of access to electricity. In
Chapter 3 of Renewable Energy Integration,
“Harnessing and Integrating Africa’s Renewable Energy Resources,”,
Ijeoma Onyeji provides a thorough discussion of the continent’s
renewable landscape, and the potential challenges and the opportunities
of tapping clean energy resources. Whether grid connected or off-grid
systems, appropriate long-term policies along with adequate investment
in infrastructure and human capacity are vital to harnessing the
renewable energy in African countries.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the African
Development Bank, the World Bank, the United Nations Sustainable Energy
for All (SE4ALL), and other organizations, tens of billions of dollars
will be needed annually to address Africa’s energy access challenges.
Some estimate that at least $93 billion per year is required over the
next decade.
Leaders of African countries and their bilateral partners realize the
urgency to close investment gaps and have made energy a top development
priority. For example, U.S. President Barack Obama last year launched a
public-private sector initiative called Power Africa
which aims to catalyze investments to support energy projects that will
result in increasing energy access for 20 million people in sub-Saharan
Africa. Power Africa will use various mechanisms to help accelerate the
completion of transactions on the continent so that actual power
projects can be implemented. This effort and other programs related to
promoting investments in Africa’s energy infrastructure are expected to
be discussed at the US-Africa Leaders Summit this week in Washington,
DC. Heads of State from nearly all Africa countries will meet President
Obama as well as other leaders from the U.S. Government and the private
sector.
With 40% of Africa’s population living in rural areas by 2030, it is
clear that centralized power stations connected to the grid will not be
adequate nor economically feasible for providing universal and
sustainable energy access to the millions of people in rural parts of
the continent. It is therefore important to point out that Power Africa
will not only focus on centralized power stations and the grid.
Instead, the U.S. Secretary of Energy Dr. Ernest Moniz recently launched
a new framework under Power Africa called “Beyond the Grid”. It will
leverage over $1 billon of commitment from the private sector into
off-grid and small scale energy solutions for underserved mostly in
rural communities of Africa.
In addition to the U.S. led efforts, governments in Africa are being
flooded with project proposals from foreign and domestic investors
seeking to cash in on Africa’s new energy bonanza. Partly fueling this
bonanza is the fact that several countries are putting greater emphasis
on how to best harness their abundant renewable resources. Investors are
being attracted, in part, due to improved regulatory environment and
policy incentives in countries such as Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya,
Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Zambia.
So, in light of the above, could Africa be the global epicenter of renewable energy by 2030?
Today, providing the essential electrical energy services, e.g.
lighting, water, food, refrigeration, mobile communication, internet
access, is getting more affordable with renewables compared to the use
of other conventional fuels. For example, lighting systems based on
kerosene cost $4-$15 per month compared to $2 per month for solar
lighting system. Also, continued advances in renewable technologies,
costs reductions, improvements in the experience curve, and the adoption
of successful business and best practice regulatory models could
certainly spur faster growth as renewables are deployed to meet the
needs of hundreds of millions of people in Africa.
Unlike most industrialized countries and other emerging markets, many
countries in sub-Saharan Africa have a unique opportunity to leverage
leapfrog technologies as well as state-of-the art regulatory models when
making decisions about the development of their energy sector. For
example, providing universal access to hundreds of millions of people in
rural communities using off-grid renewable solutions including mini-
and micro-grids will create investment opportunities which drive the
penetration of renewables. Advances in sensors and other metering
technologies are proving to be viable solutions for ensuring revenue
adequacy and financial solvency of utilities. For example, sensors and
controls can be embedded in the distributed renewable energy solutions
like solar PV. This will allow the energy service providers to collect
revenue, but also help consumers manage their energy usage.
By 2030, the majority of the remaining 60% of Africa’s population in
urban communities will expect to get their electricity services from
grid-connected power stations. Even in this scenario, renewable energy
could play an important role. In several African countries, e.g. Ghana,
Ethiopia, South Africa, large utility scale wind and solar plants are
already being connected to the grid. Renewable Energy Integration
deals with many of the salient issues and provides practical case
studies from other utilities about managing variability, uncertainty,
and flexibility associated with renewables. In Chapter 31, “Managing
Operational Uncertainty through Improved Visualization Tools in Control
Centers,” Richard Candy presents a case study from South Africa.
Africa’s large renewable potential such as the Grand Inga Hydro, and
other large wind and solar plants will be better harnessed by making the
different regional energy market work. Experiences from functioning
electricity markets in other parts of world where renewables have been
integrated between countries and across multiple regions can help Africa
regional power pools design efficient markets. Regional integration
also requires investments in power grid infrastructures, i.e. smart grid
technologies, High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC), and Flexible
Alternating Current Transmission Systems (FACTS).
An important aspect of successful markets is unbundling of
generation, transmission, and distribution. As African countries like
Nigeria, Ghana move to unbundle and privatize their power generation and
distribution sectors, they should consider the use of service- or
performance-based regulatory models instead of traditional cost recovery
mechanism based on volumetric sale of energy. Such models in which a
myriad of energy-related services can be appropriately monetized have
the potential to provide for a more flexible business environment that
will benefit both the utility (large or small energy entrepreneur) and
the consumer (grid or off-grid).
Indeed, Africa does have the potential to become the global epicenter
for renewable energy by 2030 in ways that are financially and
environmentally sustainable. The need to provide 800 million people
access to electricity is gargantuan, and the market opportunities
tremendous. However, this will largely depend on the decisions made by
African governments, who must take the long-term view as they prepare
and execute their energy roadmap to 2030 and beyond.
Last and perhaps most important, African governments must accelerate
the development of human capital, including tapping into the vast amount
of expertise in the diaspora, in order to properly leverage the flood
of investments to build and maintain its energy infrastructure. Africa
must then begin to use that energy to produce more value-added products
and services for domestic, regional, and international markets.
Twenty Things YOU Can Do To Address the Climate Crisis!
by Patrick Robbins
Getting your mind around climate
change is hard. Confronting it requires us to deal with the ways that
coal, oil, and gas have shaped nearly every aspect of our world, from
our built environments to our economic systems — even our ideologies and
patterns of thought. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t concrete
actions each of us can take, right now. Here are 20 examples of things
YOU can do (some details are US-specific).
1. Reorganize the mode of production so that surplus and capital is distributed equally throughout society, and workers have decision-making power over their labor.
3. Understand that while climate change
affects us all, there are specific populations who are more vulnerable
than others — these are low-income communities, communities of color,
coastal communities and communities on the frontlines of fossil fuel
extraction. Find a frontline organization near you and offer to support
their work. Ask them what kind of help they need and take direction from
them.
4. Lay off the policeman, the commodities trader, the real estate agent and the speculator in your head.
5. Read about what the crisis could potentially look like — go HERE or HERE or HERE or HERE or HERE — and think about what this could mean for you personally, or for people and places you love.
6. After you’ve read about the crisis,
let yourself feel grief. Don’t ignore your feelings, either through
resignation or through forced optimism. Feel what you feel.
7. Talk about your feelings with your
family and friends. Talk about what matters to you, about what the
climate crisis threatens in your life. And when they are ready, talk
with them about taking action. You will learn things that you didn’t
know about your loved ones, and you will discover allies in unexpected
places.
8. Find out if your local politicians
have ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Call out
any politician that participates in or is a member of groups designed to
give corporations the power to write the law.
9. Become an active voice in your
community, writing letters to the editor in local papers and building an
internet presence to spread information.
10. Do not fall into the trap of feeling
contempt for your fellow human. These feelings are guaranteed to
undercut your work. If you encounter resistance, consider carefully
where that resistance comes from. Radical empathy is not only good for
the soul, it will actually make you a more effective activist.
11. Look in the mirror. Do you see
someone with job security? Someone who is in a position of privilege
within your society? Think about how you can use this privilege to
destroy the systems that created it — for instance, you may have less to
lose than others by getting arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience.
12. Stay awake — there are allkindsof
great resources for staying up-to-date about the climate crisis, and
the more you know, the better you will be able to understand this
moment.
13. Buildresilience —
support spaces that are growing food, going off-the-grid, or
supplanting the capitalist state in providing for our basic human needs.
If you are able to do so, consider building these spaces yourself.
14. Don’t blame the poor — don’t blame
the worker whose industry job is the only job he could get, don’t blame
the woman who buys carbon-intensive food for her family because that’s
all that her budget and her neighborhood has to offer, don’t blame the
big family in the developing world that doesn’t have access to family
planning. The poor are not the problem. If you need to blame anyone,
blame the ruling class that controls the options available to poor
people in the US and around the world, and whose policies, consumption
habits and ideology are far, far more responsible for the crisis.
15. Again — don’t blame the poor. Seriously.
16. Walk by yourself at night under the
dark sky. Recognize that you only have one life, that you have more
power than you realize, and that there is a grace and a joy that comes
from using that power for something bigger than yourself.
17. Recognize that the climate crisis is
complicated — no one person is going to solve it by themselves, and any
“list” that suggests as much is probably lying, or at the very least
advancing an individual-based value system that sounds suspiciously like
advertising.
18. Go ahead and make changes to your
consumption habits. But also remember that no slave was ever freed by
individuals choosing to purchase products that are free from slave
labor.
19. Truly addressing the crisis will require building people power on a scale that the world has never seen before.
20. Build that power. I wish you so much more than luck.
Patrick Robbins is a writer, researcher and activist based in Brooklyn. He is currently working with Sane Energy Project toward the goal of an entirely renewable New York, and was an active member of Occupy The Pipeline from 2012 to 2014.
California has officially entered its fourth consecutive year of drought, and is trapped in its worst water shortage situation ever.
Because we know that human-caused climate change can trigger and exacerbate drought conditions,
media, public officials, California residents and scientists have all
been wondering for years if rising global temperatures likely caused or
contributed to the current drought in California.
The short answer: Yes, they did.
Weather won’t cooperate
Scientists have suspected for some time now
that a certain meteorological condition lies behind the long-lasting
California drought. The persistence of a stubborn high-pressure system
off the coast has been preventing storm systems from reaching California
and instead deflecting them to Alaska and elsewhere.
While weather events are almost always
multi-causal, the California drought is largely a result of this
atmospheric weather pattern. The question is whether climate change has
influenced the development, or sustenance, of this system.
Stanford scientists connected the dots
When destructive event happen, people want to
know right then and there what’s going on— whether it’s an epidemic,
riot or weather disaster.
But evaluating an extreme weather event for
climate change influences is a scientific process that takes several
months of computer simulations and statistical techniques. It can
frustrate some who demand an answer right away.
Well, the results from several, month-long studies are finally in. Scientists from Stanford have
found that the meteorological conditions that have caused the
California drought are far more likely to occur in today’s warming world
than in one without human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases.
It shows us – ironically and tragically – that the state that leads the nation in curbing greenhouse gas emissions is right now suffering more than any other from climate change.
California is not alone
The California drought attribution studies are a subset of alarger collection of recently published studies that explain 16 extreme weather and climate events of 2013.
Twenty research teams explored the causes of
events such as heat waves in Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Japan,
China, and Europe; torrential downpours in Colorado and India, a
blizzard in South Dakota, and a cold spell in the United Kingdom.
The studies overwhelmingly indicated that all heat waves were largely attributable to human-caused climate change. One study even suggested that the heat wave in Korea has been made 10 times more likely due to human influence.
The extreme rainfall events in India were
concluded to have been more likely in a human-influenced world, but data
for assessing precipitation events is rather limited as compared to
heat haves. Further, studies concluded that the extreme rainfall event
in Colorado, the blizzard in South Dakota, and the cold spell in the
U.K. were unlikely to have been influenced by climate change.
Climate change is happening. Now.
So for anyone who may still think that the
consequences of climate change are in the distant future, this
collection of studies suggest that human-caused climate change is right
now causing a crisis in America’s most populous state and the world’s
eighth largest economy.
California reminds us that climate change is a
major concern for societies everywhere, and that all nations are
vulnerable to extreme weather events. It’s time we roll up our sleeves
and stop this, once and for all.
Ilissa Ocko helps EDF and the Office of
Chief Scientist with anything concerning climate change. Ilissa’s main
focus is helping EDF prioritize black carbon mitigation efforts based on
the best available science. This article is republished with permission from EDF.
UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon addresses participants at 2014 Climate Summit in New York City.
Andrew Burton/Getty Image News
World leadership is gathering starting
September 23 for the UN Climate Summit 2014. In addition to government
officials, leaders of the private sector and nongovernmental
organizations are invited to the United Nations Headquarters. The goal
of this meeting is to provide a venue for participants to announce
concrete plans towards greenhouse gas emission reductions and other solutions to the global climate change problem.
In the words of the United Nations’ Secretary’s office, “the Climate
Summit will be about action and solutions that are focused on
accelerating progress in areas that can significantly contribute to
reducing emissions and strengthening resilience – such as agriculture,
cities, energy, financing, forests, pollutants, resilience and
transportation.”
No negotiations about the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
are expected at this meeting, yet it should be more than a roadside
show. There is a lot of hope focused on the 2015 Paris Climate Change
Conference, where leaders need to agree on a renewed, meaningful climate
commitment following the expiration of the Kyoto Protocol.
The 2014 UN Climate Summit in New York is seen as an important
milestone, providing an opportunity for participants to diplomatically
smooth out differences and forge alliances ahead of the Paris meeting.
An estimated 125 heads of state are expected to attend. Notably,
the Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper declined to attend the
summit. He delegated the task instead to Environment Minister Leona
Aglukkaq.
On Sunday September 21, two days before the conference began, the People's Climate March united over 300,000 in New York city for the largest climate march in history. Source
United Nations. Climate Summit 2014.
Today,
headlines like “Africa Rising” and “Africa Ascending” are often used
around the world to describe the unprecedented transformation and steady
economic growth on the continent. Over the past 12 months, I have
attended several conferences in Africa and other parts of the world
where this theme has been sounded. The promising economic prospects for
sub-Saharan Africa is also highlighted in the Africa Progress Panel
2014 report titled, Grain, Fish Money – Financing Africa’s Green and Blue Revolutions. 
