Massive opportunity for Africa

2015 COULD be a landmark year in the African struggle for energy and climate security.

As we approach the landmark Paris climate talks and renewable energy gets an increasingly firm foothold on the continent, it is clearer than ever that there is a profound link between three key challenges facing the continent: poverty, energy access and climate change.

Africa remains the continent struggling the most with poverty. With 621 million of Africa’s 1.2 billion people still lacking access to electricity, energy access is a significant obstacle to overcoming poverty. Meanwhile, climate change caused by the emissions from humanity’s burning of coal, oil and gas threatens to be more damaging to Africa than to any other continent.

It is understandable that, having seen the developed world apparently achieve high levels of development through the use of fossil fuels, Africans in pursuit of good and dignified livelihoods might wish to follow suit.

But as we consider how to increase energy access and end poverty without worsening climate change, it is worth remembering, as Nelson Mandela told us, that, “like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural, it is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.”

Poverty in Africa has been created by slavery, colonialism, apartheid, and it continues to be created by small elites that concentrate wealth while externalising the environmental and social costs of their business models onto ordinary people.

The use of fossil fuels has always come with a high cost, the full reckoning for which still awaits us in the form of climate change. Its other costs have included poor labour standards, air and water pollution, and the deaths they cause, land degradation, social disintegration, wars and the corruption and rent-seeking that all too often accompanies these industries – the “resource curse”. As Robert F. Kennedy Jr, observes, “Polluters make themselves rich by making everybody else poor.”

The good news is that over the past five years, a real alternative has emerged as a global energy revolution has started to take shape. It is a revolution that people are increasingly beginning to grasp – the rapid development of wind and solar energy technologies, and their fast-declining costs. This offers a massive opportunity for Africa to build its energy sector and fight poverty with much diminished external costs.

The annual fossil fuel import bill of some African countries is currently higher than the total aid they receive every year. Renewable energy represents a way for Africa to be in charge of its own energy policy.

Renewable energy is rising, contributing 60% of new power generation worldwide in 2014. Solar PV, wind and hydro together added 127 GW of new power generation capacity worldwide in 2014. As whole countries, from Scotland and Denmark to Ethiopia, set targets to go 100% renewable, the sector is proving that it can transform power generation.

In South Africa, investment in renewable energy has expanded from next to nothing in 2011 to an anticipated 7GW in 2020. Wind and solar PV are already substantially cheaper than new coal in South Africa.
                                                                    
The South African renewable energy programme has been lauded domestically and internationally, but a stable regulatory framework has not yet been created, and current caps on investments in renewable energy must be removed.

Worldwide experience shows that renewable energy creates significantly more jobs than coal. We already see this in countries like the US. Research indicates a probable 25% global jobs increase in the energy sector by 2020 and a 60% increase by 2025.

These new jobs and opportunities will help young Africans find ways out of poverty and dependency. This is the fight for a second independence for African countries. A 100% renewable energy future is the only way Africa can start taking its own destiny into its own hands, not only economically but also politically.

Because renewable energy is decentralised, it helps greatly with local and regional development, bringing new life to struggling rural economies. When these factors are combined with community ownership, the advantages of renewable energy for ordinary people are overwhelming.

In countries like Mali, where more than 70% of the population lives off the grid, off-grid renewable energy systems are the only sustainable way to help them, at a lower price than they are used to.

If the increased use of cleaner energy technology brings with it increased economic benefits, then it stands to reason that the more we turn to renewable energy, the more benefits we will see, which is why we are advocating that Africa (even South Africa, with its currently intensively coal-based economy) should pursue a goal of 100% renewable energy by as close to 2050 as possible. The transition is urgent if we are to avoid catastrophic levels of climate change.

We bring different experience, but equal conviction to this assertion. One of us, Naidoo, heads Greenpeace, known for fighting for environmental and social justice around the world, but which also produces some of the more accurate research and forecasting around renewable energy development.

Greenpeace research shows that the additional investment needed for renewable energy will be more than covered by savings in future fuel costs. Until 2050, we need around $1trn a year invested in renewables. But because renewables don’t need fuel, the savings over the same period are $1.07trn a year.

The other author of this article, Togola, has substantial direct experience of building the clean energy sector in Mali. His organisation, Mali-Folkecenter Nyetaa (MFC), has over 16 years helped over 800 000 people in the rural areas of Mali with solar home systems for schools, public solar lanterns, solar light and refrigeration for rural clinics, biofuels solutions to power local mini-grids, and solar hybrid mini-grids. Togola is working on a 33MW grid-connected solar plant that will contribute 6% of the electricity generated in Mali.

Those who call off-grid renewable energy systems “second-class” have not seen the socio-economic impacts of off-grid renewable energy systems in the rural areas of Africa, leapfrogging conventional systems just as mobile telephony leapfrogged the installation of fixed line telecoms. Off-grid systems can create local jobs and foster entrepreneurship at a price lower than conventional systems.

We’re not the only ones arguing for this transition. Kofi Annan’s Africa Progress Panel is also calling for Africa to lead the global transition to cleaner energy, leapfrogging fossil fuels and moving straight to low-carbon sources of power. The panel holds the view that “the argument that coal holds the key to eliminating Africa’s energy poverty combines implausible economics with unsubstantiated evidence.”

Other developing countries are already making this transition from fossil fuels. China is the world’s leader in installed wind and solar energy, it is closing coal power plants and will close over 1 000 coal mines in 2015; India hopes to become the “renewable energy capital of the world”.

Be it wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, or biomass, every African country has a renewable energy source that can power all of its current and future needs. Why wait any longer?

* Kumi Naidoo is the international executive director of Greenpeace. Ibrahim Togola is the founder of Mali Folkecentre Nyetaa and an ambassador for global 100% renewable.