Don’t Gas Africa

Since our fights for independence, Africa has spent decades and billions investing in fossil-fuelled energy systems that have failed to provide modern energy access to 600 million people, about half of the continent’s population.

Expanding this centralised infrastructure is costly, inefficient and unviable as a way of providing universal energy access, particularly poor and rural communities. It would mis-allocate scarce resources, lock Africa into obsolete energy technologies and systems, and delay the provision of universal energy access to hundreds of millions of people through renewable energy.

“Energy transition” is a transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy. The long-term utilisation of fossil fuels is not an “energy transition”. Africa needs a rapid energy transition away from fossil fuels to cleaner, cheaper, lower-emissions, renewable energy sources. Globally, renewable energy offers the technical potential to produce more than 100 times the world’s energy needs by 2050.

Africa is a renewable energy superpower, with greater capacity than any other continent. IRENA confirms over 60% per cent of total renewable power generation added last year had lower costs than the cheapest new fossil fuel option”. Africa must transition rapidly away from harmful fossil fuels towards a transformed energy system that is clean, renewable, democratic and actually serves its peoples.

The latest report of the IPCC highlights the risk of stranded fossil fuel assets, which due to their lengthy lifetimes will lock humanity into “carbon-intensive lifestyles and practices for many decades.”

According to Carbon Tracker, “fossil fuel-reliant countries could see a drop of 51% in government oil and gas revenues in a shift to a low-carbon world over the next two decades”.

It states that “compared with industry expectations, government revenues in these countries could be $9 trillion lower over the next two decades under a low-carbon scenario.

A recent report by the Natural Resources Governance Institute notes that if “national oil companies follow their current course, they will invest more than $400 billion in costly oil and gas projects that will only break even if humanity exceeds its emissions targets and allows the global temperature to rise more than 2°C”.

Ratings agencies, such as Fitch, have recently announced that climate change “stranded assets” could cause substantial falls in exporter’s sovereign credit ratings, increasing their challenge in servicing existing debts. In Africa, stranded assets have been identified by the UN University as presenting “a very real threat” to Africa’s development.

As noted recently by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, “fossil fuels are a dead end – for our planet, for humanity, and for economies. A prompt, well-managed transition to renewables is the only pathway to energy security, universal access, and the green jobs our world needs.”46

The Committees’ focus on fossil fuels in the short-, medium- and long-term risks misuising scarce African and international resources, and may undermine rather than advance Africa’s energy and development goals.

Building new renewable energy has become cheaper than running existing fossil fuel plants. According to Bloomberg, it is “now cheaper to build and operate new large-scale wind or solar plants in nearly half the world than it would be to run an existing coal or gas-fired power plant”.

Renewable energy becomes even more cost-effective when the additional costs of extracting, transporting and refining fossil fuels, and of building new coal or gas-fired power plants, and of building the large-scale transmission systems required to distribute the energy, is taken into account. And even more cost-effective when the costs of adapting to the adverse climate impacts of fossil fuels are taken into account.

Building extensive new fossil fuel infrastructure is simply not an economically sound path forward for Africa. While investments into infrastructure to develop fossil fuel reserves for export may benefit European countries and certain vested interests in Africa, it is not credible as a vehicle for advancing Africa’s development goals as set out in Agenda 2063, nor does it make sense as a cost-effective means to address energy access, or to undertake an energy transition.

A focus on fossil fuels in the short-, medium-, and long-term risks locking-in fossil fuel infrastructure, while delaying and undermining the development of energy systems that are more suited to Africa’s energy access and transition agenda.

It is widely recognised that “The lack of lock-in to centralized and expensive fossil fuel grids in most regions in Africa provides a significant opportunity to leapfrog directly to more advanced and more affordable renewable energy technologies, a transition that will be more costly on other continents”.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) confirms that “improved reliability, rapidly falling technology costs and supportive policies have made stand-alone and mini-grid renewable electricity solutions viable for the 80% of those without access in rural areas”.

“One of the most compelling arguments for off-grid solutions is that they are decentralised, and because project development activities occur locally, job creation is also localised,” it says.

In contrast to this, the African Union technical paper seems to draw on an orthodox and outmoded understanding of energy technologies and production to justify continued reliance on centralised energy systems, such as fossil fuels and nuclear, and to call for “regional integration to create large markets for energy services”.

While substantial upgrades in electricity grids and connectivity will play an important role, the objective should be providing energy access and delivering energy to productive sectors, rather than creating large energy markets per-se, which are more prone to rent-seeking, oligopoly control and capture by vested interests.

The Committee’s continued focus on fossil fuels and centralised energy infrastructure risks misdirecting attention and finance towards fossil fuels rather than towards renewable energy sources that are more consistent with achieving Africa’s energy access and transition agenda.

Because of their high level of integration, centralised energy systems are vulnerable to a variety of shocks and disruptions across the supply chain.

Investing further in centralised systems – including those based on fossil fuels and nuclear energy – is likely to further compromise the resilience of Africa’s energy systems when compared with systems based on renewable energy, which are typically less dependent on a centralised energy supply, extended and incomplete transmission systems, and other infrastructure, and are consequently less at risk of operational disruptions and natural shocks such as extreme weather, storms, extreme heat, fires and floods.

As noted by IRENA, “renewable energy technologies are deployed in a distributed, modular fashion, making them less prone to large-scale failure. This brings advantages during severe weather events or complex emergencies, as such technologies can be rolled out quickly wherever needed, getting electricity to people without complex and time-consuming infrastructure development.”

Faced with shocks and disruptions, including those relating to climate change, Africa would be well served by developing resilient energy systems that are fit for the future.

Development of large-scale, centralised, capital-intensive energy infrastructure based on fossil fuels or nuclear energy will also continue the current pattern of energy development in Africa which is heavily dependent on foreign capital, technology and ownership, and unduly skewed towards meeting foreign rather than African energy needs.

Development of more centralised energy infrastructure also risks further consolidation of energy systems for consumption by urban populations, economic elites and polluting industries, while undermining the potential to develop modern decentralised people-centered energy systems that are socially owned and community-based.

Due to their decentralized nature, many climate solutions – from renewable energy to ecological farming methods to public transit – lend themselves better to public, cooperative, and other not-for-profit ownership models than their fossil fuel-based counterparts.

Once investments into more highly centralised infrastructure are made, Africa will be locked into high-greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuel and nuclear dependence, reliance on foreign ownership and technology, and potential rent-seeking by African and foreign interests, potentially for decades.

Fossil fuel exploitation is driving climate-induced droughts and famines across Africa, while centralised fossil fuel infrastructure has systematically failed to bring energy to rural communities, including millions of African farmers and pastoralists.

An energy transition that shifts away from fossil fuels towards more decentralised, community-based approaches is needed to support a model of African rural development that benefits rural people and communities, and delivers food sovereignty and security for the continent.

“The energy transition is also an important opportunity to transform our food systems away from insecurity, commodification, and fossil fuel-heavy inputs, and towards one based on ecological agriculture, democratic ownership, and ensuring enough healthy food for all”, according to African and international civil society groups.

The IPCC states that 3.5 billion people, roughly 40 percent of humanity, are "highly vulnerable" to the impacts of climate change.

Africa, in turn, is arguably the most climate vulnerable continent. Africa and its people are already being devastated by the ravages of the climate crisis – cyclones hitting Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe; droughts in southern Africa; famines in the Horn of Africa; heat waves across the continent.

Amnesty International states that “fossil fuels are the main driver of the climate crisis, the impacts of which are already hindering our rights to health, food, water, housing, work and even life itself.”

As well as adverse climate impacts, vulnerable people “also suffer the direct human rights harms of fossil fuel extraction, production and its related infrastructure in their local communities such as contamination of local water and food supplies, air pollution, biodiversity loss, forced evictions and other human rights abuses…violating states’ obligations to protect human rights”.

Analysis by UNEP demonstrates how oil extraction has contaminated soil and water bodies in the Niger Delta, and led to health crises including a rise in cancers, birth defects, breathing difficulties, and contributed to the brevity of life in the oil field communities which stands at 40 years.

In Eastern Africa, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline is undermining human rights, causing 12,000 families to lose land, and endangering sensitive and vital ecosystems, according to non-governmental organisation Oxfam.

In Mozambique, hundreds of rural families have been removed from the homes, farmland and fishing grounds to build the infrastructure required to exploit fossil gas reserves in Cabo Delgado.

Further expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure increases the vulnerability of African populations to both climate-related and direct impacts from the fossil fuel industry, breaching African states’ obligations to protect human rights.

The World Health Organisation identifies burning fossil fuels as the primary cause of air pollution, which “is considered by WHO as the greatest environmental risk to health.”

In 2018, fossil fuel-related air pollution caused a staggering 1 in 5 deaths worldwide.

Fossil fuels have been identified as “world's most significant threat to children's health and future”.

Health problems from fossil fuels include asthma, pneumonia, bronchitis, upper respiratory and eye problems, heart attack, heart disease, neurological deficits, immune system problems, and organ damage.

The Committee’s proposal to expand energy access drawing on oil and coal in the short- and medium-term, and fossil gas in the short-, medium- and long-term, threatens to exacerbate health problems on the continent.

By contrast IRENA notes that “wind, solar and hydropower produce little or no air pollution. Other renewable energy technologies, such as biomass and geothermal, do emit air pollutants, but at much lower rates than most conventional fuels. Air pollution has become a critically important issue in many developing countries, where up to 2.9 billion people still rely on wood, coal and charcoal for cooking and heating homes. Cleaner options, including solar technologies, can play a role in this regard.”

Fossil fuels are the main driver of climate change, and climate change is becoming the largest driver of biodiversity loss worldwide. The fossil fuel industry and its products accounted for over 90% of global industrial emissions and around 70% of all human emissions in 2015, the year the Paris Agreement was signed.

Climate change, in turn, is among the five direct drivers of change in nature with the largest relative global impacts so far, and is poised to become the largest driver according to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

Expansion of fossil fuel production in Africa and the associated emissions will accelerate the degradation of Africa’s natural systems and undermine international targets relating to biodiversity.

As well as climate-related threats, the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure presents direct threats to Africa’s ecosystems and biodiversity. Planned fossil fuel infrastructure to develop the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, for example, is shown to create risks to biodiversity, protected areas, communities and water resources.

The networks of infrastructure enabling exploration, extraction, transportation and combustion of fossil fuel — mines, wells, pipelines, refineries, roads and transportation infrastructure — is already degrading nature and causing direct and immediate harm and will worsen if that infrastructure is expanded.

The relationship between the presence of fossil fuels and other mineral resources, and the absence of adequate social, economic and political outcomes – known as the “resource curse” – is well documented.

Fossil fuels are documented as causing adverse impacts to local communities; as increasing the likelihood of civil war and armed separatist movements; as strengthening the hands of undemocratic political regimes – enabling small powerful elites to extract rents and maintain economic and political control, while their populations lack access to energy, food and other essential services and remain impoverished.

Just as Europe is seeking to end a war and defund a fossil-funded autocratic regime in Russia, it is apparently seeking to scale up the financing of fossil fuels in Africa. Increasing investments into coal, oil or gas in Africa risks entrenching fossil fuels, poverty and climate change over the longer-term, placing both Africa and its neighbouring countries and regions at risk.

Falsely classifying fossil gas or nuclear as “green” – as the European Union has recently done, presumably in part to “greenwash” dangerous fossil gas and nuclear investments into Africa, presents a gift to fossil-fuel-funded autocratic regimes everywhere, including to Russia, and is a major strategic error for Africa, for Europe and for countries around the world seeking to avoid conflict, promote peace, advance democracy, and ensure a stable climate.