Africa and other developing nations need electricity now. Not someday in the future;
Ideologues, in collaboration with much of the media, have exploited the public’s naivete to promote fear of a supposedly overheating planet and halt the use of fossil fuels. The result has been numerous countries gradually sliding into economic self-destruction, of which many people remain oblivious. (1)
Green energy dogma, repeated ad nauseam by know-nothing politicians and complaint media, drowns out cries of the impoverished in developing nations. These are people just beginning to stand on their own and in need of the affordable and reliable energy of fossil fuels to rise from generational poverty.
The media’s climate obsession—lifted wholesale from the politically motivated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and parroted by Western elites—is at the heart of a campaign of distortion and fearmongering. (1)
Far from being impartial arbiters, media outlets are enthusiastic propagandists recycling doomsday predictions that consistently fail to materialize while ignoring a wealth of scientific research that challenges the narrative of disastrous warming. (2)
In many developing countries, natural gas could ease energy prices, but policymakers bowed to green pressure and left citizens to shoulder rising costs. The poorest suffer most from higher bills, fewer jobs and dimmer futures. (1)
Socially, the media’s alarmism breeds despair and division. Young people, bombarded with images of a dying planet, report rising levels of climate anxiety. (3)
Perhaps the most tragic consequence of this media malpractice unfolds in the developing world. News agencies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America often replicate alarmist content from Western outlets without independent verification.
This creates a feedback loop where local journalists and policymakers, assuming Western media reflects a scientific consensus, perpetuate falsehoods. The result is a dangerous distortion of priorities. Nations grappling with poverty, unemployment, and energy insecurity are pressured to adopt economically ruinous policies based on fallacious climate fears. (2)
The few wealthy countries of Germany, Australia, Great Britain, New Zealand, and other EU countries, and the USA are mandating social changes to achieve net zero emissions in their small worlds within the planet. (4)
Wealthy countries wishing to rid the world of crude oil, coal, and natural gas without replacements in mind is immoral since extreme shortages of the products manufactures from fossil fuels will result in the tragic loss of billions of lives from diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related events, both in the developed world and in developing countries.
Unbeknownst to the wealthy countries, over two billion people in the world must collect firewood or animal dung to cook, and close to 800 million live without electricity.
They comprise the bottom of the pyramid of the world population, along with 80% of the eight billion population on this planet that make less than $10/day. These billions of people cannot subsidize themselves out of energy poverty.
The few in the wealthy countries believe they can control climate change through subsidies on a four billion year old planet. Only wealthy economies have green movements and are pursuing them with mandates and costly subsidies. (4)
As the world increasingly shifts toward renewable energy there is a growing risk that nations could fall into the ‘renewable energy trap.’ This trap is the result of embracing an energy transition without fully understanding its economic, environmental, and geopolitical consequences. While renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and hydropower have been hailed as the future of global energy, nations rushing toward these technologies without a strategic plan may face grave economic and security challenges. The truth is that blind adherence to renewable energy, in its current form at least, is not the panaceas many believe it to be. In fact, it could prove to be a short, green path to economic ruin for both developed and developing nations alike. (5)
Energy poverty refers to the inability of households to afford sufficient energy for heating, cooling, and powering their homes. The International Energy Agency (IEA) defines energy poverty as the lack of access to affordable and reliable energy.
The last two decades should have been a period of accelerating economic development for Africa. Discoveries of abundant oil and gas supplies offered a rescue from poverty, industrial stagnation and poor access to electricity and other basic services.
Instead, they got a man-made disaster, a deliberate slowdown of growth driven not by geographical disadvantage or domestic inefficiency but by a global campaign to divert affordable fossil fuels from poor nations. (6)
The populations of South America and Africa, home to some of the world’s richest reserves of coal, oil and natural gas, are told by their media to shun these resources in favor of wind and solar technologies that are woefully inadequate for the needs of a modern society. (1)
Africa accounts for around 17% of the world’s people, but less than 4% of annual global carbon emissions. Without abundant fuel and power, prosperity is impossible.
Europe and the United States have executed a ‘blanket ban’ on supplying inexpensive and reliable energy to people living in poor countries and ending funding for energy infrastructure projects that rely on natural gas. (7)
This blanket ban will entrench poverty in regions such as sub-Sahara Africa, but do little to reduce the world’s carbon emissions. It is not fair for rich countries to fight climate change at the cost of low income countries’ development and climate resilience. Instead, rich countries should help African governments to pursue a broad portfolio of energy sources for rapid sustainable development.
Without abundant fuel and power, prosperity is impossible. Nearly 700 million Africans rely mainly on wood or dung to cook and heat with, and 600 million have no access to electric light. Britain with 60 million people has nearly as much electricity generating capacity as the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. (8)
Many sectors are discouraging the use of fossil fuels in Africa in favor of wind and solar. This has played a direct role in high morbidity and mortality rates on the continent. Approximately half of Africans cannot get electricity when they need it. Only 14.3 percent of people in central Africa have access to electricity. The combined production of power of 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa equates to the production of a single western economy like Spain.
The most devastating effect of this energy poverty is felt in health care centers, 60 percent of which in sub-Saharan Africa do not have electricity. According to the United States Agency for International Development, 100,000 public health facilities in the region have no access to reliable electricity.
The situation is not unique to the sub-Sahara. Even the advanced economy of South Africa has faced regular power blackouts.
The problem is that new investments are being directed to expensive and unreliable wind and solar projects when coal is the obvious solution to Africa’s energy poverty. The African Development Bank has stopped new funding for coal projects. So have dozens of other agencies based in Europe and North America. (8)
Africa is rapidly becoming one of the fastest growing markets for solar panel imports. However, much of this growth is driven by the rising demand for smaller panels intended for individual households and settlements rather than large scale sola power plants. The smaller panels are often of poor quality and don’t last long. (9)
For Africa, where over 40% of the population lacks access to electricity and per capita energy generation is extremely low, such growth is minimal and barely keeps pace with the continent’s rising population.
Neither solar panels nor diesel generators can adequately meet the needs of industrialization. A solar panel or generator cannot power a steel mill.
In April 2021, seven European countries pledged to stop important support for fossil fuel project abroad. They joined the United States in stopping funding for energy infrastructure projects. This blanket ban will enrich poverty in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa but do little to reduce the world’s carbon emissions. (10)
Africa and other developing nations need electricity now. Not someday in the future.
Email Us | Reader Friendly | Comments
