Africa’s moment to lead on climate
It should revamp its energy infrastructure, while riding the wave of low-carbon innovation that is transforming energy systems around the world
Climate change is the greatest threat facing humanity today. To avoid catastrophe, we must dramatically reduce the carbon intensity of our modern energy systems, which have set us on a collision course with our planetary boundaries. This is the challenge leading up to three key international events this year: a July summit on financing for new global development goals, another in September to settle on those goals and — crucially — a global meeting in December to frame an agreement, and set meaningful targets, on climate change. But focusing on ambitious global climate goals can mask the existence of real impacts on the ground. Nowhere is this truer than in sub-Saharan Africa.
No region has done less to cause climate change, yet sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing some of the earliest, most severe and most damaging effects. Africa’s energy gap is considerable. The average American uses 10,900 kilowatt hours of electricity a year; the average sub-Saharan African, just 500.
Cut off from the grid, the world’s poorest people also pay the world’s highest power prices, as they depend for lighting on costly, inefficient kerosene. Someone in a rural village in northern Nigeria spends 60 to 80 times more per unit of energy than a resident of New York. This glaring energy gap demands attention. Africa’s leaders have a choice about how to bridge the energy gap. As is demonstrated in the recently published Africa Progress Report 2015, the flagship publication of the 10-member Africa Progress Panel, on which we both serve, Africa can break the link between energy and emissions by leap-frogging over the damaging, carbon-intensive energy practices that have brought the world to the brink of catastrophe.
Africa’s energy challenges are immense. Energy sector bottlenecks and power shortages cost the region 2 per cent to 4 per cent of gross domestic product annually, undermining efforts to promote sustainable economic growth, create jobs, reduce poverty and boost investment. Switching to low-carbon energy strategies immediately isn’t possible because doing so could undermine economic progress. But Africa has enormous potential for cleaner energy — hydro, solar, wind and geothermal power, as well as natural gas. Unlocking Africa’s clean energy potential can drive growth and create jobs. Africa can grow and show the way for the rest of the world by gradually replacing fossil fuels with renewable sources and embracing a judicious, dynamic energy mix.
For that to happen, though, Africa’s leaders must seize the climate moment. For too long, Africa’s leaders have been content to oversee highly centralised energy systems that benefit the rich and bypass many of the poor. The time has come to revamp Africa’s creaking energy infrastructure, while riding the wave of low-carbon innovation that is transforming energy systems around the world.
The 2015 development and climate summits provide platforms for deepening international cooperation and providing a down payment on measures with the potential to put Africa on a path towards an inclusive, low-carbon energy future — and the world on a path to avoid climate catastrophe.
Unlocking Africa’s energy potential and putting in place the foundation for a climate-resilient, low-carbon future will require ambitious, efficient and properly financed multilateral cooperation. We strongly urge governments in the major emitting countries to act now by ending the billions they spend to subsidise fossil fuel exploration, a policy that encourages greater carbon emissions, not fewer. Instead of subsidising emissions, developed countries need to accurately price them, through carbon taxes or other means. These two policy shifts, combined with strong development goals in low-emitting countries in Africa, would go a long way towards levelling the global climate playing field.
Future generations will surely judge these leaders not by principles they set out in communiqués but by the actions they took to eradicate poverty, build shared prosperity and protect our children’s children from climate disaster. The global climate moment can be Africa’s moment to lead the world.
–Washington Post