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Friday, 12 August


Dear <<First Name>>

Diplomats have quashed an African Union proposal to expand the continent’s fossil fuels production and promote natural gas as a bridge fuel at COP27.

This follows the recent EU vote to classify gas as ‘green energy’ to facilitate African access to low-cost funds for non-renewable energy projects. The EU supports the African Union proposal; unsurprising given gas is Europe’s top power source, for which it has previously relied on Russian supply.

The proposal seems reckless. Are the countries hit hardest by the climate crisis truly willing to walk the path of dirty fossil fuels? It seems so as Egypt vies to succeed Russia as Europe’s supplier, dimming the lights on its own people to increase gas export potential.

The AfDB has argued that “no part of the world ever developed using renewable energy alone”, and African nations should benefit from their resources. But fossil fuels have failed to solve African energy poverty to date, so why now?

Pursuing gas production could lock Africa into a high-carbon future. Let’s instead empower African nations to benefit from their abundant renewable energy potential. As the Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhar put it, “we need long term partnerships, not inconsistency and contradictions”.

Cheers 

Geoff Sinclair

Managing Director, Camco Clean Energy

Story of the week

new study indicates that countries could meet all of their energy needs with wind, water, solar and energy storage, and pay off the investment required for the transition within six years.
 

West Africa

Cote D'Ivoire/ Gambia: Regional Off-grid Electricity Access Project launches (ESI Africa)
- The USD300 million project has been launched by the Economic Community of West African States to increase access to sustainable solar energy services.

Ghana: Huawei to provide solar PV and energy storage system solution (Energy Storage News)
- Huawei Digital Power has signed an agreement with local company Meinergy to provide the solar-plus-storage system for a project, which will include 1GW of solar PV generation and 500MWh of battery storage.

Southern Africa

South Africa: Country’s energy plan could deliver security (ESI Africa
- Op-ed exploring how the energy plan recently outlined by President Cyril Ramaphosa has the potential to solve the country’s unreliable electricity supply in the medium to long-term. 

South Africa: Women encouraged to spearhead climate action (ESI Africa)
- During National Women’s Day celebrations, speakers challenged South African women to position themselves at the centre of climate-related decision-making.

South Africa: US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) to support energy transition (Engineering news)
- The USTDA believes it is well positioned to feed projects into the Just Energy Transition Partnership, which was established between South Africa and several developed countries in 2020 to progress the country's energy transition. 

South Africa: US investors visit country with an eye on clean energy (Bloomberg)
- Investors with more than USD1 trillion of assets under management have visited South Africa to seek out investment opportunities.

East Africa

Ethiopia: Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) launches its second turbine (The EastAfrican
- The new turbine doubles the dam’s output to 540MW, a significant step towards generating the total 6,400MW of power that the site is expected to produce once fully operational.

Kenya: Construction of Kisumu solar PV plant begins (Afrik21)
- The 40MWp plant is expected to be operational by December 2023 and to provide clean and affordable energy to over 610,000 people. 

Tanzania: Masdar and TANESCO collaborate to progress clean energy development (ESI Africa)
- The two companies have announced plans to develop renewable energy projects in the country with an expected total capacity of up to 2GW.

Uganda: Members of parliament call for cheaper clean energy sources (ESI Africa)
- Politicians have questioned the government’s continued investment in thermal energy and urge it to instead adopt renewable energy sources.

Africa - other

Green finance: InfraCo invests USD43 million in Climate, Energy Access and Resilience fund (ESI Africa)
- The initiative will finance climate-aligned assets and growth opportunities, whilst contributing towards the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. 

Green finance: Start-up launches "Angel Investment" for green finance (Afrik21)
- Igugu Global has launched the platform to enable investors to discover and compare green financial instruments and thereby accelerate climate finance in Africa. 

Natural gas: Climate diplomats reject African Union’s pro-gas stance for Cop27 (ClimateChangeNews)
- The executive council of the African Union's proposal to endorse gas for energy access was quashed by negotiators who argued that the controversy would distract from other priorities.

Pacific

Climate finance: Development of regional climate finance strategy is proposed (Pina)
- The strategy would help the Pacific to structure and coordinate its efforts in engaging with and accessing global climate funding mechanisms, such as the GCF.

Pacific Islands: US President Biden to host White House Pacific island summit (Island Times)
- The move comes amid a flurry of US shuttle diplomacy looking to bolster alliances in the Pacific against a more assertive Beijing.

Rest of the world

Green energy: Why is green energy infrastructure booming despite global economic woes? (PV Magazine)
- Op-ed exploring how renewable energy capacity additions reached a record high last year with approximately 270GW of renewables becoming operational, largely due to falling energy costs and green recovery packages.

Renewable Energy: A clean transition would create jobs and reduce energy costs (PV Magazine)
- Research from Stanford University outlines how 145 countries could meet all of their energy needs with renewables and estimates that a clean transition would generate 28 million jobs worldwide. 

US: Historic climate bill to supercharge clean energy industry (Politico
- The climate and energy provisions of the Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act could help cut emissions and put the country on track to deliver the lion's share of President Biden's targets for 2030.

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