I analyze energy economics and issues related to public policy.
It’s refreshing! Africa’s top energy official, Amani Abou-Zeid, African Union Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy, said earlier this month that African countries will use the UN COP27 climate talks in Egypt next month to advocate for “a common energy stance that sees fossil fuels as necessary to expand their economies and continue to near electricity”. It can no longer be accepted that countries in sub-Saharan Africa – where 600 million people do not have access to electricity and use firewood and charcoal for cooking and heating in their homes with severe impacts on respiratory health and mortality – to follow International Energy Agency and World Bank Policy advice on pursuing renewable energy is best described as magic thinking.
African policymakers say steer clear of fossil fuels as wind and solar fuel the continent’s industrial journey and higher standards of living. This policy advice is supported by enforcement through veto powers in public finance and investment in fossil fuel projects by multilateral development agencies including the World Bank. But there is every hope that African nations, such as China and India, will not be hindered in their climb to the same energy scale from wood and coal to refined oil and natural gas derivatives that the West has used to improve people.
Africa Awakens
Climate change models that predict an impending apocalypse are certainly unreliable for policymakers in developing countries, where environmental problems are really tied to hunger. poverty and lack of economic development. The West carbon imperialismThe consequences of climate alarm and the Net Zero movements that have dominated Western capitals for the past two decades are increasingly being challenged by developing countries.
When COP26 was held in Glasgow last year, a 22-nation negotiating group that included China and India called the “Like-minded Developing Countries” opposed the “centred” approach. mitigation” of the US and EU. Diego Pacheco, Bolivia’s principal negotiator representing the LMDC speak that “developed countries are pushing this level of reporting to 1.5 degrees CelsiusCEL -3.3% very difficult. We knew that this narrative would lead them to take control of the world again.”
NJ Ayuk, Executive Chairman at Africa Energy Division, candid with his point of view: “Africans don’t hate Oil and Gas companies. We love oil and today we love gas even more because we know gas will give us the opportunity to industrialize. No country has ever been developed by wind and fancy blue hydrogen. Africans see Oil and Gas as the path to success and the solution to their problems. The demonization of oil and gas companies will not work.”
European hypocrisy
Ask Africans to leave their fossil fuel resources in the ground in exchange for charitable grants and “development finance” from Western governments and multilateral agencies like the World Bank Investing in unreliable solar and wind power is not only unscrupulous and unscrupulous, but it’s also clearly unworkable. Like the work of Vaclav Smil It has been indisputably proven that no country in the developed world does not have the dense energy available from fossil fuels.
To the contrary, the claims of people like Fatih Birol, head of the IEA, appear to be little more than propaganda exercises on behalf of a organization is compromised that cannot rely on even the most basic information about energy policy. In one recent op-eds“I talk to energy policymakers all the time and none of them complain about relying too much on clean energy,” says Birol. On the contrary, they wish they had more. They regret not moving faster to build solar and wind power plants, to improve the energy efficiency of buildings and vehicles, or to extend the life of nuclear plants.”
Perhaps Mr. Birol needs a reminder that the decline of German industry it seems all but guaranteed by fait colleague presented by sabotage of both Nordstream pipelines last month and what is possible a permanent loss most of Europe’s gas imports from Russia regardless of the outcome of the Russo-Ukrainian war. No amount of solar and wind can save Germany from a bad retreat from its quirks. Energiewende as its citizen looking for firewood to stay warm this winter as natural gas shortages tighten. Last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that five power plants running on lignite fuel – the dirtiest means of generating electricity – will of course reopen, “temporarily”.
But most evident is the sheer hypocrisy of Western European governments in taking a radical turn in Africa’s approach to energy projects in the face of their own energy crisis. , having self-sanctioned the EU from Russian gas supplies. Follow New York TimesNYT + 1.8%, undeterred in promoting renewable energy and the climate crusade, “European leaders have converged on Africa’s capital cities, eager to find alternatives to Russian natural gas.” So now that Europe needs natural gas, it’s perfectly fine if the World Bank refuses to fund fossil fuel investments in the continent (like elsewhere).
What goes around comes around
The critical awareness of the relationship between fossil fuel development among African leaders such as Amani Abou-Zeid and NJ Ayub has been accelerated by the energy crisis that beset the West, especially the West. in Europe and the UK. Political leaders, who once made their ethical commitments to net-zero policies, now worry about keeping the cost of living crisis and their citizens warm. pressure (by using even firewood) while asking for voluntary “demand reduction” and planning mandatory energy allocation policy. Newly appointed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is standing by the decision of his predecessor Liz Truss prevent King Charles from attending the COP27 climate summit despite the King being ‘a little bit champion’ to go. The Prime Minister himself will not attend due to “urgent domestic problems”.
European leaders are now calling for favorable pricing and trade terms in the global gas market. French President Emmanuel Macron has recently attacked US energy and trade policies he say created a “double standard”, with Europe paying a higher price for its natural gas. Meanwhile, nearly a dozen US Senators are calling on the Biden administration export restrictions on liquefied natural gas as Americans face an increase in heating prices this winter. EU leaders are now facing the prospect of the Biden administration considering a ban on oil and gas exports to Europe to curb domestic price pressures. Some might call this “being pushed under a bus” or “thrown to the wolves”.
If deteriorating economic conditions during the Covid shutdown pose profound challenges for COP26 negotiators, the proxy war between Russia and Ukraine’s NATO supporters has pushed COP27 into a geopolitical spiral treat. As global fuel, fertilizer and food prices rise to unprecedented levels due to anti-Russian energy sanctions and decades of green energy policies, the siren of the anti-climate crusade fossil fuels will dissipate at least while hard times persist in the West. Whether it loses its grip on the angry mentality of the wealthy Westerner remains to be seen.
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I have worked in the oil and gas sector as an economist in both private industry and consulting organizations, in Asia, the Middle East and the United States for the past 25 years. I focus on global energy development from the perspective of Asian countries that are still large markets for oil, gas and coal. I have written extensively in the fields of economic development, environment and energy economics. My publications include “Singapore in a Post-Kyoto World: Energy, Environment and Economy” published by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (2015). I won the 1984 World Bank Robert S. McNamara Researcher Award and received my Ph. in Economics in 1992.
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