By Robert Bradley Jr.
“Social justice” demands energy freedom and energy exceptionalism for the poorest of the poor. Today, tomorrow, and yesterday.
A recent release from CarbonBrief, “How a UK government-backed Company has Fueled Gas Power in Africa,” reported that “a little-known company that is majority-owned by a UK government development body and backed by UK aid money has been pouring investment into gas power across Africa.”
British International Investment (BII)’s Globeleq has 1,120 MW of gas-fired generation in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, and Tanzania to serve the electricity impoverished. UK climate activists are up in arms (“don’t gas Africa”), urging divestment from fossil fuels. “Let them have wind and solar” is the mantra, as if these dilute, intermittent substitutes were not expensive and unreliable.
Globeleq is adding new gas capacity to keep its portfolio at 85 percent natural gas.
BII says that in countries such as Mozambique, where only around 40% of people have access to electricity, gas power is “essential”. It argues that such nations often lack “baseload” power provided by gas, which can allow the integration of more renewables.
CarbonBrief continues:
This position has been supported by many African governments, with many advocating for the development of their own gas reserves. Many have noted that Africa currently produces a tiny share of the planet’s emissions and is home to nearly 600 million people without electricity access. Scaling up fossil fuels could be a route to development and wealth, they say.
—————
Yes, the UK government should divest itself of Globeleq and otherwise stay out of African energy politics. But what about the moral case for the best energies to address poverty, a theme that has inspired Paul Driessen (author, Eco-Imperialism) to note:
The ideological environmental movement imposes the views of mostly wealthy, comfortable Americans and Europeans on mostly poor, desperate Africans, Asians and Latin Americans. It violates these people’s most basic human rights, denying them economic opportunities, the chance for better lives, the right to rid their countries of diseases that were vanquished long ago in Europe and the United States.
And from the African Energy Chamber:
African producers have not and will not agree to phasing out fossil fuels. Unlike the rest of the developed world, the continent has not yet had the chance to transform its economies through oil and gas. In order to develop, grow and address concerns such as energy poverty and industrialization, oil and gas will need to remain central for years to come.
Also consider the idea of Laszlo Varro, vice-president of global business environment at Shell, who told his 20,000+ social media followers:
A very interesting debate: British green activists protest against gas fired power generation investment in Mozambique and Ivory Coast. They come from a society which has a per capita energy consumption around 10 times most African countries. Their privileged prosperity is based on a national wealth accumulated from past fossil fuel use and colonial exploitation. Now they are upset that former colonial nations are using their own gas resources to power development.
Varro suggests this exercise for the energy privileged:
Mozambique and Ivory Coast should create a special, green activist internship visa. This will enable British activists to come for a year and get a work permit. However, this would be valid only for the non-electrified regions of the country, not to the usual development aid practice of Western experts living in an air conditioned compound powered by a diesel generator in the backyard. The special, fossil free work permit will enable the activists to fetch water from the well in a bucket, without electric pumps and steel pipes. They will be able to tend the land and grow food without diesel tractors and gas based fertilizer, cook on an open fire, store the food without refrigerators and bring the produce to a market in a pushcart. They should definitely get a solar mobile charger so that they can share how happy their life is without natural gas in social media.
Laszlo Varro added:
Needless to say the UK government should have an open minded dialogue with those activists who completed a one year internship and still believe that African countries should not develop natural gas. In addition, if any democratically elected African government expresses concerns about the harmful effects of developing their domestic gas resources and using them to expand electricity supply then UK foreign policy should pay a respectful attention.
Indeed. “Social justice” demands energy freedom and energy exceptionalism for the poorest of the poor. Today, tomorrow, and yesterday.
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““Let them
have wind and solareat cake””What they really meant.
Can’t bake a cake without electricity.
Oh yes, the literal baking part of that can be done over an open fire, but many of the ingredients need refrigeration before they are actually used.
“Free cake tomorrow,” say the Marxists.
Africa needs reliable power, not intermittent renewable power, and lots of it. You can work wind and solar in small amounts into an existing grid, but you can’t build an effective grid from wind and solar alone. It is obscene to foist expensive net zero plans on the world’s poorest people.
Environmentalism is a luxury only developed countries can afford. Greens should see that it is developed countries that can afford to maintain and grow wild places, Development allows production of greater wealth on less land, leaving more natural places. Development leads to smaller families, putting less population pressure on wild spaces.
Greens have it all backwards.
Social justice
Is a post-modern concept beloved by pseudoscientists – aka psychologists, psychiatrists etc.
It’s time to restigmatise mental health issues….
“The special, fossil free work permit will enable the activists to fetch water from the well in a bucket, without electric pumps and steel pipes. They will be able to tend the land and grow food without diesel tractors and gas based fertilizer, cook on an open fire, store the food without refrigerators and bring the produce to a market in a pushcart. They should definitely get a solar mobile charger so that they can share how happy their life is without natural gas in social media.”
Perfect! This is just what we need here too, for the American Climate Corps!
https://www.acc.gov/
From this ACC website: “Join the next generation of creators, thinkers, leaders, and doers, working together to tackle the climate crisis. Help build a clean energy and climate-resilient future in your own community and across the nation.”
Great! DO IT WITHOUT FOSSIL FUELS or any of the modern systems that fossil fuels enables.
Architects are invited to submit plans for a sustainable, other way of knowing, Star Trek village…
Those dilithium crystals are in short supply.
Take the lift to the engine room, Scotty…
Aye cap’n but it’s awful heavy…
Humor. A difficult concept.
— Lt. Saavik
Not forgetting that they won’t be allowed to fly to Africa.
Every singled pampered Western youth that has been dumping paint on artworks should be sent to Africa for 30 days as part of their sentencing.
They need to be sent way into the hinterlands to work for a subsistence farmer, that is so poor, that not only can he NOT afford a tractor, he can’t even afford a single ox.
Let them do 30 days of that hard labor in the hot sun. If they come back and say that farmer does not deserve assistance from ANY energy source he can access, then we will know that these people are irredeemably stupid AND evil.
30 days is insufficient. They need 90 days in order to properly acclimate AND learn how to carry a bucket and pull weeds by hand.
Until the absolute corruption of governments in Africa is addressed, reduced, or eliminated (I can dream), ANY “investment” in energy or anything else will end up in the pockets/bank accounts of their political rulers and their cronies. Might as well hope for Kameltoe Harris to burp out a Willie Brown tainted intelligible sentence. Neither of these scenarios is likely to happen, even on a geologic time scale.
Are you describing Africa or the USA?
O/T Can you help Stefan?
We don’t know where the tipping point is’: climate expert on potential collapse of Atlantic circulation
Oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf explains why Amoc breakdown could be catastrophic for both humans and marine life
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/23/we-dont-know-where-the-tipping-point-is-climate-expert-on-potential-collapse-of-atlantic-circulation
If you happen to spot the tipping point drop him a line.
We know that a meteor the size of NYC will have an impact (pun intended) and we know just how catastrophic that can be. So let’s hype the fear.
I always thought the tipping point was when you handed your server extra money when you paid for a meal.
Humour – a difficult concept
Well met, friend.
It’s hiding at the bottom of the ocean along with all the missing heat.
Social justice means no one should tell anyone how to live their lives, but rather work to create opportunities to live better lives.
Dictating (aka choice elimination) is not justice.
Here we still have a number of old coal energy plants that must be closed because they donot even have sulphur sweeping. Some of them are on route of a big gas pipeline from Mozambique to Sasolburg (South Africa). If we only could get a bit of investment from this company in the UK to change these plants from coal to gas, it would be a big improvement in terms of emission. I mean, with gas you have zero SO2 and 50% less CO2 emission, if I understand it correctly.
Your numbers are as accurate as can be determined without a detailed engineering assessment.
Story tip
These surprisingly gorgeous tiny homes are giving aging wind turbines new purpose
These wind turbine tiny homes give a whole new meaning to downsizing.
https://apple.news/ANhLDvUBdRaKZpAcpI9cDfQ
Little boxes
Have you seen the dumpster houses, the bus houses, tractor trailer houses, houses built out of old tires?
Human ingenuity has no bounds. The hard part is pointing it in a productive/beneficial direction.
Still, this concept gives us something better than a landfill for when the towers crash.
The blades are the real land-fill problem. Let’s see what they can do with them. 😉
Turn them into roof shingles?
“store the food without refrigerators”
I remember the time — about 1950 — when my family’s refrigerator had a small freezer compartment in which ice cubes could be made. From an image search on the web, here is one that comes close:
DSC08854.jpg (1000×786) (imgix.net)
The house, perhaps 30+ years old in 1950, was built {apparently} wired for electricity.
At why so many in the world do not yet have electricity boggles my mind.
I’ve got one of those in the basement keeps drinks ice cold. Requires an annual defrosting (-:
Yep.
These old appliances are still in service in garages everywhere as beer fridges.
After they die, they remain in place as storage cupboards.
Prior to that was the ice age. Horse drawn cooler wagons would deliver large chunks of ice that were put into wooden boxes (aka ice box) to keep food cool.
UK climate activists are up in arms (“don’t gas Africa”), urging divestment from fossil fuels. “Let them have wind and solar” is the mantra, as if these dilute, intermittent substitutes were not expensive and unreliable.
______________________________________________________________________________
Where’s the LINK to that?
A Google search should be able to find something besides links back to:Daily News23 Oct 2024Energy Justice in Africa? Energy Exceptionalism PleaseFrom MasterResourceBy Robert Bradley Jr.Did Bradley make that up?Here’s the link:
Don’t Gas Africa
African governments and the African Union are faced with a choice – they can give into lobbying from the fossil fuel industry and European governments or blah.. blah.. blah.. .
We call for an end to fossil-fuel-induced energy apartheid in Africa
A campaign led by African civil society to ensure Africa is not locked into fossil gas production.
____________________________________________________________________________
So no, Bradley didn’t make it up the LINK just wasn’t in the WUWT post.
For years Western development assistance to Africa has prioritised issues such as transparency, market liberalisation and climate change and has withdrawn from almost all large scale infrastructure or energy and other resource related development.
Many NGOs have actively encouraged this. They care so much about ‘the environment’ that they don’t give two hoots about the people of Africa.
Is China doing it differently?
China, and to a lesser extent Russia, have invested in energy, infrastructure and resource extraction. Hence the rise of BRICS and the active participation of countries like South Africa in that organisation. The West has shot itself in the foot in this regard.
Twenty some yrs ago I knew a local federal agency employee who left her position and went to Africa and worked with a group drilling water wells. I’ve lost track of her but at one point
there was a piece about this group with some photos in a local newspaper of their work.
We are here to help. Our help is telling you what you cannot do, say, or think.
Very nice. The CAGW thugs have no standing, they spread their cultish views through lies and cheating. I agree with the visa policy giving the cultists a chance to walk the walk but it would never happen because the CAGW thugs are cowards and wouldn’t abandon their privilege for anything.
The visa is a terrific idea! I think there should be a clause which breaks the deal if the owner falls really ill with say malaria or dysentery. We don’t want people dying like they tend to do out there
This incidentally is what Emma Pinchbeck, now CEO of the UK Climate Change Committee, said a couple years back.
Emma Pinchbeck, Energy UK’s chief executive, said offshore wind was the “flagship technology” for the UK to meet its net zero targets and ensure energy security.
“We very much welcome the government responding to the increased global competition and the economic challenges facing developers by showing more ambition and giving greater confidence to investors, which will help build a domestic green powerhouse that benefits our own economy and people,” Pinchbeck said.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/uk-hikes-offshore-floating-wind-strike-price-to-a337-mwh-in-grim-portent-for-australia/
What was the occasion of these remarks?
It was when the British Government in 2023 raised the offshore floating CfD ceiling for AR6 to £176/MWh and fixed onshore to £73/MWh. This is prices as of 2023, today’s would be higher – from Homewood: £81.98/MW fixed offshore, £194.87 floating. They rise with CPI (Consumer Price Index).
The British have put innumerate idiots with no knowlege of science, engineering or business, but total confidence in their ability to make decisions in fields requiring it, in charge of their energy policy. High prices will be one result, blackouts another.
[The numbers are not the same as Paul Homewood’s, because you have to price using earlier nominal values and then use an inflator. So Homewood’s prices are as of September, with the correct inflator applied. I think the above pricing from 2023 is as of two years ago with the inflator for that date applied.]
“We very much welcome the government … giving greater confidence to investors, which will help build a domestic green powerhouse that benefits our own economy and people”
For ‘confidence’ read ‘returns’. By ‘our own’ is she referring to fanatical renewable grifters like herself? Otherwise, I’m unclear how using taxpayers’ money to underwrite foreign-owned companies to generate very expensive electricity is going to benefit either the economy or ordinary people.
The Left misuses the word “Justice”.
To them it means “equal results” regardless of any effort put in or mistakes made that would lead to different results for different people or groups.