DIRTY ENERGY in AFRICA November 2016 Introduction
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DIRTY ENERGY IN AFRICA November 2016 Introduction Dirty energy not only fuels dangerous climate change but also to afford the cost of unsubsidised electricity are left to struggle causes immense harm to people, communities, workers and the on, cooking indoors with coal or biomass year in, year out, while environment, all around the world. Dirty and harmful energy lies their health degenerates. This is part of an on-going colonial and at the heart of a broken energy system that is unjust and post-colonial pattern of natural resource exports leaving Africa’s unsustainable and destroying people and the planet. ports for richer northern countries and other wealthy elites including in southern countries. Friends of the Earth International takes a holistic approach to fighting dirty energy—we include coal, oil, gas, nuclear power, In the longer term Africa is currently on a lose-lose dirty energy industrial agrofuels and biomass, mega hydroelectric dams, and trajectory. waste-to-energy incineration in our definition of dirty energy. These destructive energy sources and technologies are driving Ambitions to keep average global temperature increase below climate change and have a deplorable track record, ranging from 1.5 oC compared to pre-industrial levels mean that carbon air and water pollution causing serious health impacts, through reductions must be very steep indeed. Developed countries must to massive land grabbing for new dirty energy mines, plants and act first and cut the most drastically, and they must contribute infrastructure. their fair share of the climate debt to ensure that Africa can shift towards sustainable socially-controlled renewable energy. We This is a global problem, but in recent decades the tentacles of need to keep fossil fuels locked underground. dirty energy have pierced through the entire African continent, destroying lives and livelihoods. But communities are fighting This is of the utmost importance to African countries, where the back against this destruction, as the case studies in this briefing average global temperature threshold will translate into much illustrate. sharper regional increases. In much of Africa the temperature rises at 1.5 to 2 times the global average. South Africa’s The dirty energy system has also failed to deliver energy for all. Department of Environmental Affairs has said, for example, that For example, in terms of energy access Sub-Saharan Africa is the a “global average temperature increase of 2°C translates to up to most ‘electricity poor’ region in the world (WEO, 2016). More 4°C for South Africa by the end of the century.” (DEA, 2015:3) than 620 million people (two thirds of the population) are living without access to electricity, and are denied the development Various African countries are already suffering debilitating climate benefits that energy access brings (WEO, 2016b). Nearly 730 change impacts. For instance, in Niger several years of drought million people in Africa are still forced to use unhealthy and were followed by heavy flooding in August 2010. People already inefficient cooking fuels (WEO, 2016b), such as biomass. vulnerable to malnutrition saw their crops destroyed, and exposed topsoil washed away. At least 200,000 people were African governments were not the ones that invented these dirty flooded out of their homes. In January 2015, floods in Malawi, energy options. The developed countries put the whole world on Mozambique, Madagascar and Zimbabwe killed 225, with this harmful development pathway. But now many African another 150 missing, and displaced more than 400,000. Across governments are lining up to push for more investment in oil, coal the region, people lost their crops and many also lost their soil. and gas extraction, more dirty power stations, and more Southern Africa has also experienced bouts of flood and drought, centralised and wasteful grid systems, often under the banner of with seasons shifting and weather patterns becoming more ‘carbon space to grow’ or hiding behind the poor in their erratic. In the southern Cape, the drought of 2010 was preceded countries. Yet simply providing more energy at any cost has been by successive years of heavy flooding while the normally dry shown over and over again to benefit corporations and not the northern Cape was inundated with flood waters in early 2011. people, and is unlikely to provide any short-term resolution to The north of the country was hit by floods in 2012, 2013 and these entrenched energy inequalities. 2014. On the East coast KwaZulu-Natal remains in the grip of a severe two-year drought (groundWork, 2015). The case study in South Africa is exemplary: Eskom produces electricity from plentiful domestic coal supplies, which is then used to power industry at subsidised rates and generate export income. Frontline communities and other South Africans unable The pursuit of dirty energy will be counterproductive for African countries. In the absence of dramatic reductions in greenhouse Dirty energy in the Maghreb gas emissions, especially by dirty energy industries in the North, where reductions need to happen first and foremost, The North African region known as the Maghreb is also facing temperature increases will be devastating for the continent, and numerous climate change impacts. There are more frequent potentially irreversible. At the same time, new investment in dirty droughts, more frequent winter storms, failing agriculture, energy infrastructure will lock African industries onto a dirty rising water shortages, and the desert is expanding while sea energy pathway at just that point in history when new and clean levels are rising. energy technologies are increasingly available. At the same time, the Maghreb is also a hotbed for dirty Friends of the Earth groups throughout Africa are therefore energy infrastructure. For example, Algeria is currently the working with communities to resist coal, oil, gas, tar sands and second biggest external supplier of natural gas to Europe, and mega-dams. People across the continent are fighting back, has large deposits of shale gas. Europe is a big market for pushing for energy sovereignty, universal energy access, energy from the Maghreb in general: About 84% of Algeria’s decentralised grids, renewable technology and a just and liquified natural gas (LNG) is sent to Europe through various democratic energy system. It is ironic, however, that local pipelines. The rest is sent to Asian markets. In general, communities and environmental defenders opposing dirty energy countries such as Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco are strongly infrastructure and fighting for Africa’s best interests, frequently linked into the European Union’s energy policies [2], which face repression and violence in return [1]. For example, 2016 saw are very influential in controlling the energy resources of the the murder of anti-mining activist Sikhosiphi ‘Bazooka’ Radebe in Maghreb. In fact the EU has been complicit in supporting South Africa’s Wild Coast. authoritarian regimes in the Maghreb in exchange for the much-coveted notion of energy security. This relates to Coal in Africa debate within the EU about establishing an ‘EU-South Mediterranean Energy Community’ starting with the Maghreb Coal is the world’s dirtiest energy. Burning coal for energy is the countries (EU, 2011). largest single source of CO 2 emissions in the world, and its extraction, processing and burning all generate intense levels of Tunisia supplies most of its domestic needs through domestic pollution and destructive impacts for communities, workers and oil and gas, but also requires some energy imports. Since one the environment. Coal mining can lead to the displacement of of the pipelines taking Algerian natural gas to Europe runs communities, often with little or no compensation, and mining through Tunisia, they get some royalties from the gas passing accidents kill thousands of people every year. Pollution emanating through. Tunisia also has 23 trillion cubic feet of shale gas from coal power plants causes severe health impacts including reserves plus 1.5 billion barrels of shale oil (DoE, 2015). There debilitating asthma, bronchitis, emphysema, heart attacks and have been significant civil society protests against the premature death (FoEI, 2015; Adyani & Waller, 2015). exploitation of these resources [3] However, coal is still used to generate over 40% of the world’s Morocco has no oil resources of its own and relies on energy energy, produces almost 50% of current CO 2 emissions, and is a imports from the Middle East. They do however have some key source of air pollution (IEA, 2015). China is currently reserves of shale oil. Morocco’s geography enables it to be a responsible for half the world’s coal use and 80% of the increase hub in the electricity network linking Algeria to Spain (RLF, in coal use since 2000 (IEA, 2015); and growing coal use in India undated). But the focus is not just on fossil fuels. Morocco has and Southeast Asia is currently offsetting declines in Europe and also made huge investments in solar energy, such as the older the US, who were of course the initiators of this destructive Desertec scheme, and the Ouarzazate Concentrated Solar energy use (IEA, 2015). Power (CSP) plant in southern Morocco, south of the Atlas Mountains. This Ouarzazate solar plant has been criticised for Countries seeking to develop their economies are still working to ‘green land grabbing’, the acquisition of 3,000 hectares of expand their coal industries, although this may risk them being communally-owned land, including pasture. It also involves locked into old and dirty energy technologies as new low-carbon using a huge amount of water in a semi-arid region of the technologies come on stream. Overall though, coal consumption world. However, people have risen up and protested against recorded the largest percentage decline on record in 2015 (BP, this, raising questions about land and water (Jadaliyya, 2016). 2016).