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| Mon, 20th Jul 2020 14:53:00 |
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Africa can become a renewable energy superpower – if climate deniers are kept at bay |
The power of climate science denial in the UK, thankfully, has been in retreat over the past decade. Nigel Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) may still boast a prime Westminster address, but its influence has waned. In fact, its decline aptly mirrors the fortunes of the coal industry, including US titans such as Peabody Energy, which saw its share price plunge 99% between 2008 and 2016 before filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy.
With countries rightly phasing coal out of their energy mix, the GWPF has turned its sights on Africa to peddle its misinformation about the merits of burning fossil fuels. It has published a new report, derisively titled Heart of Darkness: Why Electricity for Africa is a Security Issue, and launched a glossy website for “energy justice”, which uses the language of climate justice campaigners to try to undermine renewable energy.
No continent suffers more from global heating than Africa, yet nowhere has done less to cause it
As an African from a pastoralist community in northern Kenya, I have seen the suffering that coal-fuelled climate breakdown has wrought on my people. The anti-climate policies that the GWPF has pushed for years have contributed to the droughts, storms and surging temperatures that have killed people and destroyed livelihoods. Yet now they pretend to be Africa’s saviours, seeking out new markets for the ever more desperate coal industry. And coal barons are not alone: European-produced petrol, so dirty and polluting that it can’t be sold there, is being dumped on to the Nigerian market.
The GWPF report was written by Geoff Hill, a Zimbabwean journalist who spent much of his early career working for Rupert Murdoch’s the Australian, a newspaper known to spread misinformation about the climate crisis. Hill does not seem to have an academic background in climate science or energy policy. The report cites three academics who appear to have a vested interest in the solutions proposed: Dr Rosemary Falcon, Dr Samson Bada and Dr Jacob Masiala are all connected to the Clean Coal Technology Research group at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
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