How Africa can help decarbonise the world

The weekly round-up on the climate crisis and data on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

Last week, a summit was held in Paris on how to enable low-income countries most exposed to the impacts of the climate crisis to grow their economies by reducing their dependence on fossil fuels [we'll talk about it in detail later].

What can the 54 countries of the African continent do to contribute to the decarbonisation of the world?Can Africa make a leap in quality and combine energy transition and economic growth?These are the questions that the journalist of New York Times, Somini Sengupta, he addressed to Wanjira Mathai, director general for Africa and global partnerships at the World Resources Institute (WRI), and Rebekah Shirley, senior environmental researcher and deputy director for Africa at WRI.

These two simple questions opened up deeper questions having to do with the financial sustainability of the energy transition, the capacity of the electricity grid and private sector investment.

“Africa has more renewable energy potential than the entire world needs, not just Africa.But this is not enough for the continent to abandon oil, gas and coal to take the path of green energy", Shirley tells New York Times. 

The example of Kenya is particularly significant.The country is currently capable of generating more energy than it consumes.Why?Because although it is an area equipped with geothermal and hydroelectric energy and with a large wind farm under construction in a vast area in the north, in Kenya the energy produced is still too expensive to be used by many Kenyans and, with the increase of renewables, electricity prices have even increased.“We're in a constant chicken-and-egg situation,” comments Shirley.“We have a lot of power generation capacity but not enough paying customers.”

Borrow money for a renewable energy project in Africa it is more expensive than in the United States or Europe.For example, the cost of capital is 14% in Nigeria, compared to 1% in the United States or 15% in Pakistan.And only a small portion of private climate investment goes to Africa's 54 countries, Sengupta explains.

Added to this are the infrastructural criticalities.In Kenya, as in much of the continent, the electricity grid is deficient, and so even where there is electricity, the distribution is not always reliable.And so, for a local factory, it may be more cost-effective to continue operating with a diesel generator.

Finally, there are individual behaviors.Across the continent, people use charcoal and firewood just for cooking or heating.And before they upgrade to an electric heater, they may need to upgrade to a gas heater.It's one of the most difficult problems to solve, Mathai notes.

If we want to help Africa decarbonise we must ask ourselves what Africa can do to help the whole world decarbonise, say Mathai and Shirley.Which means moving away from the usual paternalistic and colonial approach towards the African continent.The executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Fatih Birol, also shares this opinion.“In the absence of support, tell developing countries:'Do this, don't do that,' is not productive or right,” Birol said. 

There is a need to reduce the capital cost of building renewable energy.We need to invest in the electricity grid.We need to find new customers capable of paying the high prices, continue the two WRI representatives.Ultimately, “a new and fairer set of rules governing global finance and trade” need to be established, Mathai and Shirley argue.

Which is what the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, was asking for. immediately after COP27 in Egypt:review the lending rules for multilateral development banks, such as the World Bank, and the debt cycle in which many poorer countries most exposed to the climate crisis find themselves.The African Development Bank he recently estimated that the continent's 54 countries need 2,700 billion dollars to achieve their climate goals.Only a small part of this figure has arrived.

“This world still looks too much like it did when it was made up of empires and colonies.We need to open ourselves up to different possibilities,” Mottley declared immediately after last year's Climate Conference.

More or less the new paths that Mottley tried to break for Barbados which, in 2017, had the third highest debt per capita of any country in the world, was spending 55% of its gross domestic product every year just to repay debts , largely to banks and foreign investors, while spending less than 5% on environmental programs and healthcare.Barbados is the clear representation of how every climate crisis is an economic crisis and that, in the future, every economic crisis will in fact be a climate crisis.

This is why in 2018, newly inaugurated Prime Minister Mia Mottley asked the International Monetary Fund for a waiver from the usual state debt restructuring scheme:funds in exchange for austerity policies.He asked to be able to spend the money provided not to cut the expenses of public institutions and create wealth to repay debts, but to increase the salaries of public employees, build schools and improve the pipes and the electrical and water systems of the island.

After two years of negotiations Mottley managed to obtain a three-year financing plan, opening a new path within the IMF and the World Bank for the restructuring of the debts of the poorest countries particularly exposed to the effects of climate change.Spending not to cut and repay debts, but to plan, rebuild, reconsolidate.

“The fact that we are more concerned with generating profits than with saving people is perhaps the greatest condemnation of our generation,” he had said Mottley during the World Trade Organization conference in 2022.“The global order doesn't work.It does not guarantee peace, prosperity or stability.The words of global partnerships are empty, the partnerships themselves are bland, corrupted by greed and selfishness, and remain fundamentally unbalanced.The world is sadly segregated among those who came before and in whose image the global order is now cast, itself simply the embalming of the old colonial order that existed at the time of the creation of these institutions.”

Climate finance summit concluded in Paris:a rain of announcements but few results

All this was discussed in Paris last weekend in the meetings on climate finance, chaired by the French President, Emmanuel Macron, and the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley.The summit, writes Political, ended with a barrage of announcements and few results.

Dozens of world leaders they met to discuss climate finance, the ecological transition, the debt crisis and how to leverage sources of private sector investment to support decarbonisation projects.Everyone's undisclosed goal was to give the poorest countries the chance to access hundreds of billions of dollars to tackle climate change.“Those meeting in Paris this week agree that the current system is no better suited to the ambition of keeping the rise in global temperatures to within 1.5°C,” he had commented on the eve of the summit the climate policy expert, Rachel Kyte.

Paris summit could spur greater action ahead of year-end climate talks, it reads in an analysis on Reuters, although, writes The Guardian, “without the guarantee of a real transformation of the global financial system, the lack of trust between developed and developing countries could be the stumbling block on which COP28 could run aground”.

However, the meeting gave the feeling of "a growing momentum forward", he continues Political.The International Monetary Fund announced a target of $100 billion in “special drawing rights” for countries exposed to the climate crisis and the World Bank's commitment to offer “debt repayment breaks” for states affected by climate change. climate disasters, as well as a $2.5 billion “just energy transition partnership” between Senegal and richer countries.However, the summit did not reach an agreement on debt relief as some – including Macron – had hoped.

In a first draft of the final report, viewed by Reuters, it was said that multilateral development banks would increase lending by $200 billion by taking on more risk and perhaps getting more money from governments.But about this hypothesis there was no more trace in the final version.

To get out of the climate-debt trap, the Paris talks they concentrated on implementing solutions that help address both problems simultaneously.These measures include advanced warning systems for extreme weather conditions that can help authorities better prepare before a disaster strikes, saving lives and reducing costly damage.Discussion also focused on expanding new types of catastrophe insurance, such as those pioneered in Jamaica and Peru, and offering debt repayment breaks following an extreme climate event, to curb accumulation of debt in more difficult times.

The President of Kenya, William Ruto, he asked the creation of a global green bank separate from the World Bank and the IMF, warning that traditional multilateral lenders are “hostage” to the interests of richer countries and therefore unable to solve the climate crisis.

Macron has proposed the introduction of international taxes on maritime transport, aviation or even financial transactions to find the necessary funds to support the impacts of the climate crisis.But the chances that such a proposal will gain broad consensus among countries are very low.

In India around 170 people have died due to the scorching heat wave that hit the country

A scorching heat wave in two of India's most populous states he provoked the deaths of around 170 people, overloaded hospitals and knocked out electricity, forcing staff to use books to cool down.119 victims in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, 47 in the neighboring state of Bihar due to pathologies linked to the extreme heat of the last few days.

The largest hospital in Uttar Pradesh's Ballia district could not accommodate any more patients.The morgues are collapsing.Some families have been asked to bring their loved ones home.Continuous power outages across the region increase heat stress, leaving people without running water, fans or air conditioners.The State Health Minister, Brajesh Pathak, announced the launch of an investigation to understand if there is a link between the many deaths and the heat waves.

Temperatures have been consistently above average, the India Meteorological Department reports, with highs reaching 43.5°C.In India, a heat wave is declared if temperatures are at least 4.5°C above normal or if the temperature rises above 45°C.

Despite the warnings, government officials were reluctant to link the extreme weather event to the increase in deaths and did not ask the public to prepare for the heat until Sunday, June 18, when the death toll began to rise.

India's federal government will send teams to assist and advise heat-hit states in the north and east of the country, reports Bloomberg, while the Minister of Health, Mansukh Mandaviya, he announced that the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) will conduct research on how to reduce the impact of heat waves on health, identifying short, medium and long-term action plans.

A week earlier at least two people had died and dozens they were injured due to a cyclone that hit the western part of the country near the border with Pakistan, knocking out power to more than 4,000 villages, damaging roads and uprooting trees, authorities said on Friday.The number of victims was contained thanks to a mass evacuation of more than 100 thousand people in India and more than 70 thousand in Pakistan, officials explained.

According to climate experts, heat waves will continue and India will need to better prepare to deal with the consequences.Earlier this year, in anticipation of an increase in heat waves, the Indian government set out “heat action plans” for state, district and municipal departments:a mix of different types of solutions, from infrastructures to nature-based solutions to individual behaviors.However, most plans did not take into account the local context, were underfunded and failed to identify precise interventions for vulnerable groups, writes the British site Carbon Brief who analyzed the Indian plan.

from this the text above:
Types of heat action plans (HAP) pic.twitter.com/jtUTUWg4dd

— Wolfgang Blau (@wblau) June 18, 2023

Heat wave plans are relatively new and, therefore, continually evolving public policy tools.From the Indian lesson, the article continues Carbon Brief, two things emerge:the plans must be territorial, almost hyper-localized, to be effective and they must be adequately financed, otherwise they remain on paper.Climate impacts will require states to think about very ambitious local policies.

“The centers of our cities, as they are built today, are death traps,” explains Eleni Myrivil, first “global chief heat officer”, appointed by UN Habitat and the Arsht-Rock Resilience Center.

Lack of vegetation, high levels of traffic and the use of heat-absorbing concrete, glass and steel contribute to the so-called urban heat island effect, which can lead to cities being several degrees warmer than surrounding rural areas .Temperature records have been broken in several major cities around the world over the past year and it is estimated that by 2050 almost 70% of the world's population will live in cities and nearly 1,000 cities will see their average high temperatures reach or exceed 35°C during the summer months, writes Akshat Rathi, climate journalist from Bloomberg.This is triple the number of cities experiencing these types of temperatures today and alarming evidence of the growing impact of extreme heat on the vitality of urban areas.

In recent weeks, even the Texas and the China are experiencing a scorching heat wave while Vietnam and Laos they passed temperature records in May.

Cities will have to plan new solutions to cool ambient temperatures, other than air conditioners.For example, Myrivili explains, bringing more water to the surface and planting more trees.

The referendum aiming to cut carbon emissions by 2050 has passed in Switzerland

In Switzerland it passed the referendum on a law that aims to reduce the use of fossil fuels and achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.A measure that is necessary to guarantee energy and environmental security, also in light of the rapid melting of glaciers in the Swiss Alps due to the increase in temperatures due to climate change.Between 2001 and 2022, glaciers lost a third of their ice volume.

The law passed with 59.1% of votes in favor and will require abandoning dependence on oil and gas imports to switch to the use of renewable sources.Switzerland imports about three-quarters of its energy, and all the oil and natural gas it consumes comes from abroad.

The climate bill provides financial support of 2 billion Swiss francs (2.2 billion dollars) over ten years to promote the replacement of gas or oil heating systems with climate-friendly alternatives, and 1.2 billion of Swiss francs to encourage the transition of companies towards green innovation.

Opponents had argued that the measures would increase energy prices.Almost all major Swiss parties supported the bill, except the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP), which called the referendum after opposing the government's proposals.

The law on nature restoration is struggling to progress in Europe, with Italy voting against

On 20 June the Council of the European Union he reached a first agreement on the nature restoration law.However, the text of the law he was rejected by the Environment Committee of the European Parliament and, previously, by the affiliated committees for agriculture (AGRI) and for fisheries (PECH).It is the first time that Parliament's Environment Committee (ENVI) has rejected an element of the European Green Deal.Now the text returns in its original version in the plenary.The decisive vote is scheduled for the week of July 10.

According to a recent report by the European Environment Agency, 81% of natural habitats in Europe are in poor condition.There are some timid signs of improvement for forests, while the situation is more critical for grassy lands, dunes and marshes and low-lying peat bogs with repercussions at multiple levels:for the animal and plant species that live there;for health (zoonoses taught us this);for the quality of life;for the climate (to give just one example, peat bogs contain approximately 30 percent of the CO2 sequestered in the soil globally).The economy is also affected, starting from the agricultural sector, given that soil erosion "costs" the Union 3 million tonnes of wheat and 0.6 million tonnes of corn every year, he writes Lifegate.

This is why the European Commission has proposed to include a law on nature restoration within the biodiversity strategy for 2030.The objective, which we want to make binding, is to implement restoration measures that cover at least 20% of the Union's terrestrial and marine territory, all of this by 2030.

However, the law on the restoration of nature has a long process ahead of it which is already proving to be bumpy.The European People's Party (EPP), the largest in the European Parliament, has in fact presented a motion to reject it in its entirety.

On 20 June the Council of the European Union, made up of the ministers (in this case of the Environment) of the 27 member states, adopted its general approach.The text, as approved by the Council, seeks to balance "ambitious objectives for nature restoration" and "flexibility in the implementation of the regulation by member states".Italy, represented by minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, voted against.Legambiente defined the approved text as insufficient.

At the school of climate change

Cara Buckley, journalist from New York Times who deals with climate, she went at Slackwood Elementary, a primary school in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, where students are encouraged to talk about complex environmental issues in addition to their usual school subjects.New Jersey it is in fact the first American state where climate change is taught at all school levels.The objective is to learn to think in terms of solutions, not just focusing on the analysis of critical issues and the scenarios prefigured by studies and reports.

Climate change education is vital to help students adapt to the health of the planet, prepare for a new green energy economy, and adapt to climate changes that promise to intensify as this generation of children reaches adulthood , explains to New York Times the main advocate of new school programs, Tammy Murphy, part of the board of directors of former Vice President Al Gore's Climate Reality Project and wife of the Governor of New Jersey, Democrat Phil Murphy.According to the new curricula, climate is a transversal subject in all teaching, even in physical education lessons.

At Slackwood Elementary, children are taught that human activities, such as transportation, heating and raising livestock, are warming the planet.But, as mentioned, the focus is on awareness and problem solving.First graders learn about composting, recycling, and hydroponic gardening, while second graders explore pollution and the impact of plastic.

In the days when the smoke from the fires in Canada reached the American skies, the lessons focused on how to adapt to these events and find solutions.“It makes them feel like they're part of what's happening outside of school in the real world,” said Ms. Liwacz, a Slackwood teacher.“Of course, not all problems will be solved.But in the meantime they are thinking:'How can I solve this problem?How can I change this?What can I do with myself or my friends or my community to help change what I see or what I've noticed?'”

The fires in Canada and the air pollution in the United States are an unmistakable message of the climate crisis

The United Nations has also highlighted the fundamental role of education in tackling global warming.However, there is strong resistance to introducing climate issues among the subjects of study.A 2016 study showed that less than two hours of classroom time were dedicated to climate per year, despite it being part of the curriculum for three-quarters of science instruction in U.S. public schools.

While no one bans education about global warming, explains Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, some states falsely frame climate science as more a matter of public debate than scientific consensus.Last spring, the Texas State Board of Education he issued of the guidelines according to which the "positive" side of fossil fuels should be studied at school.

The road, therefore, is still long.But, tells Cara Buckley in an interview again at New York Times, “the children really want to help and are open to new experiences.I was struck by the fact that they were enthusiastic about talking about the environment.”

New videos from NASA show the rapid increase in CO2 emissions in the atmosphere

The rapid increase in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere is primarily responsible for human-caused global warming.Finding ways to reduce these emissions is a cornerstone of international climate negotiations.

However, unlike other forms of pollution, this greenhouse gas is invisible to the human eye.This makes it more difficult to communicate the challenge of global warming to the public.

But new impressive graphic animations from NASA show how CO2 emissions accumulate in the atmosphere over the course of a year.The videos show CO2 emissions from different sources:human-caused burning of fossil fuels (yellow);human-caused biomass burning (red);terrestrial (green) and ocean (blue) ecosystems.The pulsating areas indicate the absorption of CO2 by terrestrial ecosystems and the ocean.

The animations highlight the imbalance in CO2 emissions between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.They also show how CO2 is transported around the world by air currents once in the atmosphere.

The project is an "excellent example" of "Show, don't tell" scientific communication. explains to Carbon Brief Doug McNeall, climate scientist at the UK Met Office.“Videos help us understand complex processes on a 'gut level'.”

Data on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere

Preview image:Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, go energy-storage.news