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Is Africa’s energy future renewable or locked into fossil fuels? A @NatureEnergyJnl paper, cited by @BBCNews, projects a massive boom in coal & gas-fired power - and calls for a blanket ban on DFI $. But here’s why IMO that’s dead wrong. THREAD→ /1 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55620848
There’s no coal boom coming. They project ~22 GW of new coal by 2030. The real new coal is more like 0.1 GW. Or maybe at the very very very most ~3 GW. The projection is off by a factor of at least 7, probably more like 100+. /2 https://www.energyforgrowth.org/memo/coals-future-in-africa-is-dim/
There’s definitely more gas power coming, but nothing remotely close to the ~39 GW projected for West Africa, a 3x rise in the next 9 years. Seriously, does anyone watching the market think this is remotely possible? (Maybe a friendly longbet @PhilippTrotter?) /3
Most of all *AFRICA IS NOT A COUNTRY*. Treating the entire region as if it’s one market makes it falsely appear coal dependent because South Africa's size is so dominant. Same applies to North Africa and gas. But there are 48 other countries with 1 billion people. /4
And because *AFRICA IS NOT A COUNTRY*, banning DFI $ for a whole continent makes no sense. We don’t penalize Portugal because of Russia's oil. We shouldn’t penalize Senegal, Liberia, and Kenya because of South Africa’s coal or Algeria's gas. It’s demeaning. /5
Read my whole reply here--> /6 https://www.energyforgrowth.org/blog/africa-is-not-a-coal-country-a-reply-to-nature-energy/
And the original paper is here. /end https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-00755-9
