Tank pipework onboard the Karmol LNGT Powership Asia floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU), operated by Karpowership, viewed from the ship's bridge whilst docked at Cape Town port in Cape Town, South Africa. Photographer: Dwayne Senior/Bloomberg via Getty Images
African countries will push for gas as a transitional fuel as it moves away from coal, and as an energy alternative, at COP28 at the end of the year in the United Arab Emirates.
They will call on wealthy countries to pledge more money to enable the continent to successfully transition to cleaner energy. This comes after African countries have raised the issue that many wealthy nations have not been able to meet the pledges made at COP27, and have continued to pollute, while putting pressure on African countries to cut their use of fossil fuels.
These were the sentiments coming from delegates, including Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe and panellists, at the Africa Energy Indaba held in Cape Town on Wednesday.
They argued that Africa’s contribution to climate change is only 3.8% but it faces the harshest impacts of the natural disasters brought on by it.
“[COP28] is going to be an energy COP. And the sooner we face this fact that [most] emissions are man-made and come from energy, then you understand this has to be the most important aspect of how we deal with climate change,” they said.
Allow gas to grow
Full-time member of the National Energy Regulator of South Africa Nomfundo Maseti argued that the use of gas must not be discounted.
“Africa must be allowed to get their industries in order and be allowed to use gas before moving fully into renewable energy.
“We must be practical and agree that our journey to net zero is not going to be overnight. We need to look at the costs and the impact it will have on the consumers. We need to also give the gas industry an opportunity to grow,” she said.
Supporting Maseti’s view, Jaco Human, executive director at the Industrial Gas Users Association of Southern Africa said it was important to have power for infrastructure. He added that policymakers should have a plan for the resources we already have and focus on helping to build Africa before exporting to Western countries
Duane Mouton, a representative of Coega Development Corporation, said Africa should be allowed to use gas as an alternative, in case renewables fail.
Human added that Africa needs to move away from dirty fuels and that is where gas comes in. America had taken 10 years to stabilise their power supply and used gas while moving into renewable energy. “Africa should get the same opportunity to do the same,” he said.
Farai Chireshe, from the World Wide Fund for Nature, said increasing renewable energy capacity is the best way to end load-shedding. As many households as possible must get rooftop solar energy. “Long term, we need to explore green hydrogen. Hydrogen is better than gas.”
Africa must be given the space to transition
On Tuesday, Mantashe said Africa must be given the space to transition from high carbon usage to low carbon use at a pace and cost that it can afford.
He said the voices of African people must be heard: “That is the voice that says energy production in Africa must be aligned to Africa’s socio-economic development. This means that there must be a balance between energy demand for socio-economic development and energy supply that is premised on low carbon emissions.
“Differences about the pace, scale and how to balance the transition will always exist, however, as African leaders, we are duty-bound to act with determination to resolve the intricate problems that beset our continent without the encirclement pressure to please others first. We must be pragmatic in our approach to a low-emissions future,” he said.
Mantashe said Africa’s stance had been to put people at the centre of any transition.
“It is pleasing that Africa is uniting on a principle that the energy transition must be people centred, take into consideration the socio-economic conditions of communities that will be affected, and take into consideration Africa’s developmental needs.
He added that, “The African continent is well positioned to meaningfully benefit from the just energy transition era, due to its endowment with the mineral deposits that are suitable for green energy production.”
COP frustration
At COP27 in Egypt last year, one of the few areas of progress was the creation of
a “loss and damage” fund to help developing countries deal with climate change.
Many delegates at COP27 expressed frustration that too much focus was placed on the loss and damage caused by climate change and not enough on mitigation by cutting global warming emissions. This needed to be the focus of the climate talks but adaptation was equally important.
Adaptation refers to how communities deal with climate change. One example is using heat-tolerant crops and embracing more efficient irrigation systems. But huge amounts of funding are needed to make this happen.
In an interview with The National last week, Germany’s climate envoy Jennifer Morgan said COP28 had to refocus on adaptation.
“We can’t talk about energy transition and not about adaptation. We talk a lot but we have not really walked the talk and I hope this COP will attract finance and get to some strong implementable action plans that can take us forward,” Morgan said.
On Wednesday, panellists said the COP27 conference had not achieved much success around mitigation as it was unable to reach agreement, for example, on phasing out of coal and other fossil fuels or setting emission peaking periods. They argued that wealthy countries’ decisions to go back to fossil fuels impeded efforts to limit the average global temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
The World Wide Fund for Nature’s Chireshe said the cost of the impact of climate change would be higher than the world anticipated. He called on countries to let go of all fossil fuels and embrace renewables.
Mandisa Nyathi is a climate reporting fellow, funded by the Open Society Foundation for South Africa