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Africa Should Set An Alternative Energy Agenda

Here are excerpts from a Reuters news report distributed by Alternet.

by Daniel Wallis

Africa must be bold and follow the examples of Brazil and Germany to plan an energy future around renewable and alternative sources, the head of the U.N. environment agency said on Thursday, March 22, 2007.

Many of the plans being considered by African governments, including huge hydropower dams and fossil fuel plants, were simply "more of the same", U.N. Environment Programme executive director Achim Steiner told a development conference in Kenya.

Many would be able to supply the huge appetite of industry and city dwellers on the world's poorest continent, he said, but they would "lock in" the rural majority to decades without power.

"We should not live with the dream of a trickle-down of energy supply (to villages) in 20 to 30 years time ... Africa should not follow the technological path the rest of the world is willing to give it access to," Steiner said.

"More imagination, honesty and boldness to set an African agenda ... is what the continent is screaming for today."

Africa is rich in renewable energy resources like wind, solar and geothermal power, he said, which could be harnessed relatively cheaply to power small communities.

African governments should be encouraged by a new focus in the West on fighting climate change through promoting clean energy generation and carbon financing, he said.

And they should look to countries like Brazil and Germany, which he said took "strategic decisions" years ago to become leaders in biofuels and wind power respectively.

"Everyone laughed at Brazil at the time ... The theory was they could not afford to invest in alternative energy," he said. "They spent $25 billion ... but have saved $50 billion now on avoided oil imports."

Steiner was speaking in Nairobi at the start of a major two-day meeting on sustainable development jointly organised by Japan, the United Nations and the World Bank.

Also see: Buyers Compete for Access to African Natural Resources http://www.progress.org/2006/africa14.htm Peace is a Better Energy Policy http://www.progress.org/2006/africa06.htm Plunderers and Monopolists versus Average Citizens http://www.progress.org/2006/oil26.htm

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