20200910
Africa can become a renewable energy superpower - if climate deniers are kept at bay
Nigel Lawson's thinktank(GWPF) is pushing dirty energy on the continent with the greatest
capacity for creating clean fuel.
The power of climate science denial in the UK, thankfully, has been in retreat over the
past decade.
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.
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.
African prosperity will not come by it being shackled to the outdated dirty energy
infrastructure of the past.
Rather than trudging behind in the 50-year-old footsteps of European countries, Africa
needs to leapfrog to the clean, cheap and renewable technologies of the future.
Not only are wind and solar increasingly becoming the cheapest forms of new electricity
across the globe, but they are also inherently more agile and versatile that grid-reliant
fossil fuels.
African governments are becoming climate leaders, setting themselves ambitious targets
under the Paris climate agreement that put richer, more polluting nations to shame.
What it does not need is discredited thinktanks such as the GWPF trying to hold back this
future by making it the last dumping ground for world's dirtiest fossil fuel.
Nigel Lawson's thinktank(GWPF) is pushing dirty energy on the continent with the greatest
capacity for creating clean fuel.
The power of climate science denial in the UK, thankfully, has been in retreat over the
past decade.
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.
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.
African prosperity will not come by it being shackled to the outdated dirty energy
infrastructure of the past.
Rather than trudging behind in the 50-year-old footsteps of European countries, Africa
needs to leapfrog to the clean, cheap and renewable technologies of the future.
Not only are wind and solar increasingly becoming the cheapest forms of new electricity
across the globe, but they are also inherently more agile and versatile that grid-reliant
fossil fuels.
African governments are becoming climate leaders, setting themselves ambitious targets
under the Paris climate agreement that put richer, more polluting nations to shame.
What it does not need is discredited thinktanks such as the GWPF trying to hold back this
future by making it the last dumping ground for world's dirtiest fossil fuel.
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