Let them eat cake

While the West and China and India gorge themselves on fossil fuels to power their industrial growth, the World Bank and the European Investment Bank expect, nay dictate, that Africa’s one billion inhabitance must power their industrial revolution by wind turbines and solar panels.

The UN’s “Sustainable Energy for All” initiative has aspirations of two light bulbs a fan and a radio. Well go Africa! Why not an air-conditioning unit, a chest freezer and a 2Kw kettle? No sod that, I would want a blast furnace an aluminium smelter and a glass bottle plant. Try powering those using wind turbines and solar panels. Heavy industry runs 24/7 the sun and the wind do not. At a time when Germany is building 10 new coal fired power stations these same Germans are telling Africans they will only lend them money to build power grids based on renewable energy.

The Centre for Global Development reports that $10 billion spent in Sub Saharan Africa on renewable energy projects will provide electric power for 30 million people. The same money spent on gas fired plants would provide power to 3 times that number.

Africa is entitled to its own Industrial Revolution. We in the West have had ours and it was powered by cheap coal. China and India are having theirs and it is also powered by cheap coal. Let Africa have its industrial revolution so that it can lift 100s of millions out of poverty and let them do it quickly using their abundant natural resources of coal oil and gas. Let them be spared the piety and holier than thou preachings of the ever so comfortable green movement.

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