Coal Is Not An Alternative For Africa

By Samuel Hinneh, (Brisbane, Australia)

Given the many harmful effects of coal power plants on human beings and the environment, Africa needs to avoid considering that source of energy to boost economic growth, says World Wildlife Fund.

Coal all over the world is regarded as the cheapest form of energy, yet causes a lot of devastating effects to agriculture, human health and livelihoods, among others, the Chief Executive Officer of WWF Australia, Mr Dermot O’Gorman said.

“What we are seeing in the last few years is that the economics of coal is changing enormously, that the price of renewable energy keeps coming down and will continue to reduce,” Mr O’Gorman noted at the ongoing G20 Leaders Summit, taking place in Brisbane, Australia from November 15-16, 2014.

“What we are seeing in the last few years is that the economics of coal is changing enormously, that the price of renewable energy keeps coming down and will continue to reduce,” he emphasised.

Increasingly the United States of America, and China are desisting from the usage of coal to mitigate carbon emissions on a large scale. However, some countries in Africa, most recently Ghana has entered into a partnership with a Chinese firm to construct coal power plant basically to generate 700 megawatts of electricity.

This move has been greeted with lots of intense criticisms from many players, most notably civil society organisations as well as climate change activists’ movement, and even the local people.

In Kenya, Gulf Energy/Centum Group consortium have entered into agreement with the Kenyan government to construct coal power plant to meet power demand.

“The world is changing, coal is not a solution as far as a decade ago, counties around the world need to realise that they need to invest in low carbon technologies that will provide energy to both cities and even energy access for poor people and coal is into the main solution’’.

“We have seen the US government only in the last year and half say that they would not be investing in coal projects, so is a very new area, China has been looking at the environmental policies into Africa and they need to look at how to finance environmentally friendly energy projects in Africa,’’ Mr O’Gorman added.