[Jonty30]

They don’t want the third world approaching first world living standards.

[goldstategop]

Let’s hear a privileged European white girl tell poor Africans “how dare you.”

The Green message won’t be we’ll received in Africa.

[central_va]

Greta says no.

[Right Wing Assault]

Sorry, Sam, you missed your chance. No electricity for you. Maybe you could emigrate to Europe? That would work.

[palmer]

First, there is nothing “green,” “clean”or “renewable” about wind and solar energy. The vast amounts of land and raw materials, mines and factories required to build wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and transmission lines – to harness widely dispersed, insufficient, intermittent, weather-dependent wind and solar energy to benefit Sub-Saharan Africans – are anything but clean, green, renewable or sustainable. In fact, trying to meet those needs would require millions of turbines and billions of solar panels.

Driessen has some good points in many of his columns but he has an unreasonable hatred of renewables. Africa has vast amounts of land, mines and materials. They would just need some factories to build the panels. Eventually all of Africa will have panels creating solar fuels, that solve the storage problem. Energy transmission would be through pipelines and fuel trucks.

That's somewhat in the future. Right now they could cover useless areas in panels that would provide electricity on a fairly predictable basis especially in the dry season. That would provide electricity for cooking for a predictable amount of time each day. They would need some grid or storage to smooth the power delivery for intermittent cooking use, but not a lot. They would not need a billion panels for a billion people, but they would need a lot, probably 100 million or so.

The link he provides ("no single solution") suggests nuclear power and I agree with that and all other power sources. But I will not dismiss solar, it is the future.

[oldtech]

I know something of the great need for electrical power in Africa & always wondered why it had to be so. Should be many opportunities for hydro-electric & certainly atomic. I should think that available, affordable electricity there would make all the difference for the economy in Africa.

[Sicvee]

I think maintenance is the big problem. You need competent organizations with a continuous supply of money to maintain power plants and electrical grids. Just as you would need the same for water supply and distribution, which poses fewer technical problems, and is also deficient in Africa. Also needed is security to protect the components from theft. Again you need money in continuous supply to pay for security. The money for maintenance and security should be collected from the users of the electricity and water. But they are currently too poor to provide enough. Whether the money comes from local sources or from outside it is subject to graft and theft.<>
Maintaining a grid with renewable sources is difficult even in advanced countries, it would be much more difficult in Africa. A fossil fuel system would be easier to maintain but would still face the basic challenges of organization, security, personnel, and money supply.

[jdsteel]

I travelled to Uganda. Wonderful people with an awful government that is 100 times better than a previous leader (Idi Amin).

They have one real paved road going through the country and one electricity generation plant that is not only not dependable, the power output varies greatly, which is hell on electronics.

With the abundance of sunshine a solar array on a roof is a great way to get dependable power for at least during the day. But any Marxist project of the “one big” solar power generation plant would be a massive cluster.

[hadaclueonce]

Money to be made in selling carbon credits.
Corruption too!
Screw the little guy with taxes and they feel good.