Support investments in clean energy, World Bank urged

A grassroots environmental movement has petitioned the World Bank to support investments in clean energy in Africa.

RePlanet Africa, which took to the streets of Nairobi before delivering a letter to the World Bank office in Nairobi, urged the international lender to rethink the magnitude and pace of clean energy access in Africa.

The call was of a series of activities under the “Switch on Africa” campaign, designed to help catalyse investment in clean energy.

The campaign also seeks to protect African women from indoor air pollution and reduce deforestation by availing energy from clean sources.

In the letter, delivered on the 6th day of the UN climate conference in Dubai, RePlanet Africa asked the World Bank to prioritise investments not just in renewable energy but also in making it affordable and accessible to all.

RePlanet Africa noted that while the World Bank has been a major player in financing energy projects in Africa, their approach has focused primarily on expanding the grid infrastructure with little regard to affordability.

“Beyond the grid, the World Bank should adopt a broader definition of energy access in Africa to something more than just a light bulb,” Patricia Nanteza, RePlanet Africa Director, said.

She said the World Bank should help African countries widen their energy mix by investing in a range of clean energy sources, such as nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal and hydro.

“Meaningful energy access must include reliable, sustainable and affordable sources of power that meet the diverse needs of households including cooking,” she said

Nanteza urged the World Bank to consider energy subsidies and urged African governments to exempt LPG from taxes to help protect the poor and vulnerable in the continent as part of the efforts to reduce the heavy dependence on biomass fuels for household cooking.

“This is necessitated by the fact even households on the grid continue to limit electricity use to lighting and switch to biomass and fossil fuels for cooking due to the high cost of electricity,” she said.

In the letter, RePlanet Africa also took issue with the World Bank’s apparent reluctance to fund nuclear energy, especially in the Global South.

“The World Bank’s freeze on funding of nuclear reactors especially in Africa portends badly for a continent that desperately requires baseload power supply to grow its industry and create jobs for millions of unemployed youths,” the letter reads in part.

The letter said World Bank’s demand for a strong track record of nuclear safety as a pre-condition for funding nuclear projects in African countries has the inadvertent negative impact of feeding the perception that nuclear is dangerous and portrays the multinational lender as a spectator.

“Instead of playing spectator, we implore the World Bank to take leadership and through partners, help African nations to establish robust regulatory frameworks prioritising safety and environmental protection,” Nanteza said.

In Africa, 80 per cent of the population still lacks reliable access to energy. According to the African Development Bank, up to 640 million Africans and 4 in 5 people in Sub-Saharan Africa have no access to energy.

The same report notes the current energy mix on the continent is dominated by fossil fuels and traditional biomass including charcoal and wood fuel, which are major sources of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.