According to a news report recently published in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, European nations are planning to harvest the sun in the Sahara desert in Africa to “provide clean electricity for the whole of Europe” but there is no mention of how such a development will also benefit Africa.
“Vast farms of solar panels in the Sahara desert could provide clean electricity for the whole of Europe, according to EU scientists working on a plan to pool the region’s renewable energy,” reports the newspaper.
As the world continues to investigate energy sources that are environmentally friendly, there is a need for developed countries to actively promote both technology and skills transfer to poorer nations. The fact is the problem of climate change is a sum of its parts. If one part of the world lacks appropriate solutions, the problem will still come back to haunt even those countries that have access to perceived technological solutions.
The report states that 0.3% of the light falling on the Sahara and Middle Eastern deserts can potentially provide all of Europe’s energy needs because the sunlight in this area is more intense. Therefore solar photovoltaic (PV) panels in that area could generate up to three times the electricity compared with similar panels in northern Europe.
“Harnessing the power of the desert sun is at the centre of ambitious scheme to build a €45bn (£35.7bn) European supergrid that would allow countries across the continent to share electricity from abundant green sources such as wind energy in the UK and Denmark and geothermal energy from Iceland and Italy,” reports the Guardian newspaper.
While there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the move to provide cleaner energy, it is essential that such an ambitious initiative is sustainable and beneficial to both Europe and Africa.
To harvest solar power in Africa without ensuring that the continent also has access to such energies is not a sufficient solution to the energy problem facing the world.
“Assuming it’s cost-effective, a large scale renewable energy grid is just the kind of innovation we need if we’re going to beat climate change. Europe needs to become a zero-carbon society as soon as possible, and that will only happen with bold new ideas like this one. Tinkering with 20th-century technologies like coal and nuclear simply isn’t going to get us there,” the newspaper quoted Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK’s chief scientist as welcoming the proposals.
Indeed Europe needs to become a zero-carbon society but so does Africa, and given Europe’s self-interested historical intervention in Africa, it has a responsibility to assist the continent.
In my opinion, a clean energy approach that does not take improving Africa’s capacity to become energy efficient and only promotes Europe’s self interest reeks of a neo-colonial project to suck Africa of its natural resources.
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