Historically, energy transitions have never meant one energy system completely replacing another rather one system reducing quantitatively amount of use in favour of another. The rise of coal ,the steam engine and petroleum did not end the use of traditional sources of energy such as firewood and horsepower.
By Moses Kulaba, Governance and Economic Policy Center
Delivering Charcoal in Uganda (Rod Waddington/CC BY-SA 2.0)
Globally, there is an increasing focus on climate change and energy transition. There is debate on the risks that these portend and an emerging view/ consensus that energy systems must transit gradually to achieve a net zero carbon emission by 2050. Africa is at a dilemma, caught up in its realities and a myriad of contesting advice on which policy direction it should take.
This article attempts to deconstruct this increasing popular narrative on climate change and energy transition by arguing that it is unrealistic to achieve net zero by 2050 and a complete energy transition for Africa is impossible. Climate change may be real but achieving total decarbornisation by 2050 may be farfetched. I take this posture by looking historically at how previous changes in energy systems happened and Africa’s realities.
Chronologically, energy transitions are not new. They have happened before. Perhaps what make this possible transition quite significant is that it has been linked with the catastrophic climate change and global warming. This transition therefore is viewed as one of the remaining silver bullet to save the planet. However, an analysis of historical trends and the manner in which the road to decarbonisation is framed and the narrative/view that energy systems must transit by 2050 is therefore problematic.
Historically, energy transitions have never meant one energy system completely replacing another but rather one system reducing quantitatively amount of use in favour of another. The rise of coal and the steam engine did not end the use of traditional sources of energy such as firewood and horsepower.
Between 1780’s to 1860’s whale sperm oil was a dominant source of energy for lighting before being replaced with the discovery of petroleum. This can be considered as the first energy transition after man discovered fire. However, the two energy sources co-existed into the next century before petroleum became the dominant source. Whale oil did not disappear but retained value as a resource after the discovery of petroleum. In the 20th Century, Whale sperm oil was used for new purposes, including margarine, lubricants soaps, detergents, vitamins D and nitroglycerine, which is still in use today.
According to Yale Professor, Paul Sabin, the discovery of petroleum is often cited as an example of an energy transition, where one fuel completely displaced another. Yet this argument is totally flawed because the discovery of petroleum actually made it possible to hunt whales at a massive scale. The fossil driven ships could travel and conquer deep seas than before and stay their longer as merchant anglers trapped, caught and killed and stored whales in their thousands.[1] There could not have been modern whaling before fossil fuels were readily available.
While the demand for whale oil declined after the discovery of petroleum, its demand continued to rise. By the 20th Century, sperm whale catch peaked in the 1960s to over 250,000 tones before declining in the 1970s and 1980s. Numerically, it took almost over 100 years between 1850 and 1980 for this gradual decline to happen.
Indeed, recognizing the pace at which the whales were fished for their sperms and other products to near extinction, in 1986, the International Whaling Commission (IWC), established in the 1940s, banned commercial whaling because of the extreme depletion of most of the whale stocks. Even with the IWC ban in place, to date whales are still-hunted and killed for their sperms and other products, as was the practice during those mediaeval times. Japan left the IWC in 2019 and now hunts whales without any international restriction.
Moreover, historical data shows that the advent of both coal and petroleum as new energy sources did not take animal powered energy systems out of the market. When goods carried by the coal fired steam engine train locomotive at the station, one needed horses to haul it to the final destination. In the United States animal power increased with the number of horses and mules rising from 4.3 mln in 1840 to 27.3mln in 1920.
To date animal power continues to exist and still forms a major source of motorization in many parts of the world. Even with the advent of the advanced petroleum, based engines, in some parts of Africa, when goods arrive by bus, truck or lorry at the nearby road terminal one requires animal power (cow, horses, mules or camels to carry them the next mile to next village destination.
This suggests that different forms of energy systems are complementary to each other rather than antagonistic. One fuel has always added to another expanding both the energy supply and energy mix. The fossil-based systems will therefore continue to serve side by side with the clean energy systems.
In my Country, the two-wheeler petroleum powered motor cycle (Boda Boda) is slowly replacing the cow and donkey horsepower as major form of transportation linking the main road to the rural interior. However, the cow, donkey and horse power are not going away too soon. In some areas the human power is still largely used with people carrying their heavy loads on their head or pulled carts. The electric car is yet to arrive and will take long to dominate our major roads in the city and perhaps another 100 years to make it to the final mile into our villages. For Africa, therefore energy shift from animal and human-based power to fossil-based energy is just midway. It will therefore take many decades to leapfrog to a total clean energy system.
Since the Paris Declaration, there has been an upscale in clean energy sources compared to the previous years. However, the pace at which clean energy is being deployed is too low to overtake fossil-based sources by 2050.There is evidence that not only Africa is doing badly on this front.
In its 2023 report, the IPPC experts warned that we have already reached the catastrophic point of no return (keeping global temperatures under 1.5 degrees and on a clear path to miss the net zero target by 2050. Green House gas emissions continued to increase. Policies and laws addressing mitigation have consistently expanded since the Paris declaration but theses are yet to cause a dent in global carbon emissions . Global GHG emissions in 2030 implied by Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) announced by October 2021 make it likely that warming will exceed 1.5°C during the 21st century and make it harder to limit warming below 2°C. There are gaps between projected emissions from implemented policies and those from NDCs and finance flows fall short of the levels needed to meet climate goals across all sectors and regions, the IPCC report states.
Since the climate problem is defined as too much greenhouse gas emissions, rather than too little energy, this historically suggests that only a solution that actually limits carbon dioxide emissions will work. However, when the climate problem and decarbonisation is defined with targets this way, there is a serious problem.
Factually, Africa is energy poor. The IEA World Energy Outlook, however, shows that close to 600 million people remain without access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa. Over 80% of Africa’s population depends on biomass as a source of fuel. The electrification stands at around 40% and use of clean sources such as solar stands at a mere 4%. The net zero is barely 30 years from now and how Africa can turn these statistics around is quite impossible.
With the current statistics and demographics, decarborization (or net zero) is in many ways unprecedented as it means or suggests eliminating the use of a currently viable and profitable fuels and replacing this with another.
Globally, fossils are too dominant and producing countries are too reluctant to let them go without proper substitutes to replace them. Yet dominant fuels have major characteristics that make them difficult to be easily replaced. These include; having large market share, economic dominance/ascendance, political dominance, established institutional structures to support and cultural influence on the users. All these take time to be built and embedded into the energy system. Yet an energy transition reflects a change in the balance between fuels and a shift in their characteristics. That clean energy system will take over the characteristics of the current fossil-based systems in the next 27 years is quite an uphill task.
The recent global events have shown that the world can reach a net zero emission in 2050 is over exaggerated and practically impossible to achieve. The simple disruption in petroleum supply chains by the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022 showed us this realty. Barely two months into the war, had developed countries such as German turn around on fossils to fire up their coal-based plants to generate energy.
Indeed, one EU leader remarked that all along Europe was wrong on coal as source of energy and that European economies could survive without fossil-based energy. German, Austria, France, and the Netherlands fired up their coal plants to save gas. Coal exports from Africa to Europe boomed and new coal investments in the US increased. The energy transition even in developed countries is happening but not without significant setbacks.
Since the 2015 Paris agreement, the 2050 net zero deadline has been a moving target. India has said it would turn net zero only by 2070, while China has set a target of 2060. Russia and Saudi Arabia amongst major economies, have also set 2060 as their net zero targets. Some African governments such as Ghana have suggested 2060 as their deadline. The reality is that this net zero target, where the world is so clean and devoid of any carbon emissions may never be reached.
For Africa, therefore the answer to this conundrum of what direction the continent should take lies in energy aggregation and consolidation. This is where by new energy systems are layered on to existing systems and gradually scaled up as, they become technologically advanced, cheaply available and affordable, to meet the continent’s sustainable energy needs. There has to be no rush for Africa to transit by 2050! Africa does not have to pay heavily to secure a net zero and a just transition by 2050.
Africa’s future is safe by developing hybrid energy systems that can at the same time sustain the fossil based systems, while clean energy systems are aggregated and consolidated on an incremental basis for the next long-term future. What is required for now therefore is;
- Research and developing technologies that can reduce the toxic levels and carbon intensity in the petroleum based sources of energy so they can continue to be used in a clean future.
- Developing alternative products that could continue to be useful in support of the fossil industry, even with its diminished existence in the next 100 years. As earlier mentioned, while whale sperm oil stopped its usefulness as a dominant source for lighting, it continues as a key ingredient used to produce other high valued products.
- Developed countries appreciate that the journey will be a long one before our energy systems can significantly decarbonize. Even with the increased uptake in solarisation and other cleaner systems, biomass will continue to play a dominant portion as a source of energy to the bigger population in Africa.
- Our policies have to be pragmatic but less ambitious to avoid pitfalls in implementation and application, achievement of their intended objectives. Africa is not devoid of policies. It is a graveyard of policy implementation.
- Africa has to define its own energy transition pathway that is aligned to its practical realities and deficiencies. It is likely that fossils will continue driving Africa’s energy system past 2050.
In the climate justice space, perhaps Africa should be advocating for a Just Energy Aggregation and not a mere Just Energy Transition!
[1] Richard York: Why Petroleum did not save the whale; socus sociological research for a dynamic world , December 2017
Disclaimer: This blog article is produced as part of our ongoing policy discussion series on climate change political economics and energy transition. The discussions and briefs therefrom are intended to share dissenting views and provoke intelligent debates ahead of major climate spaces such as COP28. The views contained herein may not necessarily fully represent those of the Governance and Economic Policy Centre (GEPC) but aired in support of intellectual democracy and geared towards securing a continental consensus.