Developing Countries Don’t Want a Forced Transition to Unreliable and Expensive Renewable Energy

October 25, 2021

The President of Uganda Yoweri Museveni wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal titled “Solar and Wind Force Poverty on Africa.” The piece comes ahead of next week’s global climate conference in Glasgow where world leaders plan to meet and discuss actions towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

A part of these discussions is moving poorer countries to 100% renewable energy as well. This worldwide aggressive energy transition is a costly and unstable move, and richer countries like the U.S. will be expected to help pay for poorer countries to make the shift.

With the current energy crisis going on that is especially affecting Europe with energy price spikes and shortages, it makes sense that developing countries wouldn’t want to switch to unreliable and expensive renewable energy. As Musevini reports:

Knowing this, many developed nations are pushing an accelerated transition to renewables on Africa. The Western aid-industrial complex, composed of nongovernmental organizations and state development agencies, has poured money into wind and solar projects across the continent. This earns them praise in the U.S. and Europe but leaves many Africans with unreliable and expensive electricity that depends on diesel generators or batteries on overcast or still days. Generators and the mining of lithium for batteries are both highly polluting.

This stands to forestall Africa’s attempts to rise out of poverty, which require reliable energy. African manufacturing will struggle to attract investment and therefore to create jobs without consistent energy sources. Agriculture will suffer if the continent can’t use natural gas to create synthetic fertilizer or to power efficient freight transportation.

The issue with renewable energy is it isn’t reliable and it’s expensive. A developing country like Uganda can’t afford to have higher energy costs and energy shortages as it works to develop key areas of the country’s economy.

Eco-elites tend to think they know what’s best for their constituents and now the rest of the world, without listening to their concerns on how it would affect their lives and their country’s development. We hope world leaders keep this and the current energy crisis caused by their green energy policies in mind when discussing a path forward next week.