Is Uganda ready for renewable energy revolution?

Aug 06, 2015

The ministry of energy and mineral development recently published a plan highlighting the encouragement of support research in the use of biomass energy through improved cooking stoves, in medium term. “The use of more modern forms of energy like electricity and gas will be promoted” pledged the re

By Boaz Opio

The ministry of energy and mineral development recently published a plan highlighting the encouragement of support research in the use of biomass energy through improved cooking stoves, in medium term. “The use of more modern forms of energy like electricity and gas will be promoted” pledged the report.

But even more recently, President Obama announced guidelines to impose 32% cuts on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants across the country by 2030 than previously expected amidst tough opposition among the very pollutants, in what the president called the most significant step the US has ever taken to fight global warming. "Climate change is not a problem for another generation," Obama said. "Not anymore."

This sends tough messages to all countries around the world about their next course of action in the fight against climate change. However, it is pleasing that some developing countries have embarked on a serious course to cut carbon emissions, among them is Burundi, Jordan and Kenya. In Kenya for instance, renewable energy productions already contributes to one percent.

These countries are being led by countries like Uruguay, which aims to generate 90%  of its electricity from renewable sources by 2015 and Costa Rica, which has maintained 100% renewable energy generation for the first 100 days of this year.

To Uganda, these figures are unmistakably just a dream as obvious in the vagueness of the statements by the concerned ministry. There is still no ‘greater specificity’.

Renewable energy technologies are clean sources of energy that have a much lower environmental impact than conventional energy technologies. “Uganda, like most sub-Sahara African countries predominantly depends on firewood and charcoal for cooking and heating in households and institutions. Biomass-based fuels contribute over 90% of the total consumable energy, with firewood and charcoal supplying about 83% and 6% of the country’s energy balance respectively. In the recent past, the demand for charcoal has been increasing rapidly at an estimated rate of 6% per annum and this trend is expected to continue in the foreseeable future if ambitious actions are not taken now alter this wrong course” says United Nations Development Programme in a document dubbed the National Charcoal Survey for Uganda 2015. Why renewable?

According to a report made by an environmentalist and climate change specialist at Oxfam Australia, Dr Simon Bradshaw, “Four out of five people without electricity live in rural areas that are often not connected to a centralised energy grid, so local, renewable energy solutions offer a much more affordable, practical and healthy solution than coal,” Dr Bradshaw said.

“But as well as failing to improve energy access for the world’s poorest people, burning coal contributes to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths each year due to air pollution and is the single biggest contributor to climate change”.

This supports statements made this year by the World Bank, IMF and former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, who have all argued that renewable energy and not fossil fuels are key to improving energy access and reducing inequality, especially in developing countries like Uganda.

The energy ministry’s plan dubiously highlighted plans about investigations of wind energy resources. Stating that, the first phase of the project is to be implemented in Karamoja and around Lake Victoria regions. “So far, seven pilot small wind turbans have been installed to test their performance” the trivialising report concluded.

With the same humour, a strategy to develop the nuclear power road map is being drawn. This includes survey of potential sites for nuclear power plants, talking of which, Kyoga basin has been proposed as the suitable location; getting on with a study to integrate nuclear power into generation capacity plan 2015-2040, and a view of the policy’s legal and institutional framework.

With transmission infrastructure grid of 1300 km, tied with high costs of electricity, the country remains heavily dependent on firewood and charcoal. This is in the whole country, not just in rural areas. It is rather thus common for urban dwellers to opt to charcoal stoves because of the high prices on electricity.

In rural communities, the tendency has impacted negatively on the environment. I gradually shifted gazes upon the horizon of my country settlement, in Eastern Uganda, immediately observing a sharp difference in what I could see just 20 years ago. Huge mahogany trees and a blend of every natural species of trees that overwhelmed the unoccupied terrain has been replaced by small agricultural plots exposing bare, a naked surface of the once beautifully green scenery. The impact on earth of deforestation is visible in the rapidly changing global climate, characterised by high levels of carbon in the atmosphere, low rainfall and other messy findings.   

Thus, earlier weedy waves of environmental protections saw combinations of efforts by private sector, government and non government organisations in sensitising people against tree felling with slogans like “tree per head”, hoping great changes if each person could plant at least one plant. Alas fighting global warming needed huge ambition, commitment and advocacy.

Yet Uganda remains among the many countries that haven’t announced how they intend to cut carbon emissions ahead of United Nations framework convention conference of parties (UNFCC COP 21) in Paris in December 2015, through what is popularly referred to as INDCs (The intended nationally determined contributions).

Earlier this year, it was revealed by the Union of Concerned Scientists that some of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies have been purposely spreading misinformation about climate change. Some of the fossil fuel companies included in the report are BP, Chevron, Conoco, ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy, Phillips, and Shell.

In fact, environmental group Greenpeace estimates that Exxon spent about $30m on researchers and activist groups simply to promote disinformation about global warming since 1981, according to a tally kept by the campaign group Greenpeace.

However, in spite of the best efforts of fossil fuel companies to spread climate denial and prevent the spread of Renewable energies, they have begun to grow at incredible speed around the world.

In fact, according to Christine Lins, Executive Secretary of the Renewable Energy Network for the 21st Century, “last year, for the first time in 40 years, economic and emissions growth have decoupled, from 3% just 10 years ago, to 22% today” she said.

The great question remains if Uganda wills to cling on the revolutionary train and speedup swift efforts towards a greener future, cutting carbon emissions so that the Pearl of Africa isn’t caught up.

The writer is a development economics student of Makerere University and climate tracker for UN Call4climate Action

 

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