Why The Last Will Be First!
Climate change is causing huge shifts in geopolitics and industry, led by a boom in renewable e
nergy. You can see change everywhere, in ten years the world’s energy outlook will look nothing like it does now. global energy demand continues to rise. Driven by emerging economies and developing nations, total worldwide energy usage is conservatively expected to grow by 70% by 2050. Big oil is not even remotely in this picture as the paradigm shift has already occurred, the problem for Wall Street is keeping it a secret until oil companies can squeeze the last dredges of profit out of the dying oil dinosaur. Many companies expected to use the energy needs of emerging nations like Ghana and Nigeria to keep oil sales in the black.
Yet even countries like Brazil and Venezuela can read the writing on the wall… the age of renewable energy is here and each year its impact grows exponentially. Global investment in transitional technologies reached $755 billion in 2021and is expected to double every two years.
Even though governments have been slow to recognize it, the world’s youth have pushed back with science common sense and accepted that climate change represents an existential threat to human civilization, with many nations seeking to reach zero net carbon emissions by 2050. Ironically because of lack of infrastructure doing this is easier in third world nations and also means a lower debt to the average citizen and greater growth potential because systems don’t have to be removed or retooled. Africa nations are quickly becoming the first regions in the world to power major economic development on renewable energy rather than fossil fuels.
With its plentiful natural resources and large population under the age of 25, Africa is apparently the paradigm of future potential and amazingly much of this is owed to two people as opposite as they can be the Senegalese American Rapper Akon who created Lighting Africa a for-profit organization that provides education and training to African workers in installing and maintaining solar energy systems, and former President Donald J. Trump of the United States! Donald Trump's disparaging remarks about African nations being pits for human waste woke many Africans to the reality that the cures so often delivered to them by the west are really the disease that foments their economic and social woes. Akon used his wealth and name recognition to bring billions of dollars to multiple African nations to supply solar and renewable energy from, of all places, China!
This makes sense because China is currently the world's largest producer of wind and solar energy,and the largest domestic and outbound investor in renewable energy. Four of the world's biggest renewable energy deals were made by Chinese companies in 2016 and that was only the beginning.Government investment into solar panel producers, subsidies, and access to government bank credit helped Chinese solar companies such as Longi, Suntech, Trinasolar, and more develop into leaders of the global solar market. As China was busy reaping the rewards of intelligent and thoughtful investment the USA under Trump was taxing home solar panels to slow import and removing tax incentives for homeowners to purchase solar energy systems. As a matter of fact instead of funding coal miners and solar installers and saving a huge portion of West Virginians from economic collapse our government asked coal miners to believe the industry would make a resurgence! Talk about bad bets! In 2021, 10 percent of all energy generated in Africa came from renewable sources, with a strong reliance (5.8 percent) on hydropower. From 2019 to 2021 alone, solar and wind capacity increased by 15 percent and 13 percent, respectively. From wind farms across the African coastline to geothermal projects in the east African rift valley, a new United Nations climate report in 2021 brought the continent's vast clean energy potential into the spotlight. If realized, these renewable energy projects could blunt the harshest global warming effects, power the continent's projected economic development and lift millions out of poverty, the report said.
Africa has attracted 2%—$60 billion—of the $2.8 trillion invested in renewables worldwide in the last two decades but with nations seeing the massive change renewables have brought to north Africa with countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, Morocco, Egypt, Ethiopia and South Africa taking the lead on large-scale clean energy adoption. Africa’s smaller countries including Cape Verde, Djibouti, Rwanda and Swaziland have also set ambitious renewable energy targets.
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