"Clean" energy is a first world problem, costly, and must be offset and backed up by cheap, energy dense power source wherever employed in any setting. Until every man, woman, and child in the world has access to light and heat, it is damn near malevolent for any ostensibly helpful, public funded organization, private or public, to spend a single penny on such a bourgeoisie fantasy.
Thanks for this measured take on the Powering Africa meeting.
I'm an American professional who has been based in Nairobi for 30 years working on solar and energy access throughout the continent. To me also, the timing of this meeting with the dismantling of Power Africa was unfortunate.
Watching his remarks on YouTube, I agree that Mr. Wright had passion and agree that his comments hit home. You could hear the sizable group of old school African leaders agreeing with the need for larger scale solutions (coal, nuclear gas...), applauding his criticism of Biden era paternalism. In fact, Power Africa never was the transformational program Obama hoped it would be. That's another discussion.
Let's see what Wright and the administration come up with. But let's also be clear. "Paternalistic" climate change arguments are not driving investment in clean energy technologies. Decreasing costs, intelligent interfaces, scalability and decentralized deploy-ability are driving the solar, wind and battery installations that did not feature in his speech. Though US investment plays an important role here, we have lost African markets (and emobility markets) to the Chinese.
Initially, I was inspired by Obama's Power Africa and I was disappointed. I am not inspired by Wright. Let him surprise us.
To be fair to Mr Wright is no place for intermittent solar and wind energy on the grid, and the decision to subsidise and mandate intermittent energy in the net zero programs of the Western world was quite likely the worst peacetime public policy blunder ever. That was done without taking account of wind droughts, that is, extended periods with next to no wind across continental areas. The meteorologists issued no wind drought warnings and the authorities who planned the wind power transition did not bother to check the reliability of the wind supply.
Imagine buying a farm to grow crops without attention to the the rainfall records but that is what happened when the wind farmers went into business without checking the records on the wind supply. They may have used the average wind velocity as the metric but that is not helpful because the power supply has to be continuous from nanosecond to nanosecond and wind droughts, the Dunkelflautes in Europe, can last for weeks.
"Clean" energy is a first world problem, costly, and must be offset and backed up by cheap, energy dense power source wherever employed in any setting. Until every man, woman, and child in the world has access to light and heat, it is damn near malevolent for any ostensibly helpful, public funded organization, private or public, to spend a single penny on such a bourgeoisie fantasy.
Thanks for this measured take on the Powering Africa meeting.
I'm an American professional who has been based in Nairobi for 30 years working on solar and energy access throughout the continent. To me also, the timing of this meeting with the dismantling of Power Africa was unfortunate.
Watching his remarks on YouTube, I agree that Mr. Wright had passion and agree that his comments hit home. You could hear the sizable group of old school African leaders agreeing with the need for larger scale solutions (coal, nuclear gas...), applauding his criticism of Biden era paternalism. In fact, Power Africa never was the transformational program Obama hoped it would be. That's another discussion.
Let's see what Wright and the administration come up with. But let's also be clear. "Paternalistic" climate change arguments are not driving investment in clean energy technologies. Decreasing costs, intelligent interfaces, scalability and decentralized deploy-ability are driving the solar, wind and battery installations that did not feature in his speech. Though US investment plays an important role here, we have lost African markets (and emobility markets) to the Chinese.
Initially, I was inspired by Obama's Power Africa and I was disappointed. I am not inspired by Wright. Let him surprise us.
To be fair to Mr Wright is no place for intermittent solar and wind energy on the grid, and the decision to subsidise and mandate intermittent energy in the net zero programs of the Western world was quite likely the worst peacetime public policy blunder ever. That was done without taking account of wind droughts, that is, extended periods with next to no wind across continental areas. The meteorologists issued no wind drought warnings and the authorities who planned the wind power transition did not bother to check the reliability of the wind supply.
Imagine buying a farm to grow crops without attention to the the rainfall records but that is what happened when the wind farmers went into business without checking the records on the wind supply. They may have used the average wind velocity as the metric but that is not helpful because the power supply has to be continuous from nanosecond to nanosecond and wind droughts, the Dunkelflautes in Europe, can last for weeks.
https://open.substack.com/pub/rafechampion/p/we-have-to-talk-about-wind-droughts