Trump's "energy dominance"? How we laughed.

Chart from Assaad Razzouk

 From This is not Cool

America’s “Energy Dominance” being pwned by China in the fastest growing and most important markets, the developing world.

The Deputy Prime Minister of Ethiopia, in the video below [here], remarked, “..those that love their children, plant trees.”
The jaded cynical, fossil fueled wise guys currently running Washington are not capable of comprehending the aspirations of the great majority of humanity, who don’t care to live under the thumb of Exxon and the Epstein Class.

Bloomberg:

n 2024, the Ethiopian government banned the import of fossil fuel-powered vehicles and slashed tariffs on their electric equivalents. It was a policy driven less by the country’s climate ambitions and more by fiscal pressures. For years, subsidizing gasoline for consumers has been a major drag on Ethiopia’s budget, costing the state billions of dollars over the past decade. The country defaulted on its sovereign bonds in 2023 after rising interest rates drove up the costs of servicing its debts, and it received a $3.4 billion bailoutfrom the International Monetary Fund the following year. 

In the two years since the ban on internal combustion engine vehicles, EV adoption has grown from less than 1% to nearly 6% of all of the vehicles on the road in the country — according to the government’s own figures — some way above the global average of 4%.

“The Ethiopia story is fascinating,” said Colin McKerracher, head of clean transport at BloombergNEF. “What you’re seeing in places that don’t make a lot of vehicles of any type, they’re saying: ‘Well, look, if I’m going to import the cars anyway, then I’d rather import less oil. We may as well import the one that cleans up local air quality and is cheaper to buy.’”

For decades, Ethiopia’s high import tariffs on vehicles put new car ownership out of the reach of most of the country’s population. Per capita gross domestic product is only about $1,000, and even by the standards of low-income countries, it has among the lowest car ownership rates. At 13 vehicles per 1,000 people, it’s a fraction of the African average of 73. With few cars manufactured in the country, the vast majority are imported, and most are bought used. 

The government’s import policy has upended the market. In parallel, tariffs for EVs were dropped to 15% for completed cars, 5% for parts and semi-assembled vehicles, and zero for “fully knocked down” — vehicles shipped in parts and assembled locally. That has made new EVs cost-competitive with old gasoline cars.

At one of Hallel Cars’ showrooms in central Addis Ababa, a Seagull hatchback made by the Chinese carmaker BYD sells for 3.6 million Ethiopian birr ($23,000), while a BYD subcompact SUV Yuan Up costs 4.9 million Ethiopian birr. Before the import ban, a secondhand compact Suzuki Dzire gasoline sedan cost more than 4.2 million birr.

“The majority of our customers are those making the switch from fuel cars to EVs,” said Moges Negash, Hallel Cars’ sales and marketing manager.

Hallel sells Toyota, Honda and Citroën EVs too, but models from BYD — which last year surpassed Tesla as the world’s biggest seller of EVs — dominate its showroom. Other dealerships around the city sell Chang’an vehicles, as well as those from Volkswagen and the Vietnamese manufacturer VinFast.

Although the price tag is still relatively high for a country where incomes are low, middle class consumers find it easier to get credit to buy new EVs than they did for secondhand gas-powered ones, which banks often wouldn’t lend against.

“Banks are reluctant to provide consumer credit for purchase of vehicles that have an uncertain fate,” said Abdulmenan Mohammed, a financial analyst based in London who covers Ethiopian banks. “EVs are a new technology and increasingly being used in the country, so it’s a better opportunity for banks to provide credit.”

For the government, the growth in EV sales is a vindication of its import policy, which in turn has been made possible by its investments in electricity infrastructure. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance dam, completed in 2025 at a cost of $5 billion, produces 5,150 megawatts of power. Combined with other generating assets, including wind farms and solar, the country has excess generation capacity, which it sells to neighboring Kenya, Tanzania and Djibouti. 

The price of delivering power to Ethiopian customers is about $0.10 per kWh, which is about half that of neighboring countries, and considerably less than the US average of $0.18 per kWh. Many Ethiopian consumers pay significantly less than that, due to consumption-based subsidies on electricity.

This is now a path open to most countries without a car industry.  Solar panels are cheap as.  Batteries are plunging in costs.  You could run your vehicle fleet on the power of the sun.  Ban the import of petrol and diesel vehicles, encourage the roll-out of household and utility-scale batteries and storage, and end the import of expensive ICEVs and oil.  Clean your air, cut your balance of payments crisis, get cheap transport, and stop global heating.  What's not to like? 

If you do have a car industry, banning ICEV imports would still help you.  And maybe, as EV sales explode, you'll encourage your own car industry to switch to producing EVs.  Globally, land transport is responsible for ~20% of emissions.

Meanwhile, the US has embraced last-century technology.

Africa's quiet energy revolution

 From Our Wonderful Green Future

A quiet revolution is underway in Africa that appears to be going mostly unnoticed by the rest of the world. A green revolution in energy, transport and regeneration. A revolution that has the potential to unlock A Wonderful Green Future for the people of Africa.

Of all the sectors driving Africa’s clean energy and environmental transformation, two-wheel transport stands out as the most dynamic and rapidly evolving. Africa is currently experiencing a surge in homegrown motorcycle designers and manufacturers, with at least 10 companies now in operation. These bikes have all been designed in Africa, for African conditions. Just six years ago the nascent bike industry was developing modified ICE bikes with hub motors. After six years of dedicated learning and continuous improvement, they present the latest generation of bikes that we see today. Some are made abroad, some built locally with imported parts, some have developed their own battery technology and some are developing their own battery swapping ecosystems. Many of the manufacturers have been smart in using common parts from the most popular ICE bikes. Leavers, brakes, forks wheels, etc. which means spare parts are abundant. This makes it easier to tap into existing supply chains and start new businesses and manufacturing, developed around common parts. This builds more resilience into the system, creates more local jobs and keeps more money in local economies.

Some of the standout manufacturers leading this surge include:

Spiro – Nairobi, Kenya. 

Spiro is Africa’s leading electric vehicle manufacturer, currently operating over 20,000 electric motorbikes across nine African countries including Benin, Togo, Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Ghana, Cameroon, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The company has established its own network with over 600 battery swapping stations. (https://www.spironet.com)

Roam  – Nairobi, Kenya.

Roam, a Swedish-Kenyan electric mobility company, has established itself as a pioneer in Africa’s sustainable transportation sector. The company designs and manufactures electric motorcycles tailored for African conditions, with its flagship model, the Roam Air. Roam has raised over $31.5 million in funding, including a recent $24 million Series A round, positioning itself for significant expansion across the continent. It has also developed its own battery swapping system and charging facilities. (https://www.roam-electric.com) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m6UGDhJ6_M

Kofa – Ghana

Kofa, a Ghanaian clean-tech startup, has developed a multi-use, high-capacity battery system called Kore2, alongside an innovative battery swapping network. Kofa’s business model focuses on creating an affordable and customer-driven electricity network powered by portable batteries and renewable energy. In partnership with TAIL-G, a globally recognised e-motorcycle manufacturer, Kofa has designed the Jidi e-motorcycle specifically for the African market, offering a range of over 100km. (https://www.kofa.co) 

Ampersand – Rwanda 

Ampersand is a pioneering electric motorcycle startup based in Kigali, Rwanda, transforming urban transportation through its innovative battery swapping technology. Founded in 2019, the company has rapidly scaled from 20 initial e-motos to become a significant player in East Africa’s emerging electric vehicle market. Its battery swapping system, allows motorcycle taxi drivers to exchange depleted batteries for fully charged ones in under two minutes. This approach solves critical challenges of electric vehicle adoption in Africa: charging time and infrastructure limitations. (https://www.ampersand.solar) 

What Ampersand is doing also ties in with other African EV leadership and the phasing out of petrol motorcycles, which I wrote about here: https://owgf.org/2024/11/07/kigalis-bold-move-phasing-out-petrol-powered-motorcycles/. From January 1st, 2025, only electric motorcycles can be registered in Rwanda.

Zembo – Kampala, Uganda 

Founded in 2018, Zembo is a pioneering e-mobility startup based in Kampala, Uganda. The company designs, assembles, and sells electric motorcycles tailored for the African market, particularly targeting the popular “boda boda” (motorcycle taxi) sector. Zembo’s business model combines affordable electric motorcycles with a battery-as-a-service (BaaS) approach, utilising a network of solar-powered battery swapping stations across Uganda.  (https://www.zem.bo/)

Other manufacturers of note include: https://www.max.ng – https://www.ewaka.tech –  https://greenfoot.africa – https://www.ecobodaa.bike and I should make an honourable mention to the electric three wheelers which are now getting more popular: https://cleantechnica.com/2024/09/19/electric-3-wheeler-sales-reach-1-market-share-in-kenya/

Ethiopia’s ban on ICEV

To match all of this innovation, some countries are backing it up with new laws to curb the consumption of fossil fuels. Ethiopia has become the first country in the world to implement an immediate ban on the import of internal combustion engine vehicles, allowing only electric vehicles to enter the country. This bold move, announced by Ethiopia’s Minister of Transport and Logistics, aims to reduce the nation’s reliance on fossil fuel imports, which cost nearly $6 billion last year, and promotes the adoption of electric vehicles in line with the country’s green development goals. (CleanTechnica.com) Currently the main issues are training mechanics to work on EVs and charging infrastructure. Most vehicles are either charged at home or at work and there is little in the way of public rapid charging.

Other EV initiatives

While China has been very active in the EV market recently, Africa’s electrification is also being noticed by a few European EV makers, from big to small. New EV designs that specifically cater for African conditions are being developed which will only make adoption more likely.

Volkswagen Group Africa has officially commenced operations at its new multifunctional facility in Gashora, Rwanda, aimed at testing modern farming techniques using electric tractors as part of the innovative GenFarm project. This initiative is designed to create a sustainable ecosystem for mechanised farming in rural Africa, enhancing agricultural productivity while promoting environmental sustainability and clean energy solutions (https://kigalijournal.com/volkswagen-group-africa-launches-facility-for-e-tractors-in-rwanda/)

Also there is OX Delivers. An electric truck that is a purpose-built, flat-pack vehicle specifically designed for African road conditions, featuring high ground clearance and a sturdy construction that can handle unpaved roads and challenging terrain. With a 74-KWh battery providing over 90 miles of range, and a unique truck-as-a-service model, the OX electric truck aims to revolutionise transportation and logistics for smallholder farmers and businesses across East Africa. What OX is doing is very different to other EV makers and it’s worth watching this excellent video from Fully Charged about them: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMIcmYOBd-E )

Renewable Energy 

Outside of transport there is now lots of activity in the clean energy sector. Energy independence is absolutely crucial for Africa due to the high costs of fossil fuel imports and the impact on balance of trade payments. The majority of African countries are net energy importers, with 38 nations relying heavily on imported fossil fuels[2]. This dependence exposes African nations to volatile global oil prices, jeopardising their balance of payments positions and eroding economic prosperity. As the cost of imported energy continues to increase, government subsidies in some African countries have tripled in recent years, reaching record highs and further straining national budgets[6]. By achieving energy independence, through renewable resources, African nations can reduce their vulnerability to price fluctuations, improve their trade balances, and redirect funds towards sustainable development rather than fossil fuel imports[3][4]. 

This means that right across Africa many leaders are pushing for as much new renewable energy as possible. The continent’s installed renewable capacity is set to grow from 54 GW in 2020 to more than 530 GW by 2040, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), with solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity soaring to 340 GW and wind energy rising to 90 GW. 

All across Africa there are 100’s of projects in development or under construction. From truly massive projects like the G5 Sahel Desert to Power Project, a $10 billion project aiming to add 10 GW of solar capacity across 11 Sahel countries[4], to much smaller but also very important projects like the Roggeveld Wind Farm (South Africa). A 147 MW project owned by Red Rocket[5][6]. While the larger African economies are getting the most projects there is activity right across the continent.

Africa Minigrid Program 

What is just as exciting is the Africa Minigrid Program. This approach to energy production and consumption brings affordability, resilience and energy independence down to the micro level. Villages, communities and homes that have never been able to connect to the main grid, due to cost, are now being connected up to micro grids. 80% of people in sub-Saharan Africa don’t have access to clean, safe fuels and technologies for cooking. That represents 923 million people. Many rely on noisy, inefficient, expensive and polluting generators for electricity production. The roll out of minigrids and other adjacent technologies like P2P energy trading will change all this.

I wrote about one such project in Zimbabwe here (https://owgf.org/2024/10/29/zimbabwe-solar-mini-grid/) You can read more about the Africa Minigrid Program here: https://africaminigrids.org/category/news/  This is a relatively new development but more projects like this are due to happen in 2025.

Regeneration

Outside the clean energy revolution there are numerous regeneration initiatives happening across Africa. Desertification is a critical issue affecting Africa, with 45% of the continent’s land area currently impacted and 55% of this affected land is at high or very high risk of further degradation. This widespread land degradation threatens the livelihoods of millions who depend on the land for subsistence. The solution to this problem is regeneration on a massive scale. 

The Great Green Wall

No other African environmental project has been more talked about than The Great Green Wall. This African-led initiative is aiming to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land across the Sahel region, with the goal of combating desertification, sequestering 250 million tonnes of carbon, and creating 10 million green jobs by 2030. The project is currently about 15% complete and has already restored 18 million hectares of land and is transforming the lives of millions by creating a mosaic of green and productive landscapes across 11 countries, from Senegal in the West to Djibouti in the East. https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/green-wall-promote-peace-and-restore-nature-africas-sahel-region  

Food Forests

Part of the Great Green Wall initiative involves the creation of food forests. At the heart of this initiative lies small quarter-acre plots that encapsulates the project’s essence. These tiny pieces of land can provide everything a family needs, from building materials to food production, habitat, and temperature regulation. I wrote about this in a previous post here: https://owgf.org/2023/12/02/how-8000-food-forests-grew-africas-great-green-wall/ 

Earth Smiles

One of the main techniques for regeneration is the use of water bunds, or as they are more affectionately know as “Earth Smiles.” This is an innovative environmental initiative aimed at regreening degraded landscapes in sub-Saharan Africa. These water bunds are semi-circular pits designed to capture and retain rainwater, preventing it from running off and being wasted. By slowing down water flow and allowing it to infiltrate the soil, these bunds help restore moisture to arid lands, promoting vegetation growth and improving biodiversity. The approach emphasises community involvement, ensuring that those most affected by environmental degradation actively participate in reversing it. Through this grassroots approach, “Earth Smiles” are transforming barren landscapes into thriving ecosystems while addressing climate change at both local and global levels. Permaculture instructor Andrew Millison has made an excellent video on them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbBdIG–b58

AFR100

Another massive regeneration initative is African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) A country-led effort to restore 100 million hectares of deforested and degraded landscapes across Africa by 2030. With 33 African nations committed and 129 million hectares pledged for restoration, AFR100 leverages local expertise and a network of technical and financial partners to implement thousands of community-led projects, addressing issues such as food security, climate change resilience and rural poverty through sustainable landscape restoration practices. Their website is filled with hundreds of projects that have already been undertaken. https://afr100.org/ 

Wrapping Up

While there is clearly lots of great things happening in Africa, it isn’t all rosy on the environmental front. There is still considerable destruction happening, especially with logging and deforestation, which remain a big concern. Also despite all the new Renewables projects, fossil fuels consumption is still growing. On top of this nations are increasingly being affected by global heating and extreme weather. A Wonderful Green Future is not assured, but as this article points out, there is a way forward emerging. This post has only scratched the surface on all the environmental projects happening in Africa. As more projects happen, more knowledge is shared, more people see what is possible, get involved, and then hopefully this quiet revolution will pick up pace.

A huge thank you to Remeredzai Joseph Kuhudzai for chatting to me about his on the ground experience in Africa.  You can see his work here:  https://cleantechnica.com/author/remeredzaijosephkuhudzai/

Other links of interest:

Africa Aid: https://nation.africa/kenya/life-and-style/dn2/the-myth-about-aid-how-africa-is-losing-out-as-donors-reap-big-time–1010542

Justdiggit is a non-profit organisation  supporting the earth smiles initiative – https://justdiggit.org/

Other information on restoring ecosystems in Africa via the UN. – https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/africa-restoring-ecosystems-central-green-recovery

Introduction to Africa’s green revolution – https://www.green.earth/blog/carbon-ar-afforestation-reforestation-projects-africa

Some thoughts on China’s role in Africa: https://theconversation.com/chinas-interests-in-africa-are-being-shaped-by-the-race-for-renewable-energy-237679

Rwanda announces master plan for EV infrastructure – https://www.electrive.com/2024/12/04/rwanda-announces-master-plan-for-ev-infrastructure/

How climate change impacts the Indian Ocean Dipole

 From Phys.Org

With a new analysis of long-term climate data, researchers say they now have a much better understanding of how climate change can impact and cause sea water temperatures on one side of the Indian Ocean to be so much warmer or cooler than the temperatures on the other—a phenomenon that can lead to sometimes deadly weather-related events like megadroughts in East Africa and severe flooding in Indonesia.

The analysis, described in a new study in Science Advances by an international team of scientists led by researchers from Brown University, compares 10,000 years of past climate conditions reconstructed from different sets of geological records to simulations from an advanced climate model.

The findings show that about 18,000 to 15,000 years ago, as a result of melted freshwater from the massive glacier that once covered much of North America pouring into the North Atlantic, ocean currents that kept the Atlantic Ocean warm weakened, setting off a chain of events in response. The weakening of the system ultimately led to the strengthening of an atmospheric loop in the Indian Ocean that keeps warmer water on one side and cooler water on the other.

This extreme weather pattern, known as a dipole, prompts one side (either east or west) to have higher-than-average rainfall and the other to have widespread drought. The researchers saw examples of this pattern in both the historical data they studied and the model's simulation. They say the findings can help scientists not only better understand the mechanisms behind the east-west dipole in the Indian Ocean, but can one day help to produce more effective forecasts of drought and flood in the region.

"We know that in the present-day gradients in the temperature of the Indian Ocean are important to rainfall and drought patterns, especially in East Africa, but it's been challenging to show that those gradients change on long time-scales and to link them to long-term rainfall and drought patterns on both sides of the Indian Ocean," said James Russell, a study author and professor of Earth, environmental, and planetary sciences at Brown. "We now have a mechanistic basis to understand why some of the longer-term changes in rainfall patterns in the two regions have changed through time."

In the paper, the researchers explain the mechanisms behind how the Indian Ocean dipole they studied formed and the weather-related events it led to during the period they looked at, which covered the end of the last Ice Age and the start of the current geological epoch.

The researchers characterize the dipole as an east-west dipole where the water on the western side—which borders modern day East African countries like Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia—is cooler than the water on eastern side toward Indonesia. They saw that the warmer water conditions of the dipole brought greater rainfall to Indonesia, while the cooler water brought much drier weather to East Africa.

That fits into what is often seen in recent Indian Ocean dipole events. In October, for example, heavy rain led to floods and landslides in Indonesian islands of Java and Sulawesi, leaving four people dead and impacting over 30,000 people. On the opposite end, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia experienced intense droughts starting in 2020 that threatened to cause famine.

The changes the authors observed 17,000 years ago were even more extreme, including the complete drying of Lake Victoria—one of the largest lakes on Earth.

"Essentially, the dipole intensifies dry conditions and wet conditions that could result in extreme events like multi-year or decades-long dry events in East Africa and flooding events in South Indonesia," said Xiaojing Du, a Voss postdoctoral researcher in the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society and Brown's Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, and the study's lead author. "These are events that impact people's lives and also agriculture in those regions. Understanding the dipole can help us better predict and better prepare for future climate change."

The dipole the researchers studied formed from the interactions between the heat transport system of the Atlantic Ocean and an atmospheric loop, called a Walker Circulation, in the tropical Indian Ocean. The lower part of the atmospheric loop flows east to west across much of the region at low altitudes near the ocean surface, and the upper part flows west to east at higher altitudes. The higher air and lower air connect in one big loop.

Interruption and weakening of the Atlantic Ocean heat transport, which works like a conveyor belt made of ocean and wind currents, was brought on by massive melting of the Laurentide ice sheet that once covered most of Canada and the northern U.S. The melting cooled the Atlantic and consequent wind anomalies triggered the atmospheric loop over the tropical Indian Ocean to become more active and extreme. That then led to increased precipitation in the east side of the Indian Ocean (where Indonesia sits) and reduced precipitation in the west side, where East Africa sits.

The researchers also show that during the period they studied, this effect was amplified by a lower sea level and the exposure of nearby continental shelves.

The scientists say more research is needed to figure out exactly what effect the exposed continental shelf and lower sea level has on the Indian Ocean's east-west dipole, but they're already planning to expand the work to investigate the question. While this line of the work on lower sea levels won't play into modeling future conditions, the work they've done investigating how the melting of ancient glaciers impacts the Indian Ocean dipole and the heat transport system of the Atlantic Ocean may provide key insights into future changes as climate change brings about more melting.

"Greenland is currently melting so fast that it's discharging a lot of freshwater into the North Atlantic Ocean in ways that are impacting the ocean circulation," Russell said. "The work done here has provided a new understanding of how changes in the Atlantic Ocean circulation can impact Indian Ocean climate and through that rainfall in Africa and Indonesia."

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

 

Africa: growth outperforms

 As far as I know, no one else actually calculates quarterly GDP or monthly industrial production for Africa.   I've used higher frequency official data, where available, for industrial production and GDP, and annual data before that.  In some cases, I have estimated quarterly/monthly data using my variant of the Chow-Lin technique.  Ethiopia, for example, publishes no monthly or quarterly GDP or IP time series, so I have used annual GDP/IP time series and estimated quarterly series using the dollar value of imports as estimator.   My variant of the Chow-Lin technique forces the quarterly data to add up to the annual data (a kind of benchmarking), so the quarterly data should show similar rates of change and growth to the annual data, but they will give a clearer idea of cyclical turning points.

The countries included are the 10 largest (in terms of GDP) plus a couple of others, covering 78% of Africa's GDP.  Weighting is a problem, one I've been meaning to address for a while.  I have used PPP GDP for 2007, but I would like to switch to a system of variable weights and a chain-linked calculation, which will be much easier to do using constant price dollar-valued GDP (using the Maddison Project GDP estimates).   The variable weights calculation involves wrestling with the maths, the coding and the data, so I keep on postponing the evil day.  I'll get there eventually.  

As the first chart shows, GDP is less volatile than industrial production, which is what you'd expect.  It also suggests (since IP is more up to date) that GDP will likely go negative this year.  However, Africa's IP spiked up in May as Nigeria rebounded after a bizarre bank note crisis, but this spike has been removed by my extreme-adjustment algorithm.  So the decline in IP is not as fierce as it appears from the chart*.  Watch this space,

The second chart shows GDP for Africa relative to my calculation of world GDP.  (My world GDP calculation is a couple of quarters out of date --- I haven't updated it yet.)  African GDP has been outperforming world GDP since 2000, though before that growth in Africa was less than in the world as a whole.   Since the chart uses a log scale, a straight line would show a constant growth rate.  Note how, even though Africa continues to grow faster than the world as a whole, its growth rate slowed as world growth slowed after the GFC.  I'll talk more about this slowdown in world growth in later posts.

Africa makes up only a small percentage of world GDP (±2.5%), at least based on 2007 PPP weights, but its rapid growth means that that is more like 4% today, putting Africa as a whole as big as Germany.  This rapid growth is one of the reasons why I would like to move to calculations using moving weights.

The chart will be clearer if you click on it.
Note logarithmic scale.

In a sense, both the GDP and IP calculations are experimental, or at least, likely to be amended as I improve both the data and my programs.  However, the broad conclusions are unlikely to change.

* [Update:  see this post, which shows both the original and the extreme-adjusted year-on-year percentage changes in African industrial production]

Things are getting very ugly

 

Source: Off Target, from the UN Environment Programme
Note:  I believe that the UN is using the convention that methane is 20 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide over 100 years.  The better way to count methane, I think, is its effect over 20 years, when it is 80 times as potent a green house gas as CO2.  This would significantly increase the percentage of emissions from agriculture above the ~20% shown in this table.

Next year, this humungous El Niño could drive temperatures to 1.7 or 1.8 degrees C above pre-industrial levels.  This is, of course, catastrophic.  Things will get very ugly, unless we redouble our efforts to slash emissions.  

What can we do?

First, what can governments do?

✔️ Set a renewable energy target.  The percentage of renewables+nuclear in electricity generation needs to rise by 6-8% a year, or more, if we are to eliminate electricity's emissions before it is too late.

Emissions from electricity generation are just under 30% of total global emissions.  We may not yet be able to go above 90 or 95% renewables in the grid, because we don't have long-term storage to offset periods of dunkelflaute, but we can certainly aim for 90%, and reconsider what we need to do next when we get there. 

How would this work?  Each utility would be required to reach the levels set in the RET each year.  Those which exceeded this target would get credits, those which didn't would have to buy credits, either from their more successful peers, or from the government.   This would encourage utilities to replace coal and gas with wind/solar/batteries/nuclear/hydro. I include nuclear, but in truth, it can't be built fast enough.  But if there is already nuclear available, it shouldn't be closed down. 

If we aim for a maximum of 10% fossil fuels in electricity generation within 10 years, we will have cut emissions by 27%.  And, remember, in principle, every use of energy can be electrified.  So removing fossil fuels from electricity generation is key.

✔️ Every country should introduce a carbon tax.  It doesn't have to be swingeing to start out with, but it should rise every year, and the pathway should be clear to everybody.  To prevent emission leakage — you tax your industries while others don't tax theirs — you must also tax imports from countries which do not have an R.E.T. or a price on carbon.  (See my posts on a carbon border tax)

✔️ We need to accelerate the replacement of petrol/diesel vehicles (ICEVs) with EVs.  15% of emissions come from transport.  Because even when we reach 100% of sales being EVs, it will take 10-20 years for all ICEVs on the roads to be replaced.  This is too long.  Most countries are nowhere near 100% EV sales, even though this percentage has risen sharply over the last 9 months.   To accelerate this process, we could, for example, ban the import of new and second-hand ICEVs, or slap 100% taxes on them.  By taxing new petrol cars and subsidising EVs, we would drive a wedge between the up-front costs of EVs and ICEVs.  Ethiopia has already done this.  This policy should apply to two and three-wheeled vehicles, too.  Countries which do this deserve reduced carbon border taxes.  And we should press on with bi-mode and battery trains and electric planes.

✔️ We need to replace oil- or gas-based household and industrial heating with heat pumps.  They're four times as efficient as gas, oil, or electric heaters, and so are cheaper to run, but they have higher up-front costs.  They will require government subsidy to start the revolution rolling.  

All of these combined will cut emissions by 50 or more.  If we also switch to low-emission steel and cement, the emissions cuts could reach 65%.

Second, what can you do?

✔️ The steps above will leave mostly agricultural emissions to be reduced, which (but see note on graphic above) are ~20% of emissions. This is too hard for governments to act on — now.   People love their meat too much to give it up.  But it won't go away.  When we've cut emissions by 70%, agriculture will dominate what's left over.  And action will no longer be postponable.  

✔️ Until then, you personally can cut beef, mutton, pork and cow's milk out of your diet, which would more than halve your emissions from the food you eat.  Even better: if land is freed from animal raising, it can be re-wilded, which reduces the level of Co2 in the atmosphere.  Negative emissions!  If you really care about global heating, this is something direct you can do.  You can only force governments to switch to renewables by acting collectively (by voting), and though we shouldn't give up trying to get collective action, we don't need anybody else's permission to eat less meat.  It's something you can start today.

The position is far from hopeless.  We have the technology to slash emissions from electricity generation and transport. What we lack is the will to act.  Perhaps the upcoming Godzilla El Niño will shift the political logjam.  Make it so.

Largest wind farm in Africa

Lake Turkana, sometimes called The Jade Sea

Kenya's president has just opened Africa's largest wind farm:

Kenya has launched Africa's largest wind power farm in a bid to boost electricity generating capacity and to meet the country's ambitious goal of 100% green energy by 2020.

The farm, known as the Lake Turkana Wind Power (LTWP) will generate around 310 megawatts of power to the national grid and will increase the country's electricity supply by 13%, President Uhuru Kenyatta said at the launch of the project on Friday.

"Today, we again raised the bar for the continent as we unveil Africa's single largest wind farm," Kenyatta said.

"Kenya is without doubt on course to be a global leader in renewable energy." 

The project is powered by the Turkana corridor wind, a low level jet stream originating from the Indian Ocean and blows all year round, according to a government statement.

An international consortium of lenders and producers, which includes the African Development Bank, came together to install the 365 wind turbines, which cost around $700m, the largest private investment in Kenya's history, President Kenyatta said.

The 52-meter blade span windmills will take advantage of high winds in the remote area.

Around 70% of Kenya's national electricity comes from renewable sources like hydro power and geothermal.

Kenya's [Lake Turkana Wind Project] is not the only existing wind power project on the continent. Africa has fully operational wind farms in Morocco, Ethiopia, and South Africa.

Lake Turkana is one of the world's largest salt-water lakes.  It is located in the Kenyan Rift Valley, where Africa is (over millions of years) splitting apart.  One day, long after we're all dust, Lake Turkana will be connected to the Red Sea.  

Floods and bushfires

From the BBC:

Flooding and landslides in East Africa have killed dozens of people and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in Australia, a period of hot, dry weather has led to a spate of bushfires.

Both weather events have been linked to higher-than-usual temperature differences between the two sides of the Indian Ocean - something meteorologists refer to as the Indian Ocean Dipole.

The Indian Ocean Dipole - often called the "Indian Niño" because of its similarity to its Pacific equivalent - refers to the difference in sea-surface temperatures in opposite parts of the Indian Ocean.

Temperatures in the eastern part of the ocean oscillate between warm and cold compared with the western part, cycling through phases referred to as "positive", "neutral" and "negative".  

The dipole's positive phase this year - the strongest for six decades - means warmer sea temperatures in the western Indian Ocean region, with the opposite in the east.

The result of this unusually strong positive dipole this year has been higher-than-average rainfall and floods in eastern Africa and droughts in south-east Asia and Australia.

"When an Indian Ocean dipole event occurs, the rainfall tends to move with the warm waters, so you get more rainfall than normal over the East African countries," Dr Andrew Turner, a lecturer in monsoon systems at the UK's University of Reading, told the BBC.

"On the other hand, in the east of the Indian Ocean, sea surface temperatures will be colder than normal and that place will get a reduced amount of rainfall."

A negative dipole phase would bring about the opposite conditions - warmer water and greater precipitation in the eastern Indian Ocean, and cooler and drier conditions in the west.

The dipole has resulted in floods in eastern Africa and bushfires in Australia. Heavy downpours have devastated parts of East Africa over the last two months, with the Horn of Africa seeing up to 300% above average rainfall between October and mid-November, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network.

Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Somalia and South Sudan have been particularly badly affected, with flash floods and landslides hitting communities across the region.

Almost 300 people have reportedly died and 2.8 million people have been affected, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Meanwhile in Australia, record-breaking spring temperatures have helped spark and fan a series of bushfires across the country.

About 100 bushfires are raging in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW), with the most severe forming into a "mega blaze" north of Sydney.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has warned communities to prepare for more severe fire danger, with a high chance of warmer than usual days and nights for much of the country throughout summer.

Extreme climate and weather events caused by the dipole are predicted to become more common in the future as greenhouse gas emissions increase.

In a 2014 study published in Nature, scientists in Australia, India, China and Japan modelled the effects of CO2 on extreme Indian Ocean dipoles, such as those in 1961, 1994 and 1997.

Assuming emissions continue to go up, they projected that the frequency of extreme positive dipole events would increase this century from one every 17.3 years to one every 6.3 years.

"The countries in the west of the Indian Ocean, so on the African coast, are going to see much, much more flooding and heavy rainfall relating to these events," says Dr Turner. "You're going to get more damaging impacts on crops and on infrastructure and flooding.

"On the other hand, in the east of the Indian Ocean, islands on the west side of Indonesia are going to see a greater chance of drought and reduced rainfall."

[I've only quoted part of the report.  You can read more here]

Africa slowing

 I've updated my calculations for industrial production for Africa as a whole.   It's only available to Q4/2021.  It covers 73% of Africa's GDP.   However, there are PMIs for several African countries, though not the same universe as those I use to calculate IP.  The overlap is considerable, however, and all the large economies except Angola and Ethiopia have PMIs.  The correlation between the two series isn't too bad.  As you see, the PMI for Africa suggests that the economy is slowing.  

What the COP won't touch

From The Guardian

There are just two actions needed to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown: leave fossil fuels in the ground and stop farming animals. But, thanks to the power of the two industries, both aims are officially unmentionable. Neither of them has featured in any of the declarations from the 26 climate summits concluded so far.

Astonishingly, the sectors themselves are seldom mentioned. I’ve worked through every final agreement produced by the summits since they began. Fossil fuels are named in only six of them. Just one hints at using less overall: the others propose only to improve efficiency (which, as we have known since the 19th century, can often paradoxically increase fossil fuel use), attempt technical fixes or, in the case of last year’s agreement in Glasgow, phase down “unabated” coal burning, while saying nothing about reducing oil or gas. Not one of them suggests extracting less. If fossil fuels are removed from the ground, they will be used, regardless of governments’ vague declarations about consumption.

The other omission is even starker. Livestock is mentioned in only three agreements, and the only action each of them proposes is “management”. Nowhere is there a word about reduction. It’s as though nuclear non-proliferation negotiators had decided not to talk about bombs. You cannot address an issue if you will not discuss it.

The call to stop farming animals should be as familiar as the call to leave fossil fuels in the ground. But it is seldom heard. Livestock farming, a recent paper in the journal Sustainability estimates, accounts for between 16.5% and 28% of all greenhouse gas pollution. The wide range of these figures is an indication of how badly this issue has been neglected. As the same paper shows, the official figure (14.5%), published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, is clearly wrong. Everyone in the field knows it, yet few attempts have been made to update it.

Even if the minimum number (16.5%) applies, this is greater than all the world’s transport emissions. And it is growing fast. In the 20 years to 2018, global meat consumption rose by 58%. A paper in Climate Policy estimates that, by 2030, greenhouse gases from livestock farming could use half the world’s entire carbon budget, if we want to avoid more than 1.5C of global heating.

An analysis by Our World in Data shows that even if greenhouse gas pollution from every other sector were eliminated today, by 2100 food production will, on its current trajectory, bust the global carbon budget two or three times over. This is largely because of animal farming, which accounts for 57% of greenhouse gases from the food system, though it provides just 18% of the calories.

This issue has become even more urgent now we know the heating impact of methane is rising. Livestock farming is the world’s greatest source of methane released by human activities. Yet there is no mention of it in the global methane pledge launched at last year’s climate summit.

Governments have not ignored these issues by accident; they have resolutely looked away. A new analysis for Chatham House finds that only 12 nations name emissions from farm animals in their official climate commitments, and none seeks to reduce livestock production. Only two nations (Costa Rica and Ethiopia) mention dietary change: arguably the most important of all environmental actions, as animal farming is also the world’s greatest cause of habitat destruction and wildlife loss.

What accounts for this determined silence? I think there are several reasons. The livestock sector’s cultural power greatly outweighs its economic power. Our connection to food is more personal than our connection to energy sources. Most fossil fuel is consumed at a distance. When we use electricity, for example, we don’t think about where it comes from, as long as the lights stay on. But we think and feel a great deal about the food we eat. And, by comparison with the denial sponsored by the fossil fuel industry, the misleading claims of the livestock industry have scarcely been challenged in the media.

A scandal broke last week about an academic centre at the University of California, Davis, which turns out to have been founded and funded by livestock lobby groups. It has downplayed the impact of livestock farming, in ways that other scientists have described as highly misleading.

But this is just one aspect of the problem. Like the fossil fuel industry, livestock corporations have been ploughing money into public persuasion, using tactics first developed by tobacco companies. Some of this greenwashing has been highly effective, especially the industry’s claims about “regenerative ranching” and the false assertion that pasture-fed meat farming sequesters more greenhouse gases than it releases.

In reality, grass-fed meat is by far the most damaging component of our diets, as a result of its massive land requirement, greenhouse gas emissions, and carbon and ecological opportunity costs. Despite a plethora of claims, there is no empirical evidence that carbon storage in grazing land can compensate for the greenhouse gases livestock produce, let alone for the carbon stocks destroyed when wild ecosystems are converted to pasture.

A paper in Nature Sustainability found that if permanent livestock pasture in just the rich nations were returned to wild ecosystems, their recovery would draw down 380bn tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, equivalent to 12 years of global carbon emissions. The UK government’s Climate Change Committee reports that, in England, “transitioning from grassland to forestland would increase the soil carbon stock by 25 tonnes of carbon per hectare … This is additional to the large amounts of carbon that would be stored in the biomass of the trees themselves.”

Slowly and painfully we have become energy-numerate. Large numbers of people have begun to “do the math” on fossil fuel emissions. Now we need to become food-numerate. An extraordinary feature of this debate is that when you present data, your opponents respond with pictures, generally bucolic images of cows or sheep.

Popular food writing is dominated by a disastrous combination of aesthetics and elite tastes. Famous authors propose that everyone eats the food that they like, promoting diets that couldn’t be scaled unless we had several planets and no space on any of them for wild ecosystems. They urge us to use a Neolithic production system (grazing) to feed a 21st-century population, with catastrophic results.

We urgently need to put these foolish things aside, to follow and understand the science, and press our governments to focus on the major causes of the climate crisis. They had two jobs, and have so far mentioned neither of them.

If you really care about saving the world from climate catastrophe, this analysis makers it clear that the biggest thing you can do is become vegetarian or vegan.   

Africa's solar surge

 From The Energy Mix

The hrowth rate hasn't just been 60% per annum for the last year.  It's average 60% per annum since June 2021.

China’s export data suggest that Africa could soon see a spike in solar energy generation, with record imports of photovoltaic panels driving a 60% overall import increase across the continent.

“South Africa and Egypt are currently the only countries with installed solar capacity measured in gigawatts, rather than megawatts,” writes global energy think tank EMBER, in a new report.

“That could be about to change.”

EMBER tracked Chinese customs data for solar panels being exported to African countries. The data showed that exports could support record growth rates for 20 countries across the continent from June 2024 to June 2025. The rate for Algeria was stunning, with incoming solar gear increasing 33-fold during that time. Zambia, Botswana, and Sudan rose eightfold, sevenfold, and sixfold, respectively, while Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Benin, Angola, and Ethiopia all more than tripled.

Overall, Chinese exports to Africa rose 60% to deliver a potential capacity of 15,032 megawatts (MW). Solar panel imports across the continent—excluding South Africa—have now tripled over the past two years from 3,734 MW to 11,248 MW.

“These solar panels will provide a lot of electricity,” says EMBER. “The solar panels imported into Sierra Leone in the last 12 months, if installed, would generate electricity equivalent to 61% of the total reported 2023 electricity generation, significantly adding to electricity supply.”

The year’s imports to Chad could similarly generate 49% of that country’s total energy generation in 2023. Solar’s share of energy generation could increase by 10% in Liberia, Somalia, Eritrea, Togo, and Benin, and 5% in 16 other countries.

EMBER says these percentages may be inflated because total electricity generation is often underestimated in sub-Saharan Africa, and the think tank’s Electricity Data Explorer does not include non-grid generation sources like the diesel generators that are widely used in many of these countries.

The destinations for China’s increasing exports across Africa have changed since the continent’s last surge of solar imports in 2023, which was largely driven by South Africa. The rise in solar capacity could replace diesel generation, which in turn might reduce oil imports for many countries. EMBER estimates that a solar panel will pay itself off in savings from reduced oil spending within months.

For example, a 420-watt solar panel that sells for around US$60 in Nigeria would produce 550 kilowatt/hours (kWh) in a year at a cost of 14 cents/kWh. Compare that to spending $60 for diesel, at a price of 66 cents per litre (at the time of EMBER’s analysis), an expense that would yield only 275 kWh of electricity, “implying a payback time of just six months” for the solar panel.

“Even with the recent diesel price rises in Nigeria, diesel is twice as expensive in many other African countries, meaning an even shorter payback [in other African countries].”

A limitation in the analysis is that it’s based on Chinese customs data for solar panels exported to Africa, EMBER writes. Exports may not stay in the African country they are exported to if they are then reshipped to another country, perhaps to dodge tariffs. Even when panels stay in that country, their installation timeline is far from certain without clear data from the importing country. That information was often unavailable for the countries in the study.

However, similar exports to Pakistan were mostly installed and led to a recent surge in solar capacity in that country. With many similar drivers for solar uptake in the two regions, EMBER suggests Africa can look forward to similar results.

(Read EMBER's report here)

 

 The decline in solar panel costs has reached the point where even poor countries want it.  Solar is rising exponentially in Africa.   If you have diesel off-grid or substitute generators, solar fits in easily.  You only need to run the generators at night, instead of all the time.   Storage costs are falling faster than solar panel costs.  In a couple of years, Africa, and other developing areas, will be installing storage as well as solar.

China isn't just greening its own economy.  It's greening the world's.

 

Global warming *has* accelerated

 From Open Mind (Tamino)

I won't repeat the whole article.  Read it in full here.

My paper with Stefan Rahmstorf showing that global warming has accelerated was published in Geophysical Research Letters today. The main result is that global warming is NOT proceeding at the same old rate it has been since 1975. It’s going faster.

In this data set [from Berkeley Earth], 2025 turned out to be the 3rd-warmest year on record (as in the other data sets except NASA, where it came in 2nd). When I adjust the data to remove the estimated impact of el Niño, volcanic eruptions, and solar variation, I get this:

The trend is unaffected, but the noise level is much reduced, which enables us to estimate warming rates with less uncertainty. I’ve added a red line to this graph which is a modified LOWESS smooth of the adjusted data.

To test for acceleration we isolated the data since 1975, and the simplest way to test for it is to fit a parabola to the data; if the quadratic term is statistically significant, we can reject the null hypothesis, that the signal is just a straight line. Of course we must correct for autocorrelation of the noise, but still the quadratic term turns out to be strongly significant. We can safely reject the null hypothesis: there has been acceleration.

According to this model, the warming rate right now is the slope at the endpoint of the parabola, which is 0.28 ± 0.05 °C per decade (i.e. between 0.23 and 0.33 °C per decade, 95% CI). I will emphasize that this is the “best estimate” and those are the correct uncertainty levels IF (and this is a BIG IF) the data actually follow a parabola plus stationary noise. If not (which is the overwhelmingly likely case), we can consider the estimate good but not best, and the uncertainty levels are a lower bound on the actual uncertainty.

Another test for acceleration is to find the best fit of a continuous piecewise-linear function which is allowed to change slope at a time chosen by changepoint analysis. This is a challenge to evaluate statistically because we have to allow for autocorrelation and account for the extra degree of freedom to choose the changepoint time. But it can be done, and the best-fit model again turns out to be strongly statistically significant.

Both those models serve excellently to demonstrate the presence of acceleration. But I doubt they are best to estimate what the warming rate is right now, and what it will be in the near future. For that, I offer yet another model, which I will apply to the data since 1880, a continuous piece-wise linear fit (PLF) which is allowed to change its slope every 15 years from 1905 through 2010. I call this model “PLF15”

The PLF15 model not only estimates the signal value, it conveniently gives us an estimate of the average warming rate over each segment between the knots. I can plot the warming rate itself (which for this model is constant during each segment) along with light blue shading to show the uncertainty range.

All these graphs plot the warming rate in °C per year, but when quoting numbers I have followed the custom these days to talk about the rate in °C per decade. According to this analysis, the current estimated rate is 0.31 ± 0.07 °C/decade.

Which estimate is best? I don’t know, but I do know that even 0.24 °C per decade will take us past 2 °C right around the year 2050. The whole point of the Paris agreement is: DON’T GO THERE. My advice: fasten your seat belt, things are going to get ugly.

We need to redouble efforts to cut emissions, or things will get very ugly.  What can we do?

• Set a renewable energy target in every country.  The percentage of renewables+nuclear needs to rise by 6-8% a year, at least.  This will cut emissions by 27% (emissions from electricity generation are +-30% of total global emissions) within a decade.  We may not yet be able to go above 90 or 95% renewables in the grid, because we don't have long-term storage to offset periods of dunkelflaute, but we will have cut most emissions from electricity generation.  
• We must tax imports from countries which do not have an R.E.T. or a price on carbon.  (See my posts on a carbon border tax)
• We need to accelerate the replacement of petrol/diesel vehicles (ICEVs) with EVs.  This is a problem, because even when we reach 100% of sales being EVs, it will take 10-20 years for all ICEVs on the roads to be replaced.  This is too long.  Most countries are nowhere near 100% EV sales.   We could, for example, ban the import of new or second-hand ICEVs, or slap 100% taxes on them.   Ethiopia has already done this.  This policy should apply to two and three-wheeled vehicles, too.  Countries which do this deserve reduced carbon border taxes.
• In rich countries, we need to replace oil- or gas-based household and industrial heating with heat pumps.  Because they have high up-front costs, they will require government subsidy to start the revolution rolling.

All of these combined will cut emissions by 50 to 60%.  If we also switch to low-emission steel and cement, the emissions cuts could reach 70%.

That will leave (mostly) agriculture.  Put that in the too-hard basket for now--people love their meat too much to give it up.  But it won't go away.  When we've cut emissions by 70%, agriculture will dominate what's left over.  And action will no longer be postponable.