NAIROBI, Kenya—Climate change is “relentlessly eating away” at Africa’s economic progress and it’s time to have a global conversation about a carbon tax on polluters, Kenya’s president declared Tuesday as the first Africa Climate Summit began.The rapidly growing African continent of more than 1.3 billion people is losing 5 percent to 15 percent of its GDP growth every year to the widespread impacts of climate change, according to Ruto.
Kenya’s president said Africa’s 54 countries “must go green fast before industrializing and not vice versa, unlike had the luxury to do.” Transforming Africa’s economy on a green trajectory “is the most feasible, just and efficient way to attain a net-zero world by 2050,” he said. The African continent has 60 percent of the world’s renewable energy assets, and more than 30 percent of the minerals key to renewable and low-carbon technologies. One goal of the summit is to transform the narrative around the continent from victim to assertive, wealthy partner.
Ruto, however, has criticized the “addiction” to fossil fuels. His country now gets more than 90 percent of its energy from renewables. European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen said African nations could produce enough clean energy to power the continent and export abroad, “but for this, Africa needs massive investment.”
Source: Energy Industry News (energyindustrynews.net)