[Update, 4/9/10: According to E&E News ($ubcr. required), the 24 member World Bank board voted to approve the $3.75 billion loan to South Africa, including $3.05 billion to construct a new 4.8 GW supercritical coal-fired power station and additional funding to construct 100 MW of utility-scale wind power and 100 MW of concentrating solar power with energy storage capability.

The United States' representative on the World Bank board abstained from the vote, and the explanation is the clearest example of the multi-faceted challenges of global development and the ways in which energy poverty and climate change objectives remain largely opposed in the absence of clean, affordable, and rapidly scalable energy technology options. According to E&E:

In a statement released just as the 24-member World Bank board started to debate the Eskom loan behind closed doors, the U.S. Treasury Department issued a statement saying its abstention "reflects concerns about the climate impact of the project and its incompatibility with the World Bank's commitment to be a leader in climate change mitigation and adaptation."

Still, the United States noted, it "recognizes South Africa's pressing energy needs and the lack of near-term feasible low-carbon alternatives."

Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, roundly condemned the World Bank decision, and chastised the U.S. for not voting in opposition. However, there is no indication that viable alternative plans to expand energy access in South Africa without exacerbating the nation's greenhouse emissions were proposed. ]

South Africa's finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, has an op ed in the Washington Post that illustrates the multi-faceted challenges facing developing nations as they struggle to provide the affordable access to modern energy needed to pull citizens out of poverty. The piece highlights the current tension between such objectives and simultaneous concerns about the environmental and climate impacts of energy development.

With South Africa's economy growing rapidly - it's expanded by two-thirds since 1994, when Nelson Mandela first took office - the nation's demand for energy has grown apace. As Gordhan notes, "Millions of previously marginalized South Africans are now on the grid." And that's a very good thing.

Consider that not having access to affordable, modern energy sources, particularly electricity, means no access to potable, running water; it means having to burn dung and wood and other primitive biofuels to provide cooking and indoor heating; and it means sputtering kerosene lamps as the only source of light after the sun goes down.

The human toll of such energy poverty is incredible. According to the World Health Organization, solid fuel use causes 1.6 million excess deaths per year globally, especially among women and children, while waterborne disease is one of the leading global killers, ending the lives of over 3 million annually - again, many of them young children - who lack access to clean and safe water supplies.

Continue reading "Without Affordable Clean Alternatives, South Africa Turns to Coal" »