World Bank Wants Us All To Be Poor
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2018/01/28/world-bank-wants-us-all-to-be-poor/
By Paul Homewood https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/chart-countries-where-over-80-electricity-renewable Apparently the World Bank thinks that having 80% of renewable electricity is a good thing. This is the map: Now shoot me down in flames if I am wrong, but it seems to me that the one thing that most of these countries have in common is poverty. The only exceptions are Norway, Iceland and Brazil. Iceland gets almost all of its electricity from hydro, along with a bit of geothermal. As the World Bank own data shows, Iceland was getting just as much from these sources in 1990. Norway gets 96% of its power from hydro, which again is little different to decades ago. Hydro also provides most of Brazil’s power, 66% in 2016 according to BP. Wind and solar only supply 6%. Significantly though, again according to the World Bank’s data, the share of renewables in Brazil’s electricity mix has actually fallen from 95% in 1990, to 73% in the latest figures. The reason for this is very simple – Brazil’s electricity generation has increased from 222 TWh to 581 TWh between 1990 and 2016. As the country’s economy has rapidly grown during that time, it has needed reliable and affordable energy, provided by fossil fuels. Meanwhile the rest of the countries on the map are extremely poor. Countries like Malawi, which are desperate for a reliable power supply. As I reported a few weeks ago, Malawi is far too dependent on hydro power, which is far from reliable when river levels drop. As a result, 90% of Malawians cannot even get electricity at all, and those who can regularly face power cuts. Not only does this impact ordinary Malawians, who depend on charcoal and wood burning for cooking, but economic activity is also restricted as a result. Mark Smedley, who admittedly is not exactly unbiased as Editor of Natural Gas Africa, sums up the situation perfectly, with this comment on the World Bank post: It’s an interesting graphic. Many sub-Saharan countries also have v low 2012 World Bank access to electricity ratings: 9.8% for Malawi, 10.8% for Central African Rep, 16.4% for Congo Dem.Rep, 20.2% for Mozambique and 22.4% for Zambia so are eager for some non-renewable alternatives. Malawi is eying coal-fired power. Because of intermittent hydro in Ghana, the World Bank is supporting projects to increase local gas production (much cleaner than coal). A high renewables proportion of the energy mix in some countries just means a scarcity of alternative energy and investment capital. The boss of Eni, an investor in gas-fired power in Africa, last week addressed ‘the curse of biomass’ in a guest lecture at the IEA and called for more effort to electrify Africa https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/chart-countries-where-over-80-electricity-renewable According to their logo, the World Bank is “Working for a World Free of Poverty”. They have a strange way of going about it!
— gReader Pro
