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ZIMBABWE, and for that matter Zambia, are in a double bind with global warming and climate change, suffering from the present effects which include their Kariba power stations running at 12 percent of maximum output, and yet needing to invest very large sums in renewable energy to meet their own present requirements and power their future economic growth.
President Mnangagwa, in two interventions in the present round of conferences making up COP29 in Azerbaijan, stressed the double burden falling on many developing countries, who are having to cope with much of the present damage from climate change that they contribute such a tiny fraction of the causes, and then having to not only fund their own alternatives, but also their economic development under new systems.
While the President, who as chairperson of SADC has a regional as well as a national voice, was addressing two separate forums, the top-level World Leaders Climate Action Summit, and the COP29 High Level Roundtable on Energy, his interventions were related since both, in the general scope of combating climate change and in the switch to pure renewable energies to minimise future change, the need is the same: high levels of investment into infrastructure and energy.
Some of this investment can be private sector investment, and Zimbabwe has created the framework that allows such investment into irrigation and dam building, vital to combat the present levels of climate change and the more severe and more frequent droughts these impose on Zimbabwe and its neighbours.
The Second Republic also untangled, a few years ago, the investment rules for new power stations, especially solar stations, and while deals have been signed and work is in progress on building, in stages, some of the required capacity, the investment flows do need to rise. These need to be backed by greater State investment, from both domestic sources and from the much-discussed funds that have still to reach the needed and promised levels.
UN Secretary General Mr Antonio Guterres, in both his address to the World Leaders Summit and his report on the energy transition, stressed the need for the world to find the US$40 billion a year minimum required to assist the developing countries combat climate change and meet their own commitments to head off further change.
President Mnangagwa has continually stressed, and did so again, that Zimbabwe needed to fight change effectively and was extremely willing to switch to green energy sources and industrial processes so that development could not just take place, but be accelerated without further damage. But this could not be done from purely internal resources, hence the need for partners and access to global funding.
Climate change has created an additional dilemma that the President outlined. Kariba Dam was built at the end of the 1950s and, when the lake is full, it is the largest man-made reservoir on Earth. Hydropower is ultimate green renewable energy, emitting no greenhouse gases and so Kariba Dam and its two large power stations should be major positive factors for both Zimbabwe and Zambia.
Under normal conditions, at least normal as defined last century, each Kariba station should be supplying close to half the electricity required by each country, and a far greater percentage of the peak demand following the expansion of each of the stations to a little over 1000MW.
Right now the stations are generating 124,5MW, with just one turbine on each side spinning at less than full speed. Zimbabwe is picking up most of its requirements from Hwange Thermal, a coal station, although this is not meeting full demand and Zambia is in an even deeper bind since the two Kafue hydro stations supply most of the remaining demand, and both are hit by the drought.
Plans for more hydro along the Zambezi River have been put on hold as a result of the ever more frequent droughts in the catchment area. If Batoka had been built some years ago it too would be producing very low levels of power for the two countries. So the countries need more solutions than just Kariba and more power dams.
With winds being very variable deep inland in the tropical world, the main renewable for Zimbabwe is solar power. The technology exists and prices are falling, but the capital investment for giant solar stations and the even greater sums for the vast battery complexes, since solar is only generated when the sun shines, is very large and requires partners with deep pockets.
Other areas where Zimbabwe is making commitments include the need to industrialise using green technologies as well as green energy inputs, and the President stressed that to do this there had to be technology transfers and skills training.
This year has already seen the hottest day and month on record in the world, and will almost certainly be the hottest year ever recorded in human history. No one can now deny climate change is a fact, and that the global situation is worse than was predicted a few years ago. Even countries less badly hit have still been hit, and the developing countries have been hit the hardest.
Hence, as President Mnangagwa emphasised, half measures are now longer good enough. The whole world needs to be united in facing this growing crisis, which we all have to recognise is now with us, and together cope with the effects while we limit future damage.
This does also require that industrial development in continents like Africa, which is needed to give the population a chance of a decent life, is done in green ways, which require more investment. The world can do this, but everyone needs to act now.
Online Reporter