Amid the climate, energy and geopolitical crises that have been raging for some years now, it is time the world looked to Africa for energy. This is according to Samia Suluhu Hassan, president of Tanzania, speaking at a session on “Repowering the World” at the 53rd World Economic Forum Annual Meeting.“We have everything when we talk about green energy – cobalt, copper, nickel. You can extract and manufacture in Africa, provide energy to Africa and take it to other countries,” he says.
Making an appeal for greater private sector investment in Tanzania, Hassan says Africa needs a lot of energy as many Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies are being applied there and a lot of related manufacturing is carried out there.
“We want to build regional power pools in East African and Southern African … if any region has a shortage, the other could supply it,” she says.
Instead of Europe, Japan or India pursuing unilateral policies, more concerted efforts are needed to tackle the energy crisis that is truly global in nature, she adds.
Chemistry is the mother of all industries, says Ilham Kadri, CEO and chairman of the executive committee of Solvay, and it is imperative to create diversified supply chains of metals and rare earths such as lithium, cobalt, nickel and copper that are essential components of EV batteries and so many other applications in the energy transition.
China has built rare earths value chains for decades and, to avoid a “Russian gas supply syndrome”, she says Europe and countries around the world must find diversified sources of these metals and minerals as well as localise battery assembly.
From reskilling workers to issuing permits, Europe needs policies that “get it done quicker”, Kadri says, when asked about the US’s new Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that offers funding and incentives to accelerate the clean energy transition and has raised fears in Europe of an investment drain.
Europe must boost its competitiveness to prevent de-industrialisation, she adds. “The question is not IRA or not, but what does it take for Europe to have a competitive industrial policy? I need clean energy, at cost and at scale, and 365 days a year.”
In the same vein, Mark Rutte, prime minister of the Netherlands, says the IRA is an opportunity for Europe to cut bureaucratic red tape, which would unleash opportunities for innovation, new jobs and working together at a European scale, or else “real action will move to Asia and other parts of the world”.
Asked if Europe had been amiss in continuing to depend on cheap Russian gas for too long, Rutte agres that Europe could have cut this dependence sooner, but added that it was a collective failure, and not just Germany’s, as it is sometimes made out to be. Natural gas will continue to be used as a transition fuel in the short- to medium term, he says but, longer term, the direction is decidedly towards renewables, green hydrogen and even nuclear.
“I would not be amazed if many more countries start to reinvest in nuclear,” he says, adding that Belgium will build two new nuclear reactions.
The Technology Perspective Report of the IRA got a thumbs-up from Francesco Starace, CEO and GM of Enel, for not only interpreting the need to transform energy systems but also to transform supply chains and industrial systems. “China and some Asian countries took the chance [to do so] earlier,” he says.
The energy transition is taking place much faster than originally estimated, and will accelerate, he adds, putting additional pressure on an industry used to longer time horizons.