Your Daily Dose of Climate Hope: July 11, 2024
Support U.S. Investment in Clean Energy for Africa!
At the G7 summit, President Biden announced unprecedented U.S. investment in clean energy projects to bring electricity to Africa!
You can help by telling Congress to support this vital work.
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Reasons For Hope
Renewable energy is growing exponentially from China to India to Europe to America, but one continent is still comparatively left out. Africa is home to about 20% of the world’s 8 billion-plus humans but receives less than 3% of global spending on energy. And the need is acute. In much of Africa, the goal isn’t to replace fossil fuels but to provide any energy at all, as 600 million Africans still have no access to electricity.
At the 2024 G7 meeting, President Biden announced unprecedented U.S. investment in bringing clean energy to Africa, bringing together public and private sector funds.
The U.S. accelerated its support and funding for the Lobito Economic Corridor open-access railway network project spanning Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Zambia.
The U.S. Export-Import Bank finalized nearly $900 million in financing for two new 500-megawatt solar farms in Angola.
Microsoft is investing in a new data center campus in Kenya that will be entirely powered by geothermal energy, as well as supporting African-language AI development
BlackRock is investing in the largest wind farm in Africa, the 310 MW Lake Turkana Wind Power Project in Kenya, which provides electricity to 3.2 million people.
And just a few weeks after the summit, the U.S. announced a loan of up to $99 million for the first-ever wind farm in Mozambique.
This is a good start, but there’s a gigantic amount of more work to be done. Africans without electricity don’t have much of a voice in the halls of power, but you do.