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Africa/Global: Climate Action Beyond Paris
AfricaFocus Bulletin
September 30, 2015 (150930)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
"Temperatures over subtropical southern Africa have risen at more
than twice the global rate over the last five decades." - CSIR,
South Africa. *** "To date, 436 institutions and 2,040 individuals
across 43 countries and representing $2.6 trillion in assets have
committed to divest from fossil fuel companies." - Arabella
Advisors, USA. *** "Kenya is emerging as a hotspot for off-grid solar
power. A 2014 study by M-KOPA Solar and InterMedia shows that 14 per
cent of the surveyed population use solar as their primary lighting
and charging source." - The Nation, Kenya
While news media in coming months may focus primarily on the global
climate summit coming up in Paris two months from now, it is already
clear to everyone that governmental commitments to reduce carbon
emissions to be made in Paris will fall short of that needed to curb
global warming short of catastrophic results for the planet [See
http://tinyurl.com/nq3m2wt for summary and links to a report on the
"intended national determined contributions" (INDCs).]
Even more than the results in Paris, however, the race to save the
planet and to limit the damage to regions already most affected,
particularly those in Africa, will be determined by actions before
and after Paris, around the world. Shell's decision to stop drilling
in the Arctic in response to massive public pressure is one example.
The quotes above point to a few of the other places that action
is making a difference and can make more.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains two short articles and one
excerpt from a longer report on different fronts of the fight for
significant action on climate change and climate justice: global
fossil-fuel divestment, Africa-based and Africa-specific research on
the rapidly mounting damage from global warming, and one example of
the accelerating growth of off-grid solar power, particularly in
East Africa (see M-KOPA website at http://solar.m-kopa.com.
Another relevant article not included here is "55GW of Solar PV Will
Be Installed Globally in 2015, Up 36% Over 2014; Solar will account
for roughly half of new electricity capacity out to 2020."
GreenTechMedia, June 17, 2015 http://tinyurl.com/pkkkttq
Note that GreenTechMedia (http://www.greentechmedia.com/) is a
fundamental source for following global technological developments
in renewable energy.
For talking points and previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on climate
change and the environment, visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-env.php
++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++
Measuring the Growth of the Global Fossil Fuel Divestment and Clean
Energy Investment Movement
Arabella Advisors, September 2015
[Excerpts only. For full report visit
http://www.arabellaadvisors.com/ - direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/o6ng6p5]
Executive Summary
To date, 436 institutions and 2,040 individuals across 43 countries
and representing $2.6 trillion in assets have committed to divest
from fossil fuel companies. The divestment movement has grown
exponentially since Climate Week in September 2014, when Arabella
Advisors last reported that 181 institutions and 656 individuals
representing over $50 billion in assets had committed to divest. At
that time, divestment advocates pledged to triple these numbers by
the December 2015 Paris UN climate negotiations. Three months before
the negotiations, we have already witnessed a fifty-fold increase in
the total combined assets of those committed to divest from fossil
fuels.
- Pledges have spread to sectors not traditionally associated with
divestment, including pension funds and private companies. In 2014,
foundations, universities, faith-based organizations, NGOs, and
other mission-driven organizations led the movement. Today, large
pension funds and private-sector actors such as insurance companies
hold over 95 percent of the total combined assets of those committed
to divest.
- While historically based in the United States, the divestment
movement now spans the globe. In 2014, 78 percent of divesting
institutions were US-based. Today, 57 percent are US-based.
Institutions that have chosen to divest represent more than 646
million individuals around the world.
- Climate risk to investment portfolios is helping drive the
exponential growth of divestment. Reports by Citigroup analysts,
HSBC, Mercer, the International Energy Agency, Bank of England,
Carbon Tracker Initiative, and others have offered evidence of a
significant, quantifiable risk to portfolios exposed to fossil fuel
assets in a carbon constrained world. The leaders of several of the
largest institutions to divest in the past year have cited climate
risk to investment portfolios as a key factor in their decision.
- Thanks to increasing commitments to invest and a proliferation of
fossil free products, more capital is flowing toward climate
solutions. Globally, investment in clean energy reached $310 billion
in 2014. Among those pledging to divest, many are also committing to
invest in climate solutions: those institutions and individuals that
have pledged to both divest and invest in clean energy collectively
hold $785 billion in assets.
Other Key Areas of Growth:
- The faith community is making a strong case for the moral
responsibility to act on climate and to provide clean energy access
to the world's poor, bolstering the divestment movement. Faith
leaders of diverse religions and creeds are demanding our world's
leaders take meaningful action to curb climate change at the UN
climate negotiations in Paris in December. Many are also divesting
their own assets of fossil fuels: 126 faith-based organizations with
a collective $24 billion in assets have committed to divest.
- University commitments have nearly tripled in the past year, as 40
educational institutions with $130 billion in assets have pledged to
divest. A number of prominent universities have committed in the
last year, including the University of California, Georgetown, and
Oxford. The University of California is the largest higher education
commitment to date, with a $98 billion portfolio.
- Divestment by state and local governments worldwide is also
growing: The California General Assembly voted this month to divest
its $476 billion public employee pension funds from companies that
get at least half of their revenue from coal mining. Providence,
Rhode Island became one of the largest cities to commit to divesting
all its funds from top coal companies. In Australia, the city of
Newcastle— home to the largest coal port in the world—voted to
divest, as did the government of the Australian Capital Territory.
- Foundation pledges have grown rapidly since September 2014, as 116
foundations with over $10 billion in assets have committed to divest
from fossil fuels.
The surge in the divestment and investment movement comes at a
critical moment, as the world's leaders converge on Paris in
December 2015 to negotiate an agreement to curb catastrophic
warming. The growth of divestment is adding to mounting pressure
globally for governments to make meaningful commitments to
transition to a clean energy economy. Divesting and investing in
clean energy has offered millions of individuals across the world an
opportunity to take direct action on climate. A large and mobilized
constituency is now demanding political and financial action on
climate, and this pressure will likely continue to build
irrespective of the outcome of the negotiations in Paris.
A History of the Divestment Movement
The fossil fuel divestment movement was born when climate advocates
decided to directly challenge the fossil fuel industry. Inspired by
the moral arguments of the historical anti-war and anti-apartheid
divestment campaigns, a group of students launched a coordinated
series of divestment efforts on half a dozen college campuses in
2011, calling on their administrations to divest endowments from
coal and other fossil fuels and invest in clean energy and "just
transition" strategies to empower those most impacted by
environmental degradation and climate change. By spring 2012, the
campaign had spread to an estimated 50 campuses. Since then,
students, alumni, and professors have launched sit-ins, rallies, and
occupations of administration offices on campuses around the world.
The movement gained steam as the moral arguments of the student
divestment campaigns converged with an increasing recognition of
financial risks associated with investment in fossil fuels. In the
summer of 2012, author and longtime climate activist Bill McKibben
published "Global Warming's Terrifying New Math" in Rolling Stone,
forging a link between fossil fuel divestment and the need to keep
global warming under two degrees Celsius (2° C). Drawing on the
groundbreaking analysis "Unburnable Carbon" by the London-based
Carbon Tracker Initiative, he argued that a broad-based global
movement should directly confront the fossil fuel industry because
its viability is rooted in existing carbon reserves that cannot be
burned without severe consequences for the climate. McKibben,
350.org, and other leading climate organizers threw their support
behind the student divestment campaigns, launching a global
divestment effort.
The movement quickly grew beyond universities as new sectors
responded to the call to act. A diverse group of faith
congregations, environmental NGOs, municipalities, and health care
organizations signed on as early adopters of divestment. Led by the
Wallace Global Fund, 17 foundations—controlling $1.8 billion in
assets—launched "Divest-Invest Philanthropy" in response to the
movement's charge that foundations should not hold assets in a
fossil fuel industry that worked in direct opposition to their
stated missions. Ten cities, led by Seattle, announced they would
also divest from fossil fuels. "Cities that do so will be leaders in
creating a new model for quality of life, environmental
sustainability, and economic success," argued Seattle Mayor Mike
McGinn.
As the broader climate movement reached a crossroads in the fall of
2014, the divestment campaign won global recognition as a critical
component of climate action. In September 2014, the world's leading
climate advocates converged on New York City for Climate Week, which
included the "People's Climate March," an unprecedented event that
saw 400,000 people take to the streets to demand that the world's
leaders act on climate. The week of action coincided with the United
Nation's Climate Summit, which sought to catalyze meaningful climate
action in advance of formal international negotiations to reach a
global climate treaty in 2015. During Climate Week, divestment
advocates announced that, as of September 2014, 181 institutions and
local governments and 656 individuals representing over $50 billion
in assets had pledged to divest from fossil fuels. A report by
Arabella Advisors (http://www.arabellaadvisors.com/) found that, in
just three years, the divestment campaign had mobilized billions of
dollars in capital and engaged a broad segment of society in its
efforts to accelerate the transition to a clean-energy economy.
The movement's growth was heralded by world leaders and covered
widely in the global media. Prominently featured was a notable
commitment by the heirs of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller
to divest the Rockefeller Brothers Fund endowment. The divestment
and investment movement was recognized in the UN's formal climate
summit proceedings as one of many important actions to catalyze the
transition to a clean energy economy. At the same time, Archbishop
Desmond Tutu issued a stark call to action on climate, calling for
"an end to the fossil fuel era" and an "apartheid- style boycott to
save the planet." In a press conference announcing that the
divestment movement had exceeded $50 billion in total assets of
those committing, leading advocates set the bar even higher for
2015, pledging to triple the total assets by the 2015 Paris UN
climate negotiations. Since then, the total combined assets of those
committing to divest has increased, fifty-fold, expanding in scope
and scale in ways no one fully anticipated.
CSIR projects drastic temperature increase over Africa
11 September 2015
CSIR climate modellers believe that 2015 is on its way to be the
warmest year ever recorded. This is partially due to climate-change,
and partially due to a massive El Nino event currently developing in
the Pacific Ocean. Temperatures over subtropical southern Africa
have risen at more than twice the global rate over the last five
decades.
Moreover, further warming of between 4 - 6 degrees C over the
subtropics and 3 - 5 degrees C over the tropics are projected by the
end of the century under low mitigation, relative to the present-day
climate. This was revealed in a CSIR study using a regional climate
model integrated on a powerful computer-cluster at its Centre for
High Performance Computing (CHPC), to obtain detailed projections of
future climate change over Africa.
This study comes ahead of the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC)'s 21st Conference of the Parties (CoP 21),
due to take place in Paris, France in November 2015. This meeting
aims to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on
climate, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2 degrees C.
"If the negotiations fail to ensure a high-mitigation future, we are
likely to see rapidly rising surface temperature across the
continent," says Dr Francois Engelbrecht, CSIR Principal Researcher
and leader of the study entitled, "Projections of rapidly rising
surface temperatures over Africa under low mitigation."
Africa is particularly vulnerable to excessive temperature increases
due to the continent's dependence on subsistence farming and rainfed
agriculture. "For many regions, the impact of temperature
increases on the agricultural and biodiversity sectors may be
significant, stemming from temperature-related extreme events such
as heat-waves, wild fires and agricultural drought," explains Dr
Engelbrecht.
Heatwaves are rare events over Africa under present day conditions.
The highest number of heat wave days occurs over the Limpopo river
basin region in southern Africa, the eastern interior and east coast
regions of South Africa and the Mediterranean coast of North Africa.
Drastic increased occurrences of heat wave days may be expected
across the continent under climate change, contributing to decreased
maize crop yield through the exceedance of critical temperature
thresholds increases in livestock mortality and adverse impacts on
human health. If a heat wave occurs during a drought, which dries
out vegetation, it can contribute to bushfires and wildfires.
Wildfires cause large financial losses to agriculture, livestock
production and forestry in Africa on an annual basis.
"Globally, Africa is the single largest source of biomass burning
emissions," says Engelbrecht. "It is very important to understand
the impacts of increasing occurrences of fires on the African
savannas, as well as potential feedbacks to the regional and global
climate system". Moreover, Engelbrecht and his co-authors point out
in the paper that general reductions in soil-moisture are plausible
to occur across the continent, as a result of enhanced evaporation
that occurs in response to increasing surface temperatures. "In the
subtropics, this effectively implies a longer burning season and a
shorter growing season", says Engelbrecht.
Considering the fact that African temperatures in the subtropics are
projected to rise at 1.5 times the global rate of temperature
increase (an estimate that may be conservative) and the aim of the
upcoming UNFCCC negations seeking to keep global warming below 2
degrees C compared to pre-industrial temperatures - the Long Term
Global Goal (LTGG), Engelbrecht is of the opinion that the trends
and projections of rapidly rising African temperatures should be a
key consideration at the UNFCCC negotiations. "The relatively high
rate of temperature increases over Africa should be considered when
deciding on the suitability of the LTGG of the UNFCCC in terms of
climate-change impacts in Africa" Under low mitigation, the world is
likely to experience an increase in global average surface
temperature of 3 degrees C or more, and the relatively strong
temperature signal over Africa is of particular concern within this
context."
The full paper, which has been published in Environmental Research
Letters, is available here: http://tinyurl.com/qxlzq59
"M-KOPA Solar connects 250,000 homes to power in East Africa"
Daily Nation, September 23, 2015
http://www.nation.co.ke - direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/oyof6hz
In Summary
M-KOPA is one of the fastest growing power providers in the region,
connecting solar to over 500 new homes each day.
Each M-KOPA Solar home is calculated to save $750, compared to using
kerosene over a four-year period.
The battery-powered 8W home system has three lights, a phonecharging
facility and a chargeable radio.
By Edwin Okoth
A local 'pay-as-you-go' off grid energy provider has announced
connecting 250,000 homes across Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to a
solar power system.
M-Kopa Solar which provides payment plan for supply of a solar
lighting system, a radio and phone charging apparatus said the
achievement was in line with its target to connect one million
customers by 2018 to its solar power systems.
The firm's Managing Director and Co-Founder Jesse Moore said the
growth in connected customers was satisfactory as the region renewed
focus on renewable energy.
"Last September we celebrated 100,000 customers, and a year later we
are already at a quarter-million. With hundreds of great customers
coming on board every day, we are helping East Africa leapfrog over
the grid to enjoy cheaper, cleaner, and more reliable solar power,"
Mr Moore said.
Off-Grid Solar Power
Kenya is emerging as a hotspot for off-grid solar power.
A 2014 study by M-KOPA Solar and InterMedia shows that 14 per cent
of the surveyed population use solar as their primary lighting and
charging source.
M-KOPA is one of the fastest growing power providers in the region,
connecting solar to over 500 new homes each day.
The battery-powered 8W home system has three lights, a phonecharging
facility and a chargeable radio.
The savings generated by using off grid solar over kerosene are said
to be substantial for individual households and the broader East
African economy.
Alex Nduati, an Athi river resident became the plan's 250,000th
customer when he purchased an M-KOPA III solar home system.
"I am so excited to take home a solar system that will give me much
more value than kerosene, and with M-KOPA's daily payment plan it is
affordable for me. I purchased this system for my rural home where
there is no access to electricity," Mr Nduati said.
Each M-KOPA Solar home is calculated to save $750, compared to using
kerosene over a four-year period.
This means that the combined projected savings by the 250,000
households using M-KOPA Solar is $187 Million.
The Nairobi-headquartered, M-KOPA Solar now has a network of over
1,500 direct sales agents and 100 customer service centres across
Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.
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