“I think it's fundamentally incorrect for one country to tell the other country how to develop their energy transition… I'm not going to say it's okay for people to live in poverty a day longer than they ever have to.”
Damilola Ogunbiyi is the CEO of Sustainable Energy for All, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All and Co-Chair of UN-Energy. Michael and Damilola discuss SDforAll’s mission, helping developing nations to a net-zero pathway, and just how many billions need to be put to work, and how.
Michael Liebreich: Perhaps you could just explain, to begin, what Sustainable Energy for All is?
Damilola Ogunbiyi: Sustainable Energy for All is an international organisation whose focus is to achieve SDG7, which is affordable, sustainable, modern energy for all, by 2030. So, that means universal access to electricity; we still have about 759 million people without enough, or no electricity at all. We have 2.6 billion people who have no access to clean cooking. One of our targets is to increase the share of renewables, and I think we probably will achieve that goal by 2030. And then there’s energy efficiency, where we're trying to get to this magic 3% every year; we're not on track to achieve that at all. Our main goal at SE4All, is that we need the policy and the financing to be in place; if we don't achieve this goal of universal access by 2030, we cannot achieve net zero by 2050. A lot of people don't realise, coming from a developing country, that energy is our climate action. If you think about Sub-Saharan Africa, excluding South Africa, there's only about 81 gigawatts of energy installed. Especially in Asia and Africa, much more energy is going to be needed and populations are growing. We have to make sure that we have the financing to make sure that energy is provided in a clean, sustainable way, instead of reverting back to business as usual.
ML: In much of Africa, the question is, how do you actually get on that ladder in the first place, and get energy? How are we doing on that, and how do we solve it?
DO: So, electrification might look like it's getting better, but most of those wins have really been in a couple of countries. And in terms of clean cooking, it's even more bleak. I feel we first have to give the tools to countries to understand what their energy mix is. That might sound very basic to us sitting in the developed world, but it's critical. We're asking for countries to electrify their entire economy, something that hasn't been done anywhere else, and we're asking people with the least amount of money to do that. Nigeria itself needs something in the region of $410 billion above business as usual spending just to get anywhere near net zero. The most important thing is global political will to solve this issue, to treat what is happening to millions, billions of people as an injustice. If we solve this issue, there'll be more economic growth, there'll be healthier people. And don’t forget that these countries could become big emitters if you don't consider them now. People shouldn't be okay with people not having clean energy. This is life and death for a lot of people.
ML: What do the solutions look like? Is it all about grid connections? Or can it be rooftops, microgrids? What does success on electrification look like?
DO: This is where the data comes in. It's important to have integrated energy planning. And what that does is allows you to plan the least expensive way of providing adequate and sustainable electrification for your population. I'm not against many solar solutions, like solar lanterns; I just don't think that's electrification. It's very, very important to understand that when we talk about energy, it's not the bare minimum: it’s energy for development, energy for economic growth. I do not believe that we should be doing any solar hybrid systems without adequate battery storage. For the clean cooking part, it is a little bit more difficult, because the fuel source is free. People are not used to paying for what they use. If had to have a choice between a woman not having any energy at all, or using an LPG, I would obviously choose LPG. Everything that we're doing has to be transitionary; we have to make allowance for transitionary fuels, as long as it's part of a plan to reach net zero. We have to make sure that the low-carbon trajectory is maintained, but it's not done in a way that stops development. It's not okay because Africa is low-emitting to leave Africa as it is. That’s a cop out. And again, it's not okay to say Africa doesn't have the right to have a just and equitable transition as well.
ML: Some people would say Africa shouldn't be doing natural gas. What do you say to all of these people saying, we won’t finance that, we don't do that?
DO: I think it's fundamentally incorrect for one country to tell the other country how to develop their energy transition, especially when the people causing climate change are still using those fuels. I think it's fine to have sustainable financing mechanisms, as long as you recognise that you also need to finance developmental agendas, and some of them might be using some form of gas. If you're stopping kerosene or stopping deforestation because you're using LPG, I will argue that it's climate-friendly. The data shows that we don't even have enough natural gas to be able to integrate renewables as needed in Africa. What I'm not going to do is say it's okay for people to live in poverty a day more than they ever have to. There's been so much focus on the planet, especially in developing countries, and not enough focus on the people.
ML: Let's turn to finance. The developing world really needs half a trillion dollars a year or a trillion a year or so really to catch up. How do you do that? Is it investment? Is it aid? Is it private? Is it the government?
DO: In terms of the larger amounts that are needed, it’s going to be blended. It's going to be grants, it's going to be concessionary financing, it's going to be in the private sector. In some strategic areas, I'm creating a lane for the private sector to really come in and operate and maintain a lot of the systems that are put in place. We don't have the scalability in a lot of countries right now. I'm working with the Rockefeller and IKEA team on the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet; it does change the landscape if you have $2 billion of catalytic grant funding that can be aligned with the energy access and energy transition story. There’s also leading by example, right? So, if you do something in Senegal it is most likely all the other Francophone countries and want to do something similar. Indeed, when we took up this challenge in Nigeria, I employed 20 to 25 of the cleverest Nigerian people, and I forced them all to move to Nigeria with me to solve this problem over a 5 to 10-year period.
ML: I worry about a model that says this is investment by the developed world in developing world countries, because investment has a very specific meaning, that you have to pay it back. Are you not going to create tens of billions of dollars a year of liabilities?
DO: First, it depends on which country. But I think there's also people who don't really understand just how much people are paying for not having adequate energy right now. In Nigeria, people are probably paying three to four times what I'm paying in New York on my electricity bill. What we need to do is dimension it on a country to country basis. The same solutions for a monster like Nigeria will not be the same in Sierra Leone. What I'm trying to say is, can we get a bit more granular to the economic makeup of these people? What are the financial inclusion models? That's when we will truly know the figure and truly know how to split that financing.