Africa Must Partner Google To Build The Grand Inga Hydro Power Plant

Instead of allowing themselves to be convinced by Chinese power companies to permit the building of coal-fired power plants across the continent,  Africa's leaders ought to rather convince Google to partner the Democratic Republic of Congo,  to build the Grand Inga hydro power plant.

 The Grand Inga hyro power project has the potential to generate as much as 43,856 megawatts of electricity - twice that generated by China's Three Gorges hydro power project,  and enough  to literally power the whole of Africa. Renovating the Inga 1 and Inga 2 hydro power plants, in tandem with that mega project, will ensure that  there will also be enough power  to meet all of the DR Congo's own domestic energy needs

Google's participation would ensure that the highest environmental, engineering  and technological standards will underpin the project. It will also ensure that all those displaced by the project, are resettled and provided with sustainable livelihoods, which will enable them to enjoy a far better quality of life than was previously the case.

The Chinese claim that they can build "clean coal-fired power plants" is spurious. There is no such thing as a clean coal-fired power plant - a contradiction in terms if ever there was one. Incidentally, we must also not forget that carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology will not be ready for at least another twenty years.

The terrible toll that pollutants - particulants in particular - have had on the  health of millions of Chinese citizens in cities across that energy-hungry nation, including the capital Beijing, is the main reason why the Chinese government now frowns on new coal-fired power plants being built in China, and is now focusing instead on renewable energy projects.

 The chairperson of the Sunon Asogli Power Company, Mr. Li Xiahai, said recently that his company would build a "European-standard" clean-coal power plant in Ghana. With respect, that is pure nonsense on bamboo stilts - considering the haste with which European coal-fired power plants are now being converted to utilise wood pellets as feedstock: as a result of concern in Europe over the pollution they cause and their role in the emission of greenhouse gases.

A prime example is the conversion of the biggest coal-fired power plant in Europe, the UK's Drax coal-fired power plant - which is now importing wood pellets 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean from the U.S.A.

 The question is: Why does the Sunon Asogli Power Company not rather build a power plant that uses wood pellets and wood chips in Ghana - and create a virtuous green feedstock supply-chain across Ghana that encourages Ghanaian entrepreneurs to use marginal land, as well as land destroyed by illegal gold mining, to establish agro-forestry plantations containing fast-growing tree species?

That will create thousands of jobs across rural Ghana, and help Ghana's conversion to  a low-carbon economy, would it not, I ask? And it will also help burnish the Sunon Asogli Power Company's own corporate image yet further, and boost its green credentials - such as they are - would it not?

The proponents of coal-fired power plants from China,  and elsewhere, are relying on the ignorance and corrupt nature of much of officialdom across Africa, to sweet-talk their way to obtaining permits to build their so-called "clean" coal-fired power plants. They must not be allowed to succeed in their aim.

Africans, including Ghanaians, like Chinese citizens who live in urban China, also deserve to live in pollution-free environments, and enjoy healthy lifestyles lived in cities, towns and villages, in which the air quality is amongst the best in the world.

 The lungs of Africans are no less deserving of breathing clean air that is virtually devoid of  carbon dioxide, sulphur, particulants and other pollutants, than the lungs of  Chinese people - and the lungs of all the other members of the one human race on the surface of the planet Earth.

The  World Bank's managing director, Dr. Jim Yong Kim,  and his officials, ought to take note of that salient point, as they think of making an exception of Africa, at  a point in time when they are reluctant to finance coal-fired power projects: apparently except where there are no other viable alternatives. Well, as it happens, Africa indeed does have a viable alternative, to dirty and health-destroying coal - the Grand Inga hydro power project.

 Africa would be far better off focusing on partnering Google to implement the Grand Inga hydro power-generating project. That will provide the whole continent with cheap and reliable clean power for decades to come. One hopes that Ghana's President Mahama and the continent's other leaders will work together to make the Grand Inga hydro power project a reality. A word to the wise...