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Cut reliance on dirty thermal power to speed up clean energy shift

31Jan

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clean energy, Comment

Cut reliance on dirty thermal power to speed up clean energy shift

Photo © Zbynek Burival/Unsplash To make electricity more affordable to Kenyans and spur sustainable social and economic development, President William Ruto’s administration should speed up efforts to displace expensive and dirty thermal power from our electricity grid. The government aims to transition power generation to 100% clean and affordable sources by 2030. This entails reducing our reliance on thermal power plants which run on imported and polluting heavy fuel oils (HFO), diesel, or kerosene. Without political will, the 2030 target can easily be missed. Kenya is lauded globally for being a leader in clean electricity, generating 92% of its power from geothermal, wind, and solar. However, electricity remains too costly for local businesses and homes. This ...

Mainstream Nature into Africa’s Economic Policies

Photo: Amanda Silva/ Unsplash The rapid loss of nature in Kenya and Africa threatens long-term socio-economic development and people’s well-being. To address this challenge, governments and businesses should expand efforts to recognize and quantify nature's contributions to economies and integrate them into policies and decisions. This will boost the sustainable management of our natural resources. Natural capital-- forests, wildlife, land, oceans, and wetlands--provides vital goods and services to economies. These include food, fresh water for domestic, agricultural, and industrial use, air filtration, pollination, flood and soil erosion control, tourism attraction, and climate change regulation. But nature’s contributions to economies are largely not part of calculat...

Africa Must Act Against Harmful Paints

Joyful spherical creature, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons The majority of African countries are yet to outlaw harmful paints containing heavy metal lead despite their documented and far-reaching negative health and economic impacts, and the high risks of exposure to them facing many people on the continent. As the world marks the 10th Anniversary of International Lead Poisoning Prevention Week (23-29 October 2022), we can no longer brush aside the pressing need to keep unsafe paints out of our homes, schools, and workplaces. We can do this by developing and enforcing mandates against lead paints, and enhancing public and industry awareness about their dangers. Information compiled from the United Nations Environment Progra...