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So much for a post-carbon world, as a welter of new upstream investment plays marks the start of 2023. Some of Africa’s biggest producers are offering new acreage and developments, including Nigeria’s latest marginal fields round and Algerian efforts to exploit surging demand for gas stoked by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine nearly a year ago.

Aggreko has been awarded a contract by Electricité de France subsidiary EDF La Réunion to help support conversion of the coal-fired Bois-Rouge power plant on Réunion island to 100% biomass. Aggreko said the conversion would lower direct emissions by 84% compared to the plant’s current operating levels.

Sultan Al-Jaber’s appointment to preside over the end-year COP28 climate talks in Dubai brings a storied United Arab Emirates official to global prominence. His leadership in renewables developer Masdar and other UAE sustainable energy initiatives is welcome, but Al-Jaber’s powerful role as head of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) has added to climate campaigners’ fears that big hydrocarbons producers will take the COP process even further off track, write Jon Marks and African Energy staff.

A realignment of global alliances is ever more apparent as the first anniversary of Russia’s attempted conquest of Ukraine approaches and global power and wealth seem to concentrate in ever fewer hands. This has been seen in the solidarity among members of the Opec+ oil exporters’ alliance, in which long western-aligned Saudi Arabia and President Vladimir Putin’s Russia remain the driving forces.

Egyptian oil and gas producers are foregoing an estimated $4.5bn a year of revenues by flaring gas rather than putting it to use – 50% more than the $3bn financing deal recently agreed between Cairo and the IMF. International companies are putting in place projects to deal with the problem, but a lot more needs to be done.  

Hull-based HiiROC expects to install a number of thermal plasma electrolysis units at gas flaring sites in Egypt in 2023, after signing aN MOU with Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company. The programme is part of a wider series of pilot projects that HiiROC hopes will demonstrate the commercial viability of producing what it calls ‘emerald hydrogen’, writes John Hamilton.

It was supposed to be all about implementation and Africa, but the COP27 climate summit ended on 20 November amid disharmony and a failure to agree more cuts in fossil fuel use. However, a series of initiatives were launched that might not have gained as much media attention but which could help African countries match their development needs with clean energy ambitions, writes John Hamilton, recently in Sharm El Sheikh.

The unveiling of a number of major initiatives to help mitigate climate change, start moving towards offering ‘loss and damage’ support and stimulating carbon markets and other financing mechanisms was a feature of the COP27 climate summit in Sharm El Sheikh. African Energy takes a closer look at The Bridgetown Initiative, Alliance for Green Infrastructure in Africa, African Carbon Markets Initiative and The Transforma Platform.

Global Alliance for People and Planet and the Norwegian government have pledged more funding to support the development of solar power in Sahel countries.

The Africa Carbon Market Initiative (ACMI) was formally launched at the COP27 climate conference in Egypt, with the aim of generating 300m carbon credits a year by 2030, which would lead to $6bn in revenue. Several African countries – including Kenya, Malawi, Gabon, Nigeria and Togo – have signalled their intention to collaborate with ACMI, to scale up their voluntary carbon markets (VCM).

Southern Africa leaders have made a joint appeal at COP27 for nearly $20bn from investors to complete electricity transmission interconnectors and fund new renewable energy projects, in part to increase energy capacity in the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP).

Growing alarm over the scale of the climate emergency and the impossibility of limiting the global temperature increase to just 1.5ºC by 2100 has put Africa’s climate finance conundrum into the spotlight during COP27 in Egypt.  Divisions over the future role of gas in energy transition have split the continent – which will not get all the new money it wants to help it adapt to the consequences of climate change, writes John Hamilton in Sharm El Sheikh.

President Abdel Fattah El Sisi’s aim of using COP27 to bolster Egypt’s credentials as a regional green energy hub have seen deals on multi-gigawatt wind farms and the commissioning of the first green hydrogen (GH2) pilot project in Africa. But tricky compromises will be needed to turn some of the heady plans into reality.

BP has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Mauritanian government to explore the potential for large-scale production of green hydrogen (GH2), with BP to evaluate the technical and commercial feasibility of projects in the country. The deal was signed at the United Nations climate conference (COP27) in Sharm El Sheikh.

The Gabonese government is planning to sell carbon credits to fund two hydroelectric projects, with a combined capacity of 88MW.