Podcast Review: The Role of Fossil Fuels in Sub-Saharan Africa’s Renewable Energy Future
Katya
Forsyth
March 22, 2022

Sustain 267 is a podcast hosted by Pato Kelesitse and produced in Botswana, and aims to educate the public around climate issues in Africa and the rest of the world. In this episode, entitled The Role of Fossil Fuels in Sub-Saharan Africa’s Renewable Energy Future, members of the Global Shaper Community, a network of young people working working to address local, regional and global challenges, had a conversation with Mr. Olumida Adeosun, the CEO of Ardova PLC, Nigeria’s leading integrated energy company. 

The interviewers took turns pressing Mr. Adeosun on how exactly the transition to renewable energy can and should happen in Africa. He discussed the ongoing challenges that plague many energy companies: there are too many sunk costs, and too many remaining opportunities to extract value from fossil fuels for companies to have any real motivation to make the switch to renewable energy. Adeosun said that Ardova made the decision to diversify their energy sources from a place of morality and social responsibility, rather than the transition being immediately profitable or even possible. 

The interviewers pressed Adeosun about the premise of “sunk costs,” bringing up the construction of the new East Africa Oil Pipeline, and the fear that Africa may miss their chance to lead in the renewables industry and will once again be reliant on foreign-owned energy companies. Adeosun responded with a sobering prediction: the West is already moving ahead with renewable technology, and Africa will soon have to cope with an influx of discarded fossil fuel technology. The activists proposed the opportunity for Africa to “leapfrog” on development into renewables the same way that Africa jumped into the digital age. However, Adeosun lamented the lack of funding for a transition to renewable energy, as well as the extremely tight margins in the oil industry which would require a large increase in production in order to generate enough profit to fund a significant shift. Adeosun approximated that for Ardova, it would cost about 250 million dollars to initiate an impactful transition, but also conceded that he was looking more into waste-to-energy (incineration), instead of exclusively renewables. 

While Adeosun reiterated Ardova’s commitment to the “triple bottom line” — people, planet and profits —  the huge costs of transition combined with the promises of “peak oil” left a question hanging: what if the profit is undermining your other bottom lines? At what point will companies do the right thing to protect the people and the planet that might not survive past “peak oil”? This question was left more or less unresolved, but in the end, Adeosun encouraged the Global Shaper Community to continue to engage in education around renewable energy and to continue holding leaders like himself accountable to their sustainability promises. He emphasized two aspects in particular. First, educating consumers about renewable energy so that demand continues to grow, whether for electric vehicles or solar panels, in order to signal to the energy industry that renewables have the potential to be more lucrative than fossil fuels. Second, the energy industry needs a framework for “how to exit the fossil fuel game”, or rather, the most effective way to shift to renewables and break their addiction to oil. All of the interviewers on this podcast boldly pushed Adeosun to confront the challenges and inadequacies of the oil industry’s response to climate change, and provide examples of how we can continue to publicly hold the industry accountable.



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