“For the creditor the swap can be made to count as a component of their Nationally Determined Contributions ,” he said, adding; that “To make this efficient, there are of course significant policy actions necessary to make this acceptable and sustainable.”
“Currently, direct carbon pricing systems through carbon taxes have largely been concentrated in high and middle-income countries.
According to him, nearly 90 million people in Asia and Africa who had previously gained access to electricity can no longer afford to pay for their basic energy needs. The inflationary pressures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and other macroeconomic trends have been further exacerbated by the ongoing war in Ukraine.
“We anchored the plan on key objectives including lifting 100 million people out of poverty in a decade, driving economic growth, bringing modern energy services to the full population and managing the expected long-term job losses in the oil sector due to global decarbonization,” he said “By comparison, the United States has an installed capacity of 1,200 gigawatts to power a population of 331 million people, while the United Kingdom has 76 gigawatts of installed capacity for its 67 million people. The per capita energy capacity in the United Kingdom is almost fifteen times than in Sub-Saharan Africa.”
Acknowledging the contrast to the wider responses to the climate crisis on the African continent, the vice president said, “We are not seeing careful consideration and acknowledgement of Africa’s aspirations. For instance, despite the tremendous energy gaps, global policies are increasingly constraining Africa’s energy technology choices.”