These People Can Make a Commitment to Solar—And We Can’t?

Those of you following the “Keep It In the Ground” campaign, focused on encouraging a migration away from fossil fuels at the maximum practical pace, should be aware of the commitment that Burundi made in this regard.  Here’s an African nation two-thirds of whose population lives in poverty, a land where conditions were recently made even more miserable by way of an attempted political coup, that is bravely headed in the direction of solar energy to address its horrific blackouts and general failure to provide electricity to its people. (Pictured here is a typical hospital; its primitive technology doesn’t work most of the time due to the lack of electrical power.)

From the article linked above: 

The American-owned Dutch company Gigawatt Global says it has a “hybrid model” that uses renewable energy projects as a catalyst for social development. Yosef Abramowitz, president of Gigawatt Global, said: “We are deeply concerned about the poverty of the Burundian people. We just hope we’re able to bring the project to life to help the community.”

Gigawatt Global plans to build 1,000 MW of solar in Africa by 2020, providing electricity to millions of households and institutions. Abramowitz added: “I believe solar power is the engine of transformation in Africa. It can deploy so quickly that you can drive poverty alleviation and economic growth like no other technology. It’s going to take off so fast now.”

It’s long been obvious that the developing world will experience a curious benefit as it begins to provide energy to its people for the first time, i.e., that it will “leapfrog” traditional technologies, i.e., fossil-fueled power plants, and move directly to distributed solar and wind.  It’s great to see that coming to fruition.