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NJ Ayuk’s most recent publication, A Just Transition: Making Energy Poverty History with an Energy Mix, has debuted as a #1 bestseller on Amazon’s US store
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JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, March 9, 2023/ — Following its release on Wednesday 8 March, NJ Ayuk’s most recent publication, A Just Transition: Making Energy Poverty History with an Energy Mix, has debuted as the #1 bestselling book on Amazon’s U.S. store, a testament to its significance in the current energy transition climate. Representing an in-depth analysis of Africa’s energy sector and the threat an immediate transition to renewables poses on the continent’s ability to develop, reaching bestseller status speaks to the value the book holds. The release of the book follows years of research and analysis, as well as meetings with prominent stakeholders, with the end product shedding light on the sobering reality that is unfolding in Africa. The bestselling publication reaffirms what African stakeholders believe is the right way to transition to a cleaner energy future. Rather than abandon the very resources that serve as the solution to developing, industrializing and electrifying the continent, the book brings attention to a different approach: an African approach. By providing key insight into the disastrous impacts transitioning away from oil and gas will have on the continent, the book offers a drill-focused approach, essentially defending the continent’s right to develop and utilize its oil and gas resources. By drawing attention to the need to end resource nationalism as well as critical role large-scale oil and gas developments such as the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, Mozambique’s three sizeable Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) developments and South Africa’s natural gas projects, to name a few, will play in alleviating energy poverty while increasing the supply of clean energy, the book makes a strong case for what Africa needs to develop and mitigate climate change. At a time when African countries have aligned their policies to attract more investment into upcoming oil and gas developments, world leaders continue to call for the end of oil and gas utilization. For Africa, developing oil and gas is no longer an interesting prospect, but rather, it has turned into a critical solution for developing economies. Across the continent projects continue to take off. These include Senegal and Mauritania’s Greater Tortue Ahemyim development; Nigeria’s floating LNG train; Uganda’s Lake Albert development; Namibia’s trifecta of oil discoveries and many more. If these projects were to end, what chance does the continent have to make energy poverty history? Rather than place oil and gas stakeholders against environmentalists, a trend which continues to be done by world leaders, the book posits a collaborative approach to addressing dual challenges of energy poverty and climate change in Africa, making clear the value of cooperation among energy players and environmentalists alike. Rather than picking sides, Ayuk takes on a new approach to the climate debate, introducing the concept of integration and cooperation above opposition. Additionally, the book makes clear the need for an energy mix-approach. For Africa, adopting an energy mix represents the only and best method of making energy poverty history while addressing climate change concerns. In addition to over 125 billion barrels of crude oil reserves and 620 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, Africa holds significant renewable energy potential, and energy stakeholders are already working towards capitalizing on these resources. In this area, the book identifies a particularly interesting and highly lucrative space: green hydrogen. While global markets begin to turn their attention to global hydrogen, Africa’s untapped renewable energy resources and position as a future green hydrogen hub have made it a top investment destination, however capital remains slow in this area. As such, the book introduces a key solution to raising the funds needed to develop this sector: oil and gas. If Africa immediately transitions away from these resources, how will the continent finance its future? The book points to this very notion, emphasizing that a Western idea of the energy transition will do more harm than good in Africa: that a rushed transition will be even more disastrous; and that relying on foreign aid, rather than developing resources, will cause long-term harm, preventing any meaningful economic progress from taking place. There is still time to secure your copy of A Just Transition: Making Energy Poverty History with an Energy Mix. Purchase your copy on Amazon at https://apo-opa.info/3ynv5Ev Distributed by APO Group on behalf of African Energy Chamber.
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Tag: energy justice
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A Just Transition: Making Energy Poverty History with an Energy Mix Hits #1 Bestseller on Amazon
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Making Compelling Case for Natural Gas
Opinion Piece
By: NJ Ayuk
When most people hear the word “gas,” they’re automatically inclined to think about the type of gas that pumps directly into their fuel tank. But although petroleum gas is the most common gasoline fuel we encounter daily, it is only one “type” of gas.
By speaking of gas, we also may refer to “natural gas,” which (although it shares similarities) is intrinsically different from petroleum-based gasoline as a whole.
Like oil, natural gas is a resource that is extraordinarily abundant in Africa and many other countries around the globe. As a result, I’ve observed a renewed interest in natural gas in the last several months.
The need for alternative energy doesn’t require us to overlook fuel sources at our fingertips entirely. For example, despite being commonly roped in with petroleum-based fuel, natural gas burns significantly cleaner than oil and coal.
Being an emission-friendly fuel, natural gas can absolutely serve us in our objective of building a greener future.
Redefining Natural Gas
It’s easy to overlook things that we don’t have direct involvement with. For example, most people only think about natural gas when their stove or water heater ceases working.
As a result, many people aren’t even aware of how natural gas is derived — let alone its molecular composition.
In my objective to help educate people and empower them with knowledge about the vast and varied world of energy, it wouldn’t hurt to provide a refresher on what natural gas actually is and how it is obtained.
Put simply, natural gas (like crude oil) is an energy source formed by fossil fuels under pressure deep beneath the earth’s surface. Natural gas is made up of many different compounds, but the largest of these is methane, a compound composed of one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms.
The process of extracting natural gas involves drilling into subsurface rock formations. Modern advancements in hydraulic fracturing (colloquially known as “fracking”) have allowed us to draw upon immense volumes of subsurface natural gas.
Natural gas can be used as a clean-burning fuel to power many of the same devices and operations as oil-based petroleum and can burn with significantly higher efficiency and cleanliness.
Electricity Powered by Natural Gas
Electricity is the end product needed for our lifestyles to carry on in the way we’re used to. But what are the sources required to generate electricity?
Solar may be highlighted as the most renewable energy source of them all. Still, natural gas-powered plants can produce vast amounts of electricity with much higher output than coal-burning power plants.
Although natural gas is a hydrocarbon that produces the pollutant carbon dioxide, it outputs around 50-60% less carbon dioxide than coal and approximately 30% less carbon dioxide than oil.
Working With Today’s Materials to Build Tomorrow
Natural gas reservoirs are abundant and ready to serve our objectives in developing manageable, environmentally friendly energy technologies.
While we sculpt our plans to build a more energy-efficient future via solar and other innovative technologies, we can make intelligent use of the materials at our disposal today — resting comfortably with the knowledge that they are also serving our goals toward lowering global emissions.
Hearing global leaders and corporations carry out more serious discussions about natural gas’ role in our future’s ecosystem offers reassurance that there may indeed be a way to make a just transition between our present and future.
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ESG in Africa is colonialism 2.0
by N.J. Ayuk
Many today believe the era of colonialism in Africa is over. They’re wrong. The era of colonialism in Africa has merely entered a new and insidious phase.
Some call it “neo-colonialism.” I call it colonialism 2.0. In colonialism 1.0, Western and other nations conquered large parts of Africa, and in colonialism 2.0, they use their money to impose their unrealistic ideologies on an unwilling but still desperate continent.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the mania surrounding ESG, a set of environmental, social, and governance criteria for financial investments that are being weaponized to impose green energy on African nations that desperately need cheap, reliable energy — that is, fossil fuels. We need this energy to continue developing our economies and providing basic necessities for our people.
Everyone knows that Africa is still a largely developing continent. As such, it requires the help of other nations in order to save lives and improve the well-being of its citizens. Great progress has been achieved since World War II, not only in Africa but around the world. For example, just between 1990 and 2015, extreme poverty in Africa went from 54% of the population to just 41%. It is estimated that the number could decline to 23% by 2030.
However, elites in Western countries are threatening to undermine all this progress unless Africans go along with their unrealistic and extremist expectations. In a rather colonial fashion, Western countries are denying African countries their once-in-a-generation opportunity for development by making us the subjects of their ESG experiments. If we don’t agree to abide by ESG criteria, they try to bribe us with IMF and other loans through the sophisticated international finance system. And if that fails, they punish us by denying their help — even if it kills our people.
I’ll be as blunt as I was when I spoke at African Energy Week in Cape Town weeks ago. For African nations to continue to emerge from poverty, we need to drill, baby, drill. That’s Africa’s message to the world. If we’re going to solve energy poverty, the world needs to invest in Africa’s oil, natural gas, and other God-given resources.
Foreign leaders from wealthier, more advanced nations need to be responsible and tone down the rhetoric that fossil fuels and energy producers are evil. As Matthew Opoku Premeh, the Ghanaian minister of energy, reminded us at Africa Energy Week, over 80% of the oil and gas we take from Africa ends up in Europe, China, and India. So not only are African resources often extracted for the benefit of other nations but now we are not even allowed to pursue our own priorities? Nonsense.
Enough with the hypocrisy. Let us use what we have, as every other developed country has had the freedom to do for centuries. I stand with our energy producers and against the Western elite and will not apologize for Africa’s energy sector.
That is why I went to COP27. I believe that if Africa does not take a seat at the table, it will end up being on the menu. Let me be clear: those of us who advocate African countries to continue using the oil and gas resources within our sovereign borders are not ignoring the green agenda — we simply are not willing to embrace Western elites’ timetables for transitioning to renewable energy at the expense of the energy security and economic well-being of our own people.
Not just Africa but the whole world is now experiencing firsthand how important abundant and cheap energy is to economic development. With it, endless opportunities are available. Without it, your economy is at risk of collapse, as we are witnessing in Europe now.
Cheap energy is absolutely vital to economic development. So far, many so-called “green” energy sources have simply proven incapable of providing enough energy to rapidly developing countries, let alone developed ones like those in Europe and the United States. Those of us across the African continent desperately need to build vast amounts of infrastructure to feed our people, get them to work, and expand our access to the world. This requires cars, buses, trucks, ships, trains, docks, roads, power plants, utilities, and fiber optic networks, among many other countless amenities developed nations already enjoy.
Imposing environmental standards on African nations that are still in the early stages of development artificially maintains millions of Africans in poverty, unable to enjoy the economic empowerment that comes with cheap energy. As indicated by the International Energy Agency, over 700 million people don’t have access to electricity, many of whom are in Africa.
Did not the West itself go through a similar phase of development? It would be one thing if new energy sources were up to the task — but they aren’t. Africans must not be held in poverty for the sake of environmental extremists in the West who can’t even provide for their own energy needs, let alone ours. As Matthew Prempeh made it clear in Cape Town, he would be “an irresponsible leader to sell my country on the altar of energy transition without talking about the significance of energy security or energy access or without talking about energy affordability.”
By using ESG to impose strict “E” policies, the West is imposing its own priorities on countries that are still working on providing the basics to their people — food, infrastructure, internet, and energy.
A growing number of Western countries are making their aid packages contingent on going “green” when African nations simply can’t afford it. In such a situation, the West cannot be surprised if such nations begin turning to countries like China and its Belt and Road Initiative for cheap capital with no environmental strings attached.
We are not fools. Africans want to develop and prosper economically, and we know what we must do to achieve that. We need affordable, reliable energy. And if the West is unwilling to help us do that, we will turn elsewhere.
Do we want cleaner air and sustainable energy? Of course we do, who wouldn’t? The real question should be who is willing to see Africans die and slip back into poverty in a sloppy attempt to achieve those goals. I’m certainly not, but it seems many of our old colonizers are willing to make that horrendous bargain.
The West — its governments, corporations, nonprofit groups, and NGOs — must end ESG restrictions on investment in Africa and bring colonialism 2.0 to an end.
N.J. Ayuk is a lawyer and entrepreneur, and executive chairman of the African Energy Chamber, the only advocacy organization representing all facets of Africa’s energy, oil, and gas industry.