Eddie Cross's Website

The Energy Crisis in the World

My Granddaughter is in a University in the northern part of New York State and yesterday they recorded the lowest temperature ever recorded of less than 70 degrees Celsius. It was not as cold as that where she is but still very cold. I have been in such temperatures on the Norwegian border with Russia where water thrown in the air froze before it hit the ground. But I was not worried because she was in a protected environment and well heated by some form of energy.

Somehow in the last century we took energy for granted. Walked into a room and switched on the lights, got into the car and turned on the air conditioning and the engine. Gas, gasoline, electricity, coal, were just always there. We did not have to cut wood or make a fire, the products we used every day just kept on coming.

Today we are suddenly learning just what that means when energy in its various forms becomes a scarce commodity. In this part of the world, it is South Africa that is in a real crisis. When Mandela took over in that country, the new Government inherited a power grid that comprised perhaps 36 coal fired power stations and one nuclear power station near Cape Town. South Africa's very substantial industrial base had been established on the basis of cheap, abundant electricity. In some parts of South Africa the coal generated pollution was visible and the very atmosphere smelt of the gases emitted by the power stations.

The new Government did not invest in the system and allowed the utility Eskom to build up massive debts as it borrowed funds to try and maintain supply. Today the debts of Eskom amount to 70 per cent of the National Debt. Even this did not maintain the system and today the country reels under load shedding of many hours every day. It is so serious that it threatens the future of the country.

A similar if different situation exists in Zimbabwe. Our previous Governments before Independence in 1980, built 4 coal fired power stations and the Kariba Dam, still the largest man-made lake in the world. The surplus of electricity at low prices in South Africa enabled us to import any shortfall. Our demand of 2400 megawatts was small by comparison with the 45 000 megawatts of capacity in South Africa and our immediate neighbours of Mozambique and Zambia had a small surplus.

But, like South Africa our coal fired plants ran out of real life. Old boilers and inefficient turbines. Then we ran out of water for power generation in Kariba when we over used the water available to meet demand. At home we now experience 18 hours of no electricity from the grid and we have had to invest in solar panels and a lithium battery. It meets our needs but is too expensive for the majority of our people.

But this crisis is not local, its global in character. This is because the activists around the world have decided that 'climate change' is the new idea to pursue. Suddenly the energy regime that has created the greatest and most sustained economic boom in history, has become the enemy. The demands are ever more strident - we must stop mining coal, stop drilling for oil and gas, abandon our nuclear power plants and turn to wind and waves and solar power. The call is for the world to covert to 'green energy' and to make this possible, to spend trillions on new forms of energy creation, storage and distribution.

In the United States they are having power shortages and 'brown outs', Germany is struggling with energy as it not only seeks to placate the Greens but also to reverse the dependence on Russia - one of the great energy sources in the world economy. Energy prices have soared and in the winter cold, people in the developed and wealthy world are struggling to heat their homes and run their factories. Natural gas, which two years ago was the hope of the globe with its seemingly abundant supply at very low prices, is four or five times the price.

We (our generation) knows very well how critical energy is to our economies. The new economy of a digitalised world with artificial intelligence in everything and offices and factories without people, are totally dependent on energy. We know how to generate it and to transmit it to points of demand but we do not as yet know how God generates energy, for example, in the Sun. If we did, our problems would be over and abundant cheap energy would be available for everyone. Maybe that is coming, but for now we have to live and work and that requires we carry on with what we have.

So there is no question of the developing countries abandoning coal. What we can do, if the wealthy countries will help us with technology and money, is build clean coal fired power plants. I know it can be done, but it takes time. Sure we can develop wind and wave and solar, but today, this is not the solution and these forms of generation are not only expensive, but unreliable. We also need our petroleum products - from fertilizers to plastics, diesel and petrol. The internal combustion engine is by no means history, it will be with us for many decades to come.

What we do not need is the wealthy countries dumping their old factories and power plants as well as old technology on us because it is cheap and available. Its like second hand clothes and vehicles. We need to be able to afford the best and for that to happen we need financial help.

Last night I was told of an old factory in China that produced a range of products based on the petroleum sector. This had been established early in the Chinese industrial revolution and quickly established its global presence. But now it was old technology, creating a very polluted environment in that City and Province and the Government ordered the company to relocate and invest in the best of new clean technology. To help, the Government financed their relocation and gave them cheap, long term loans for new equipment bought from the West. Today that plant is selling their products at half the price of the old factory and is completely clean with no pollution. Money and technology, hard work does the rest.

The simplified solutions tendered by the activists in the climate change world are not going to do the job. In fact what they might do is make it impossible for us to lift the majority of the worlds populations out of poverty. This need not be at the expense of the environment, in fact we can achieve both, but only by working together with access to both money and technology. The climate change summits with their strident demands are not going to produce the solutions, those are going to come out of enterprise, market driven change and hard work, as it always has.

The exciting thing about all this is amply demonstrated by the US economy which in the past month has created over 500 000 new jobs. Never in history has this happened and it was not predicted, in fact we hardly understand how it happens. Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the USA, stated that he feared the emergence of the new economy in the US, fearing that it would slow productivity and innovation and reduce the availability of paid work. When he retired after 17 years in the job, he said the very opposite had happened.

We have to find solutions to the many problems we have but we do not need to fear the future. We have overcome these problems before and we will continue to do so. What we need is vision and enterprise and to work together as a global community, in the pursuit of change and growth.

Eddie Cross
Harare 5th February 2023