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Next Monday, 30th November 2015, the beleaguered but still beguiling city of Paris, will welcome about 50,000 delegates and protesters to the 21st session of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 21 of UNFCC).  The participants will come from the 195 countries of the UNFCC, including an official delegation from Ghana.

The stated objective of the 2015 Paris Climate Conference will be to aim to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2°C.  This will mean that for the first time, all countries, both Developed and Developing, will be asked to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide.

The universal intent of Paris is a sharp departure from the KYOTO protocol of 1997 when developing countries were exempted from meeting any targets for greenhouse gas reduction. The rationale for Kyoto was that since developed countries are principally responsible for the high levels of emissions in the atmosphere the Protocol placed the burden on them to reduce greenhouse gases (GHG)

As is now the tradition, COP 21 has been preceded by numerous international initiatives, including conferences, all aimed at creeping towards a consensual position that could be signed agreed and signed formally at the end of the two week conference. As you would expect from the country that talked its way to independence, Ghana has been very prominent in the pre-COP activities.

Our current President took part in the last major meeting held in Paris just one week before the IS massacre of Friday 13th November.  Former President John Agyekum Kuffuor is currently the UN Special Envoy on Climate Change. And last but not least, former United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, is Chairman of the Africa Progress Panel, which is championing renewable energy as the clean energy path to Africa’s development

All three prominent citizens of Ghana will join US President Barrack Osama, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Hu Juntao, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moo and virtually every leader in Paris over the 2 week tenure of COP21.  Ghana wills this have a very heavyweight presence in Paris and therefore message that we deliver to COP 21 will need to be coherent and consistent with the stated aims and intended outcome of the conference.

It is in the above context I worry about the recent conclusion of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Chinese authorities to bold a 1,000 MW (yes, one thousand megawatt) coal-fired power generation plant in Ghana in the best few years.  So here we are going into COP 21 with Ghana holding a position that it intends to emit substantial amounts of carbon dioxide, as its contribution to reducing GHGs in the coming years.

The above is the tragic, incoherent and quite frankly shameful position that we are asking our illustrious leaders to have to answer for as they seek to rally the whole world to accepting universal limits to the emission of carbon dioxide. NO, NO, NO Dr Kwabena Donkor; this is palpably untenable and must be put on hold without any ifs and buts,

Yes, we face a future where thermal power, rather than hydro, will become the major mix in Ghana’s power generation.  But the way to deal with that is to pursue a sensible policy that rolls out more climate-friendly thermal and renewable technologies first before we look at oil and I it ever comes that, coal powered generation. We can and should do this because it is the sensible way to go, and more importantly we have ample time and internal resources to pursue such a policy.

At present Ghana’s peak load requirement is 2000W; as against an installed generating capacity of 3000 MW. This is double the normal reserve margin capacity for operation, Even without the ubiquitous power barges, VRA alone has contracted to all between 1500-2000MW of gas/oil thermal plants over the next five years.  This development alone would take our installed capacity to close to or beyond the ‘magical’ 5000MW installed capacity mark beloved by all Presidents.

In the midst of our prolonged suffering from Dumsor due to our inability to find/ pay for fuel for our rehabilitated thermal plant, we are told everyday that we are finding our own indigenous gas in near Qatar proportions. So we are in the happy position of adding fuel to the new thermal megawatt to indeed fix our Dumsor for the foreseeable future.

To all of the above, some retort that there are other countries, including the USA and Germany, who are generating power from coal. True and I may have been less worried but still skeptical if indeed we had signed the MOU with companies from these countries. But we have signed with China, where 4,000 citizens a day die from the smog effects of coal –powered generation for the past 25 years of uninhibited industrialization and growth.

Now, China like us will not be exempt from having to reduce its own carbon footprint under any agreement that emerges out of COP21. It is already taking steps to do by investing and becoming the largest producer of solar systems in the world. Sometimes, in my uncharitable moments, I cannot help but be cynical in thinking that China is seeking to get carbon credits for itself by exporting coal power technology to us.

The title of this piece is ‘plagiarized’ from a presentation I made in 1991 as Africa’s representative at a conference entitled “Technologies for a Greenhouse-Constrained Society”. The conference, a disguise to push nuclear energy, was held in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, one of the US Dept of Energy’s nuclear research centres

My thesis then, as now, was that we need to produce substantial amount of conventional power from fossil fuels if we are to attain the same levels of socio-economic development that had led to some being labeled as Developed. Our path, especially now that we are required to meet our own limits, lies with using the clean fuels of gas and renewable.

That is the ‘win-win’ option to Ghana’s sustainable Development that justifies our very high profile presence at the Paris Climate Summit.