Ndii article an attempted takedown masquerading as economic analysis

In the Nation of June 2, David Ndii presented an interesting opinion of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s recent trip to China for the “New Silk Road” summit, at which he witnessed the signing of a financing agreement for a coal power plant to be built in Lamu. The article is, however, an attempted political takedown masquerading as economic analysis.

The article implies that the President has influence on the coal plant in question – what Ndii calls “the controversial Lamu coal power plant”. But, as he acknowledges in the article, the project is in fact a private venture. The President attended merely to witness the signing of the financing agreement, and the government and taxpayers of Kenya are not liable for the success or failure of the project. If it succeeds, fine. If it fails, it’s just another failed private venture. So, what is the big deal?

The big deal is ideological, and is exposed in the meat of the article. Ndii criticises Mr Kenyatta’s meeting with US President Donald Trump at the G7 meeting in Italy shortly after the China trip, and compares Uhuru and Trump, adding that those two “were the only pro-coal leaders at the meeting”. So what? Since when did being pro-coal become a hanging offence? How is it a crime to share an energy perspective with Donald Trump?

HE FAILS

When Ndii finally gets around to attempting to make the economic case against coal, he fails too. His first contention is that “grid-scale solar power has become cheaper than coal in 30 countries”, “according to a World Economic Forum report”. The report also notes that the use of solar is predicated upon the availability of advanced battery and storage technologies. The quoted cost of solar power is stated by the report to be “at or near $100/MWh”. This is the same cost as coal. But unlike coal, solar power needs advanced battery and storage facilities. And those facilities cost money – the report states that such battery packs cost on average $350/kWh. Now, 1MWh is the equivalent of 1,000kWh. So, a battery pack that stores 1MWh of solar power will cost $350,000. The equivalent cost for coal power? Zero. Which is the more expensive option now?

THE RELIABILITY

Solar and wind do not provide the reliability that coal and other fossils provide. Kenya is a growing economy, and is on the verge of demanding full-time electricity. The ruinous load-shedding that we experience day in and day out is a huge cost to doing business, and the infrastructure improvement needed to avoid transmission faults must go hand in hand with a reliable supply of electricity that is guaranteed to provide power every time the switch is turned on. And if you are on solar, and the sun doesn’t shine, there won’t be power when you turn the switch on – simple as that. As a result, solar requires a backup power source. Obviously, the backup cannot also be solar, and will necessarily be a fossil source like generators and coal plants. This means investing twice – first in the solar plant, and then in a coal or gas plant or even diesel generator for when the sun is not shining.

TESLA CARS

Ndii quotes Elon Musk, the businessman behind Tesla cars, and his promise to install a 100MW power storage facility in Australia in 100 days for free, to help fix Australia’s power problems. This bears some expounding. South Australia, one of Australia’s six states, recently experienced a devastating series of power blackouts. This is surprising at first, because Australia is a first-world country and South Australia holds 30 per cent of the world’s uranium deposits, alongside massive deposits of coal, gas and oil. On the surface of it, therefore, South Australia should never have power blackouts – they can construct nuclear power plants, oil, gas, or coal-powered plants to supply electricity. The problem is politics: South Australia is run by a state government ideologically wedded to the same “clean” energy gospel that Ndii preaches in his article. As a result, they demolished their fossil-powered generators and chose instead to rely on wind, solar, and similar “green” energy. However, in September 2016, a huge storm hit South Australia. Some power transmission facilities were knocked out, and demand automatically switched to the remaining grid. This grid was, of course, running on “green” wind energy. It could not cope with demand and, unlike a fossil power plant, wind cannot just be “turned up” to generate more power when needed. The demand was too much, and the rest of the grid failed. Australia’s Federal Energy Minister, Josh Frydenberg, said the massive blackouts were caused by the intermittence of solar and wind power.

Ndii should abandon the ideological posturing evident in his article and debate solutions that are workable, not just those that are ideologically comfortable for him.

Peter Wanyonyi is an information systems professional.

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