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Africa urged to embrace China's efficiency in renewable energy

Xinhua, May 26, 2016 Adjust font size:

An international environment expert on Wednesday urged Sub-Saharan African countries to learn from China's experience in renewable energy development.

David Rodgers, a Senior Climate Change specialist with the Global Environment Facility (GEF) said Beijing has made renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar that use to be seen as luxuries become affordable to the world.

"China's approach of doing things in a big way has made the country become the leader in the world by availing affordable energy to the populations," Rodgers said during the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) in Nairobi.

He said after developing a five year renewable energy development plan in 2014, China lifted the investment in renewable energy by 17 percent to 102.9 billion U.S. dollars at a time when the developed countries combined investment was 130 billion dollars.

Rodgers added that the country has been the single biggest reason for the near unbroken uptrend for the developing world as a whole since 2004.

"Africa must develop strong policies to enable them adopt solar and wind power since the continent still do not have enough supply of energy," he added.

According to a report titled global trend in renewal energy investment 2016, developing countries jumped ahead of develop countries for the first time in 2015 in terms of renewable energy investment.

The share of global investment accounted for by developing countries rose from 49 percent in 2014 to 55 percent in 2015, with the dollar commitment at 156 billion dollars the previous year.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) said that Africa is one of the most promising markets for renewable energy over the next 10-20 years due to its abundant sunshine, wind, biomass and geothermal opportunities.

Within the East African region, Kenya attracted 316 million dollars of asset finance in 2015.

The only other countries that have also made tremendous progress are Uganda with 134 million dollars and Ethiopia with 100 million dollars. Endit