Post #289

Green Energy, But Not For All Many corporations love to boast about their environmental credentials — and some even do so without lying — but in certain places green energy is simply the only option 🌐 DRC's major copper company Ivanhoe Mining, backed by Chinese and Arab investors, has launched at its Kamoa-Kakula copper mine what it calls “the largest and greenest copper smelter in Africa”. 🔌 At the event —where the investors also paraded traditional rulers — the company noted that the enormous 60-megawatt giant furnace would be powered by one of the DRC’s hydroelectric plants. ⚡️ The achievement is indeed commendable, but its scale fades a bit once you consider that the DRC has virtually no “non-green” electricity at all — roughly 99% of its power already comes from hydropower. ⛔️ So far, companies are trying to create a national image by inviting traditional chiefs, while only about 22% of the Congolese have access to electricity. Congolese green power generation is not the result of elaborate climate policy but of poverty and economic underdevelopment. Let us thank the Chinese investors for not building oil burners all around Congo — but it would be nice if ordinary people could plug into the green socket too. Devils Below