Energy shortage tops agenda of G20 energy ministers' meeting in South Africa

Transcript

00:00At least 600 million Africans still live without electricity.

00:11For those connected to the grid, power costs are often too high to use.

00:15Many turn to dangerous alternatives for cooking and heating, claiming millions of lives every

00:20year from indoor pollution.

00:23You could have people who have connected to the grid, but they still rely on paraffin,

00:29on wood, on coal, for cooking because of the cost of electricity.

00:34G20 energy ministers meeting in Durban struggled to find common ground, but agreed on one thing,

00:40the need to fix its reality.

00:42What we're looking at is things like gas, LPG, and then also things like biomass, solar stoves.

00:49So there's a huge amount of innovation in the clean cooking space.

00:54Very rural areas, gas is not going to work, there's no proper infrastructure, so we'll

00:57look at biomass, closer to urban centers where people can get access to gas, we can look

01:03at gas.

01:04Africa wants to power up 300 million people within five years and cut in half, the number

01:09still living in the dark.

01:10Although money remains a hurdle, nuclear energy is gaining traction, appearing on the G20's

01:16agenda for the first time.

01:17We are looking at concrete possibilities here in Africa, we are doing the same in Brazil.

01:23There are interesting examples in the United States, as you know, where SMR designers and

01:30companies are specifically zeroing in on coal power plants as potential platforms for clean

01:42energy.

01:43South Africa remains the continent's only nuclear-powered nation, but others are fast

01:47joining the race.

01:48Egypt is in the process of building four nuclear power reactors, Ghana is very far along, Kenya

01:54is very far along.

01:55So we are finding that there are countries, even Namibia has expressed interest in nuclear.

01:59As a legacy project, South Africa has launched the African Energy Efficiency Facility, which

02:04is set to mobilize $3 billion in funding over the next few years.

02:08The goal is to make every sector, from households to heavy industry, less energy intensive, more

02:14resilient and ready for a net zero carbon world.