East African Community States to Have a Renewable Energy Centre

PLANS to have a centre for renewable energy and energy efficiency in the East African Community have been completed, according to Deputy Secretary General in charge of Productive and Social Sectors Jesca Eriyo.

The Deputy Secretary General told a meeting of EAC Energy ministers in Arusha, Tanzania, Friday the feasibility study and project documents for the establishment of the EAC Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency had been completed.

Eriyo informed the ministerial session of the 8th Meeting of the EAC Sectoral Council on Energy that the Austrian Government had committed one million euros towards the establishment of the centre, which she said would be instrumental in advancing the development of renewable energy in the region.

She added the project would also provide a channel for implementing energy efficiency programmes and thus called for its expeditious approval.

The meeting also discussed the East African Petroleum Conference and Exhibition, selecting Rwanda as the host for the seventh edition of the event due in 2015, while the ministers directed the EAC Secretariat to develop a concept paper on establishing an energy fund as a window under the EAC Development Fund.

Other matters the meeting discussed included the establishment of the East African Community Power Pool, new and renewable sources of energy and energy conservation and efficiency, the Regional Clean Energy Programme, and the Energy and Environment Partnership programme.

In attendance were Irene Muloni, Uganda's Minister for Energy and Mineral Development and chairperson of the sectoral council, Come Manirakiza, Minister for Energy and Mines (Burundi), Emma Francoise Isumbingabo, Minister of State for Water and Energy (Rwanda), George Simbachawene, Deputy Minister of Energy and Minerals (United Republic of Tanzania) and Davis Chirchir, Cabinet Secretary for Energy & Petroleum (Kenya).

http://allafrica.com/stories/201306250090.html

Obama Unveils $7 Billion ‘Power Africa’ Electricity Plan

That is OUR $7 billion he is spending on another nation. Because of the sequester, he wanted, this country doesn’t have the funds to help vets in need, fund White House tours or Independence Day festivities but is ready to help Africa out! This is the same guy who promised his policies on Cap & Trade would bankrupt coal companies and that under his plan electricity prices would necessarily skyrocket!

This is what you call social and economic justice. What the MARXIST in Chief is doing is raising the lifestyle of lower classes around the world with US taxpayer dollars while taking steps in the US to bring Americans lifestyle down to the rest of the world!
We are broke and this govt as a whole, both sides, just keeps blowing money. The Fed is printing/ digitizing money we don’t have while emperor 0 and the progressives leave the American taxpayers on the hook for their “good deeds”!

This is all part of the emperors promise to fundamentally transform the USA!

Obama Unveils $7 Billion ‘Power Africa’ Electricity Plan

What can Barack Obama’s “Power Africa” program achieve?

Seven billion dollars is a lot of money—except when it goes into infrastructure. Then, $7bn, the sum that the US has committed to spend over the next five years on the Obama administration’s newly-announced Power Africa initiative, does not sound like so much at all. Even considering that Power Africa will roll out in only six countries (Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria and Tanzania), the project’s funding feels slender. Power plants are expensive: in Tanzania, for example, a Sumitomo-built 240 MW gas-fired plant that just secured Japanese financing will cost $414m; in Ghana, the 400 MW Bui hydroelectric plant, now under construction with Chinese financing, costs $622m. Transmission and distribution networks are expensive in their own right.Announced by President Obama himself during his current Africa tour, Power Africa arrives with the pomp of a legacy-building initiative; measured against these industrial costs, it risks appearing tentative and small-bore, like much of the administration’s Africa policy.

That said, all infrastructure investment should be considered a good thing unless proven otherwise—especially in Africa, where the need is so great. At present, continent-wide installed capacity and power generation are roughly equivalent to those of Germany or Canada. Remove South Africa and Egypt, and you are left with about 63 GW supplying 260 billion kWh, scarcely more than Australia or Iran. In this context, if the first phase of Power Africa succeeds in its stated goal of adding 10 GW of generation capacity and connecting 20 million new residential and commercial customers, it will represent a major expansion—albeit not near the doubling of access that, according to the White House fact sheet on Power Africa, is the program’s ultimate aim. Indeed, the same fact sheet soberly estimates that it would cost $300bn to secure universal access to power on the continent by 2030.

Good forecast for Dutch solar panels in Kenya