Total Energies' Uganda Oil Project Advances Despite Opposition From Climate Campaigners

 Total Energies is pressing on with it’s $10 billion oil project, in Uganda’s lake Albertine Rift Basin despite rising criticism from climate activists and environmentalists concerned about the oil project's emissions profile and environmental impact.

Environmentalists argue that oil production will shift a large portion of the Uganda’s energy needs toward carbon-emitting fossil fuels making it more difficult for the country to adapt to and mitigate the effects of the climate change reality.

Jobi Rii-5 well pad construction site in Murchison Falls National Park ,Tilenga project area operated by Total Energies in Uganda’s Albertine Graben Region.

 

Total Energies has begun to invest in renewable energy sources such as solar power and undertaking several initiatives aimed at tackling climate change and lowering it’s carbon foot print but activists say the company must do more to fight climate change.

Last year, the company signed a solar project agreement with the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development for possible deployment of 120 MW of solar energy.This is part of the company’s commitment to develop 1GW of renewable energy in Uganda by 2030.

“The solar energy projects are part of Total Energies global multi-energy strategy and climate ambition to reach net zero emissions by 2050,”says Philippe Groueix, the General Manager of Total Energies Uganda.

In addition to renewable energy initiatives, Groueix says that Total Energies is working with government to use its existing infrastructure in Uganda to assist in the implementation of e-mobility infrastructure. The company owns and operates over 200 petrol stations, which it intends to upgrade to include charging stations for electric motorcycles and cars.

  A Resettlement house  constructed by Total Energies  installed with Solar panels in Ngwedo sub-county, Buliisa district 

 

"We plan to not only produce oil, but also to become a key player in renewable energy in Uganda to address the twin challenges of energy poverty and lower emissions," Groueix said.

However, environmentalists remain concerned about the environmental impact of Total Energies oil projects and continue to advocate for their total abandonment in favour of renewable energy ,based on the Paris Agreement on climate, which aims for a 50 per cent cut in emissions by 2030 and net zero by 2050.

“These oil projects,will worsen the impacts of climate change that are already affecting poor people in Uganda and Africa, especially those depending on their lands to live.What is needed is gross reductions of emissions,” said Juliette Renaud senior campaigner at Friends of the Earth France.

Globally, there is growing recognition of the need to transition to more sustainable energy sources and reduce reliance on fossil fuels in order to cut greenhouse gas emissions and stay below 1.5 degrees celsius compared to pre-industrial levels.According to the UN, coal, oil, and gas are by far the most significant contributors to global climate change, accounting for more than 75% of world greenhouse gas emissions and almost 90% of total carbon dioxide emissions. The sun's heat is trapped as more greenhouse gas emissions from dirty fuels blanket the earth.

Total Energies operates the Tilenga and EACOP oil projects. Tilenga covers the remote districts of Buliisa, Hoima, Kikuube, and Nwoya near the Murchison Falls National Park. It consists of six oil fields and is expected to have 400 wells drilled in 31 locations. It will also house an industrial area, support camps, a central processing facility, and feeder pipelines.

The EACOP entails construction of a buried 1,443 km oil pipeline between the town of Kabaale in Uganda and the port of Tanga in Tanzania. The pipeline includes six pumping stations and a heat tracing system.

 

 

                                             A map showing the EACOP route

The pipeline has the capacity of transporting 216,000bopd and is operated by the EACOP Ltd whose shareholders are Total Energies  62%, Uganda National Oil Company 15%, China’s CNOOC 8% and the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation 15%.

A report released in October 2022,by the US-based Climate Accountability Institute CIA states that the EACOP will produce vast amounts of carbon dioxide that will result in 379m tonnes of climate-heating pollution over a period of 25 years, the project’s shelf-life.This is far greater than estimates in the EACOP's environmental impact assessment reports , which CIA notes that accounted for a mere 1.8 percent of the project's emissions and did not take into account downstream emissions such as transporting oil from the pipeline to global markets.The report further notes that in the years of peak oil flow, the associated emissions would be more than double those of Uganda and Tanzania in 2020.

 

A chart showing the full project emissions from construction to end use, 25-yr life source,Climate Accountability Institute

“The scale of TotalEnergies’ crude oil extraction and transport through the EACOP pipeline can not be mitigated by the company’s initiative to develop renewable energy sources and plant trees,”said Rick Heede ,author of the report.

Last year ,the European Union’s Parliament passed a resolution urging the TotalEnergies and government of Uganda to abandon the EACOP project citing climate destruction and human rights concerns.President Yoweri Museveni responded to this resolution with a twitter post where he stated that Europe's failure to meet its climate goals should not be Africa's problem.  

"We will not allow African progress to be the victim of Europe's failure to meet its own climate goals. It is morally bankrupt for Europeans to expect to take Africa's fossil fuels for their own energy production but refuse to countenance African use of those same fuels for theirs," he said

 

A well pad Construction site at Kingfisher Development area operated by China’s CNOOC in Kikuube district

Total Energies has launched the Tilenga Biodiversity Program , an initiative aimed at protecting and conserving biodiversity in and around the Tilenga project area.Implementation of this program will include among others protection of 10,000 hectares of natural forest threatened with deforestation and restoration of 1,000 hectares of tropical forest.

“We are mindful of the sensitive context within which we are undertaking our activities. We have thus made a commitment to ensure that we implement action plans designed to produce net positive impact on biodiversity,”Groueix stated in a statement posted on the Total Energies website.

But activists are not persuaded.Some have formed a campaign called #STOPEACOP .They want government and TotalEnergies to halt oil projects in order to demonstrate its commitment to carbon reduction and energy transition.

“Most fossil projects have between 25-30 year life spans .Getting into this type of investment will definitely undermine any safer alternatives and will lock a country on dirty fuel for decades, and potentially leave them with stranded assets,”says Abiud Onyach the STOPEACOP Communications and Digital associate

Total energies also has an ongoing law suit filed in France , where a number of environmental organizations accuse the company of green washing "misleading consumers about its efforts to combat climate change." 

 “Total Energies says they will leave a "net positive impact on biodiversity" but it is part of their green washing. You cannot have a positive impact on biodiversity with oil wells in a natural protected area, and with a pipeline crossing many fragile ecosystems,” says Renaud.

World Bank figures indicate that only 3% of the world's CO2 emissions originate from Africa, the second-largest and second-most populous continent, which is home to around 20% of the world's population.Africa remains the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, although contributing the least to the climate crisis.

 

Uganda emits only 0.01% of the world's total carbon emissions, and its per-person emissions of CO2 are likewise quite low at 0.13 tonnes.However, analysts predict that once oil production begins, this will change.

 

“EACOP intends to implement a number of carbon footprint reduction strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the operation of the pipeline, these include the complete electrification of pumping stations in Uganda, where grid electricity is primarily produced by hydroelectric plants, and a hybrid power generation solution in Tanzania that involves solar energy from five solar farms that will be installed along the pipeline, ” says Peter Muliisa, the Chief legal and Cooperate affairs for UNOC

 

Uganda’s GHG Emissions Profile

Climate change is a reality in Uganda.The dramatic reduction in the size of ice caps on the Rwenzori mountains and an increase in the frequency and duration of droughts have both been related to changing climate trends. In August 2022, flash flooding in Mbale district killed at least 29 people and displaced over 5,600 others.

 

According to the 2022 Uganda Nationally Determined Contributions report submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Uganda’s GHG emissions have been on the rise from 53.4 MtCO2e in 2005 to 90.1 MtCO2e in 2015 .

The Land Use and Forestry sector accounts for majority of emissions with 59.5% of the total emissions.Agriculture is the second largest, contributing 26.9%, followed by the energy sector 10.7%and waste 2.3%. The energy sector, which includes transport, power generation, and oil and gas exploration and production, accounts for 10%, with the transportation sub-sector accounting for around 66% of energy sector emissions.

This story was produced with support from the Africa Centre for Media Excellence 

In Kibera, Africa's largest slum, an indigenous women's group fights hunger and preserves traditional food

Nubians have a distinct culture that has been upheld by successive generations.They have traditional outfits and traditional cuisines

An indigenous women’s group in Kenya’s kibera slum is undertaking backyard sack gardening helping preserve their traditional foods while tackling food insecurity.

Mazingira is a Nubian women’s group that was formed to empower Nubian women on environmental conservation through sustainable urban farming as well as the importance of food sovereignty-regularly expressed as the right and responsibility of people to have access to healthy and culturally appropriate foods.

According to Malasen Hamida the leader of the group,backyard gardening is enabling Nubian families to remain food secure but also safe guard traditional Nubian foods in their community.

“We hope to solve the interconnected problems of lack of affordable, nutritious food and the difficulties of farming in an over populated slum area while spotlighting the significance of our traditional foods and the cultural values woven into our these foods,” says Hamida.

The Nubian community of Kenya is composed of up to 100,000 descendants of people originally from the Nuba mountains of northern Sudan and Southern Egypt  who were brought to Kenya over 100 years ago to serve in the East African Rifles, a regiment of the British colonial armed forces. 

In 1912, the British government designated some 4,197 acres of land for the Nubians to settle on. They named the land which is located on the outskirts of the city of Nairobi- Kibra meaning land of forest.Kibera is the Africa’s biggest informal settlement and home to approximately 250,000 people across an area of just 2.5 kilometres. Kibera is a densely populated place where most people face hunger and diet quality-related issues.While Covid19 made food insecurity worse, the issue predated the pandemic.

According to Hamida, the Nubian community in particular experiences disproportionately high rates of food insecurity as a byproduct forced relocation to rural areas, a settler-colonial activity which led to degradation of traditional subsistence patterns.Nubians also struggle with insecure land rights as their claim to land in Kibera has been contested by successive governments.

“Nubians have distinct culture that has been upheld by the successive generations .They have traditional cuisines which include vegetables such as okra stew,fava beans,courgettes,spinach ,amaranth and peas,” says Hamida

Mazingira helps the women grow these vegetables by providing seedlings and training the women on how to set up backyard gardens.

 Africa continues to grapple with the worst food crisis in decades buoyed by the Covid pandemic, climate change, Russia’s war in Ukraine and increases in conflict. An estimated 346 million people in Africa are affected by the food crisis, according to recent reports by the Food and Agriculture Organization. 

Indigenous groups who are mostly marginalized experience disproportionately high rates of food insecurity due to migration and relocation to urban lands ,which results into degradation of their traditional subsistence patterns.

 In Uganda, 36-year-old food activist and agronomist Edie Mukiibi leads Slow Food a global network of local communities, founded in 1989 to prevent the disappearance of local food cultures ,traditions and counteract the rise of fast food culture.

The Slow Food movement involves millions of people in over 160 countries, working to ensure that everyone has access to good, clean, and fair food produced with low environmental impact.Slow Food is spreading across Africa, with over 3,600 kitchen gardens since 2011.

Students of Kisowera secondary shool in Uganda pose next to one of the slow food gardens which is part of the Slow Food Uganda program

“Our local food species are dissapearing and being replaced by single-use hybrid seeds controlled by multinational corporations.Widespread pesticide use is causing many local species to become extinct .Food related health diseases are spreading.Our food system is our primary responsibility.The only way to reform the food system, is to promote indigenous food systems through agroecology which is sustainable, socially equitable agriculture and this is what the slow food movement is about,” says Mukiibi.

According to the International Food Policy Research Institute’s global food policy report 2023, an estimated 20% of people in Sub-Saharan Africa that is some 282 million people suffer food insecurity and malnutrition, more than double the share of any other region.

“Indigenous food species should be promoted because they are more resistant to the vagaries of climate change like drought, more nutritious, healthier and resistant to pests and diseases unlike most genetically modified crops,” says Jeniffer Anena an agronomist from the Water Governance Institute Uganda.

 

 

 

Ugandan company takes the frontline in the fight against deforestation and emissions.

Seeing the wood for the trees in Uganda

Ugandan social enterprise Eco Fuel Africa (EFA) has come up with an innovative method for turning agricultural waste into clean biomass energy, leading the way on how to cope with emissions and rampant deforestation from wood fuel usage in this agriculturally dependent East African nation.

 EFA uses coffee husks, corn cobs, ground nut shells, sugarcane waste, and rice husks to make clean and affordable briquettes. The briquettes are a carbon-neutral cooking fuel that functions the same as wood fuel, but is highly efficient, cleaner, smokeless, and burns longer. They address one of the largest causes of emissions and deforestation, while also improving household health in Uganda.

“I got the idea of making briquettes when I visited my home village in rural western Uganda and found that my sister had missed school because she had to walk long distances to collect firewood,” says Moses Sanga, the director of EFA. “The trees that surrounded our home were gone, and she had to walk longer distances to gather firewood. I had to find a solution.” But this was not the only thing Sanga noticed in his hometown. “There was plenty of litter everywhere,” he says. “Uganda is primarily agricultural, but farm waste is just abandoned.” It was then that Sanga began researching and learning everything he could about turning organic agricultural waste into fuel.

Armed with a bachelor’s degree in finance and with the help of engineering students from Makerere, Uganda’s leading university, he embarked on a mission to design kilns and briquetting machines using oil drums. This led to the founding of EFA in April 2010.

How it happens

The locally-made kilns carbonise agricultural waste to create char. The briquetting machines use high pressures to mould loose char into compact and solid fuel briquettes that can be used for cooking, boiling water, or heating rooms. EFA provides training to marginalized rural farmers on how to turn their agricultural waste into char.

After the training, they are offered a chance to take home a kiln on a lease-to-own basis. “We are currently working with 3,500 farmers who use our kilns,” says Sanga. “About 80% of the produced char is sold directly to EFA and each farmer earns at least $30 (€26.8) per month in additional income. 
EFA then presses the char into cleanburning fuel briquettes.” The farmers are also trained on how to mix the biochar with local organic nutrients to make fertiliser, which they then put in their gardens. This has helped them increase their food harvests by more than 50% ensuring food security and reduced malnutrition. EFA also works with a network of female micro retailers that sell the briquettes to end-user customers. Selected women are trained for three days and at the end of the training, EFA builds each of them a kiosk to use as a retail shop to sell briquettes in their local communities. Already, EFA has created a network of 2,000 female retailers in Uganda. Each of these women retailers earns at least $152 per month. “By using agricultural waste, we are creating clean, affordable and accessible energy, helping to create socially and economically thriving communities,” says Sanga.

EFA currently provides fuel for more than 115,000 Ugandan families and is responsible for saving 500,000 acres of forests in averted deforestation. It also sells its products to institutions like schools, hospitals, hotels, and restaurants. “Our goal is to provide clean cooking fuel to every energy-poor household in Uganda by 2020 and a 150,000 tonne reduction in CO2 emissionsper year,” Sanga concludes. Another company helping Ugandans embrace clean energy is Pamoja Cleantech, also specialising in waste-toenergy projects. It converts waste products into high energy density fuel pellets for industrial and domestic use. The firm also makes energy-efficient cooking stoves and operates microgrids powered by biomass fuels for direct electricity distribution in rural areas.

Government support

The government of Uganda has long regarded biomass energy as a viable option for clean energy generation. Uganda’s Renewable Energy Policy was put in place to increase the share of renewable energy in the energy mix from the current 4% to 61% of the total energy consumption by 2017. The policy recognises biomass as a significant source of modern, clean forms of energy with potential to contribute to Uganda’s energy sector development. The government has also put in place a legal and institutional framework to attract private investments in development of modern energy forms. This includes the introduction of specific tax regimes that favour modern energy, such as preferential tax treatment and tax exemption. According to statistics from the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development, Uganda’s energy consumption matrix currently stands at 90% biomass, 7% petroleum products, and 2% electricity produced from hydro and thermal power plants. The majority of the population relies on wood based fuels in forms of firewood and charcoal as a main source of energy for cooking. This has led to massive environmental degradation and health hazards among households. According to the Uganda Demographic Health Survey (2006), cooking with wood fuel is a major cause of respiratory illnesses such as lung cancer among Ugandans, given that it emits a lot of smoke and affects the quality of air in a household. Worse still, using biomass hugely depends on traditional technologies such as three-stone fireplaces and charcoal stoves that are quite inefficient in their fuel utilisation, leading to excessive use and demand for firewood.

According to Godfrey Ndawula, the Commissioner of Renewable Energy in the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development, 18 million tonnes of firewood is burned every year, resulting in deforestation on a massive scale. “EFA will help us save our forests and avert the 13,000 reported premature deaths resulting from indoor air pollution,” he says.

‘Need to raise awareness’

Despite its important economic and social role, uptake of modern biomass energy is still low in Uganda. According to a Ministry of Energy report on Uganda’s biomass energy situation, the country’s main challenge is not the supply of biomass but rather lack of awareness among the masses on modern forms biomass energy and lack of the appropriate technologies. Therefore, there is a need for intensive promotion and marketing both in urban and rural areas to increase uptake of modern biomass energy alternatives. “We need to raise awareness of the new improved biomass energy and environmentally-friendly cook stoves to reduce firewood consumption and global emissions,” Ndawula says. Biomass energy is also yet to receive recognition and prioritisation in terms of funding from government compared to other renewables such as hydro energy, which impedes its development. Uganda typically generates almost half of its modern energy output from hydropower dams along the River Nile. 
The micro-scale social enterprises that form the bulk of investment in the biomass energy subsector face a number of challenges, including maintaining appropriate financial and human resources to sustain operations, and cannot afford market development costs. Traditional financing through commercial banks or commercial lending institutions has not been a viable option for many of these enterprises. The inability to predict monthly sales, the lack of collateral and credit history, and the large informal economy mean that commercial banks hesitate to provide loans to businesses.
 However, the Ugandan government has established the Uganda Energy Credit Capitalization Company (UECCC) to assist micro-project developers interested in doing business in the biomass energy subsector in Uganda in attaining financial closure. Social enterprises are also looking to take advantage of the green climate fund and carbon financing in order to acquire funds and engage in product marketing and promotion, to help rural communities. “If biomass waste-to-energy projects are scaled up, it could allow rural Ugandans to embrace cleaner cooking methods that protect the environment,” says Ronald Kaggwa, an environmental economist at the Uganda National Environmental Management Authority. He adds: “If the country could turn more of its waste into energy, it would also bring it closer to its goals of switching to greener energy sources and reducing deforestation.”

According to Lighting Africa, a World Bank group programme to increase access to clean sources of energy, Africa has a large off-grid population. More than 590 million people live with no connection to their national electricity grid, exposing them to hazardous options. This is an indicator that biomass will continuously play an important role in Africa’s energy sector. Investment in efficient, clean and less polluting modern biomass energy should be a priority if Africa’s emissions are to be curbed and forest cover conserved.

dianakarakire@gamil.comx