When Jimoh Abeeb first heard about using compressed natural gas (CNG) to run cars back in 2022, he didn’t think much of the idea. A friend had just adapted his vehicle for CNG and was encouraging him to do the same.
“When he told me that I was going to use up to N450,000 ($282) to convert my car to CNG, I just lost interest,” Abeeb told Climate Home.
But the following year, the Nigerian government removed its fuel subsidy, causing petrol prices to rocket from about N250 ($0.16) a litre in March 2023 to N1,180 ($0.74) in October 2024.
The Abuja-based civil engineer quit his job at the start of 2024 to go freelance but towards the end of the year, he was struggling to afford his usual petrol bill of about N250,000 ($157) a month as he crisscrossed the city to work on different construction sites. “I was using 50 percent of my monthly earnings just to fuel my car,” Abeeb said.
So in October, he spent N800,000 ($502) to convert his vehicle to run on CNG. For just N3000 ($1.88), he can now fill his cylinder which lasts for three days and covers 150-200 kilometres. “It is a game changer,” Abeeb said.
Across Africa, growing numbers of drivers are doing the same. This is evident in the long queues of people waiting in line to refill their CNG cylinders in countries such as Tanzania and Nigeria, as the supply network struggles to keep pace with surging demand.
Leap in CNG use
Mordor Intelligence estimates that the African market for vehicles powered by CNG and LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) is expected to grow 7% a year between 2025 and 2030, with most of the growth in CNG.
Some African governments are supporting this expansion. Nigeria, for example, has launched a Presidential CNG Initiative (Pi-CNG) to “provide succor to the masses” due to the hardship caused by the fuel subsidy removal and to deliver a “cleaner alternative” to petrol and diesel.
In some states, it provides free conversion for commercial drivers and a 50-percent discount for ride-share vehicles. Last July, the country’s state-owned oil company commissioned a dozen CNG stations in major cities, while constructing 35 more across the country.
Over in East Africa, the Tanzanian government has also invested in CNG stations and is partnering with private companies to fast-track infrastructure development. Additional support includes certifying retrofitting workshops and eliminating duties on CNG equipment and conversion kits to make adoption more affordable for businesses and individuals.
Vehicles queue at a CNG filling station in Abuja, Nigeria
Also, in late 2024, the Egyptian government announced the roll-out of a national initiative to convert 1.5 million vehicles to CNG this year. Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly said it would reduce carbon emissions and cut fuel costs for citizens.
The environmental benefits of this African shift to gas for transport are, however, hotly contested. CNG is a fossil fuel – natural gas – where the gas has been compressed so that it can be stored in high-pressure cylinders for use in vehicles. Critics say that its deployment will detract from efforts to run vehicles on clean electricity.
But CNG does produce less exhaust and greenhouse gas emissions than motors running on gasoline or diesel oil.
These qualities make it a viable energy transition fuel for Africa, said Michael David Terungwa, climate advocate at the Global Initiative for Food Security and Ecosystem Preservation (GIFSEP). As well as being “cleaner” than petrol, it is also more affordable, given price increases and poverty levels on the continent, he added.
Still a fossil fuel
But Lorraine Chiponda, Africa coordinator at the Global Gas & Oil Network, argued that adopting CNG for vehicles will lock Africa into using climate-polluting fuel for transport. She said the conversion is “misguided”, adding that fossil fuel firms are trying to “greenwash people into believing that gas is cleaner”.
With governments setting net zero targets – like Nigeria’s for 2060 – they must eventually phase out fossil fuels, she argued, thereby making Africa’s CNG adoption “both short term and short-sighted”. “Seeing African countries adopting technologies that will soon be redundant is not the transition that we are aiming for,” she added.
Africa should instead be negotiating green technology transfer – for the production of batteries, chargers and electric vehicles (EVs) – with richer nations including China, as well as mobilising public and private investment, Chiponda said.
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Interest in EVs is increasing across Africa and countries are preparing to electrify transport, albeit at a slow pace. A report by the global think-tank Energy for Growth Hub found that many African countries are lagging, with only a quarter of those analysed – like Morocco and South Africa – demonstrating high readiness for EV adoption.
But even in those places that are most advanced, the challenges of weak electric grid infrastructure, limited access to finance and low incomes limit EV potential, the report says.
A CNG retrofitting workshop in Port Harcourt, Nigeria (Photo: Vivian Chime)
In Nigeria, “if you have an electric car, where are you going to charge it?” Terungwa asked. “Also if you look at the average cost of an electric vehicle, we cannot afford it,” he said, adding that until these issues are addressed, CNG offers more economic benefits.
What African countries need to transition to electric transport systems is huge investment in EV manufacturing rather than importing goods and equipment, he noted. “Global North companies should set up factories for the production of batteries and the manufacturing or assembling of EVs – that way, it will become cheaper,” he added.
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Energy and industry consultant Elizabeth Obode said drivers are interested in CNG because it is cheaper rather than “cleaner”. The high cost of EVs, coupled with a lack of good roads, charging stations and repair workshops, “is the huge killer” for EV adoption, so that even if African countries wanted to shift entirely to EVs and ban CNG vehicles in the next decade, they would struggle to do it, she added.
Obode said that to encourage EV adoption, African governments need to incentivise the private sector to invest by offering tax breaks and other financial support for battery production, charging stations and EV manufacturing.
She and Terungwa agreed that countries should plan a time-frame to move away from CNG. Obode said governments can work with their net-zero emissions targets “to help determine what is realistic in terms of transitioning away from CNG use”.
(Reporting by Vivian Chime; editing by Joe Lo and Megan Rowling)
The post African governments opt for gas-run cars over EVs to drive down transport emissions appeared first on Climate Home News.
African governments opt for gas-run cars over EVs to drive down transport emissions
SYDNEY, Thursday 30 October 2026 — In response to reports that the Albanese government is set to introduce draft legislation this year that would seek to ban data centres in Australia’s suburbs, Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“These reports are a testament to the growing community opposition to these completely inappropriate AI factories that have sprung up across our suburbs, and Big Tech corporations should take heed — the data centre build-out must not happen without the endorsement of the Australian people.
“But the government can’t simply ship this problem out to regional Australia without addressing the fundamental issues with this extractive new industry.
“We’re already seeing a trend of AI data centre proposals moving to the regions, in areas that are more water-scarce, more environmentally sensitive, and next to sources of fracked and coal seam gas to support their massive BYO gas-fired power plans — a pattern we’ve seen play out in the United States.
“From the Beetaloo Basin in the NT to the Western Downs in Qld, we’re seeing a wave of AI data centre proposals that would see new gas fast-tracked to support their massive energy demand, and threaten to completely derail Australia’s energy transition.
“Just as suburban Australians are asking, “what for?”, regional communities like Berry Springs and Dalby do not want dirty data centres setting up shop with absolutely no benefit to their communities. Greenpeace is calling for a moratorium on AI data centre developments until strict and enforceable safeguards are in place to protect our climate and our communities.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
AI data centre ban in suburbs would not address fundamental issues: Greenpeace
In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.
The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.
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Early speakers’ list suggests few powerful leaders will attend COP31
Just 77 heads of state or government are scheduled to address the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, a third less than the COP28 peak -
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To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.
Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).
The same on the surface
Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.
Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause.
But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.
Global warming is projected to be around 1.3C lower this century than it would have been if the world had not committed to tackle the climate crisis under that accord. Developing countries have a valued space at COPs in which their voices have equal weight in decision-making, unlike in many other international fora. And most importantly, perhaps, there has been a subtle shift, tipping the balance away from negotiating towards doing.
Brazil branded last year’s summit in Belém as the “COP of Implementation”, corralling the sprawling Action Agenda into six axes. This was a bid to impose some structure on the mushrooming efforts between governments, UN agencies, cities, businesses and civil society to set targets and spur faster results on their pet issues, from methane emissions to health and adaptation in conflict zones. COP30 alone saw the launch of 120 “plans to accelerate solutions”.
COP30 roadmaps off the cuff
Meanwhile, as the formal negotiations drew to a close, it was clear that consensus decision-making was evolving into something a little more improvised.
With only around half of all countries on board with the idea of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced his team would put one together over the coming year, along with another on how to meet a global goal to halt deforestation by 2030. Those roadmaps will be launched next week, presented and discussed at COP31, though it’s still unclear whether or how they’ll be incorporated into the formal negotiating agenda.
Some leading policy-makers don’t think that matters too much. Speaking to journalists before the Antalya summit, COP30 CEO Ana Toni and Dutch climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven said “coalitions of the willing” can move ahead without needing consensus from the COPs. This, they said, was evident this year at the first global conference on TAFF, co-chaired by van Veldhoven and attended by 60 countries.
“Consensus or no-consensus in the general COP doesn’t make a difference for the choices I have to make in my country to get my country to phase out fossil fuels,” said the Dutch minister. The Netherlands recently became one of the first to publish a national TAFF plan.
COP31 banks on flagship voluntary initiatives
This thinking has permeated the management and expected outcomes of this year’s COP too. Earlier this year, Türkiye, supported by international energy agencies, floated the idea of a voluntary goal to boost electrification to 35% of the world’s final energy consumption by 2035 – and this is now being touted as one of the main results to be expected from Antalya.
Türkiye is also championing a pledge on AI and climate, while co-host Australia is pushing to ease access to climate finance for least developed countries and small island states.
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None of these needs consensus. But with a political cover decision already in the works, as trailed by the COP presidents, they – and perhaps the fossil fuel roadmap – may find a home in the official text if language acceptable to most can be found, giving them them additional weight.
UNFCCC reform process in the shadows
Formal reform is underway too, if quietly. UN climate chief Simon Stiell is leading a review informed by ongoing consultations with a group of 15 well-respected climate policy experts, three of whom signed the open letter in 2024.
Among them is leading Swedish climate and sustainability scientist Johan Rockström who has strong ideas about how to make COPs function better, including a switch to majority voting. He told the same press briefing nothing stands in the way of this, because the rules of procedure for making decisions at COPs have never been formally agreed.
Still, to get away from the default setting of consensus would require agreement on a new system that may be impossible to achieve given the rise in bullying tactics by fossil fuel heavyweights.
Comment: The UN climate process was built for negotiation – now it must support implementation
The deliberations with the high-level policy gurus, as reflected in a summary of June’s session in Bonn, largely echo what’s already happening organically, calling for stronger partnerships and accountability both in and between the Action Agenda and negotiations. It doesn’t mention voting.
A general overview of the reform exercise says that “improving and optimizing the [UN climate] process over the medium to long term… will be critical to fostering trust, enhancing collaboration, and catalyzing increased ambition”.
In the short term, don’t hold your breath for anything concrete on reform at COP31 but watch for signs in what ends up dominating the headlines from Türkiye.
The post Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines appeared first on Climate Home News.
Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines
With the COP31 climate summit in Turkey looming, all eyes are on China to see what the country will push for in the negotiations.
At COP30 last year, China helped to secure a “dialogue” on climate-related “unilateral trade measures”, as well as a two-year “work programme” concerning climate finance.
The nation also championed south-south cooperation throughout the conference and co-led a summit on methane, alongside Brazil and the UK.
In a recent press conference, China’s environment vice-minister Li Gao noted the need to “uphold multilateralism” and send a “clear political signal” that the global community is united around climate action.