Weeks before African leaders travelled to Nairobi for the continent’s first climate summit in September, climate justice groups wrote to Kenyan president William Ruto accusing consultancy firm McKinsey of “undue influence” on the summit’s agenda.
The American firm had offered Ruto support in running the summit during a meeting with him and US ambassador to Kenya Meg Whitman in late May, several sources told Climate Home News.
A few days later, in early June, McKinsey wrote the concept note, which set the summit’s structure, and later drafted a paper to frame its outcome.
“For a few weeks, it was their way or the highway,” a source close to the summit’s organisation told Climate Home.
At the time, the Kenyan government said civil society accusations that Mckinsey had captured the summit were “extremely far from the truth”. McKinsey said the claims were “inaccurate”.
But the backlash publicly exposed the influence McKinsey wields on Africa’s climate agenda – a position it would prefer to keep discreet.
Leaked documents
Now, Climate Home has obtained leaked documents and interviewed multiple sources, who have asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the issue.
They show how McKinsey dominates an ecosystem pushing carbon markets in Africa and processes designed to help governments develop long-term energy plans.
This has been facilitated by McKinsey’s deep-rooted ties with Sustainable Energy For All (SEforAll), which is responsible for delivering on a 2030 sustainable development goal for everyone to have access to affordable, reliable and sustainable energy; and the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP), which works to accelerate the energy transition.
Climate Home’s investigation reveals that SEforAll staff complained of CEO Damilola Ogunbiyi’s “preferential treatment” of McKinsey in a whistleblower report in 2020.
That year, SEforAll brought in the firm to facilitate a leadership retreat and develop the organisation’s business plan. At the time, SEforAll’s top management dismissed the allegation.
Three years on, documents show how McKinsey has turned initial pro-bono work into lucrative contracts.
A source close to SEforAll told Climate Home that McKinsey encountered hardly any competition and enjoyed “almost unrestricted access to the highest levels of the UN and national governments”.
An SEforAll spokesperson said: “All SEforALL processes are followed at all times in the selection and engagement of any advisory services,” adding that any idea to the contrary was “baseless”.
“Come to take over”
African government insiders say McKinsey’s domination is problematic because it is pushing a top-down tunnel vision and non-Afro-centric view of how to address the continent’s climate and development challenges, which, if unquestioned, could constrain its ambition.
“The role of McKinsey is highly problematic because they don’t come in a capacity support role, they come to take over,” said one source.
There is a role for consultants to help governments and international organisations plug skill and knowledge gaps.
But consultancies should advise “from the sidelines in a transparent way… rather than be allowed to run the show from the centre,” economist Mariana Mazzucato and researcher Rosie Collington write in their book about the consulting industry The Big Con.
Michael Marchant is head of investigations at Open Secrets, an NGO which advocates for private sector accountability and investigated McKinsey’s work in South Africa.
He told Climate Home that despite receiving large amounts of public money, large consultancy firms like McKinsey “operate in secrecy and with almost no public accountability”.
Heart of climate governance
Yet, allowed in by governments, McKinsey has found a place at the heart of critical climate governance processes. France24 recently reported that McKinsey is pushing fossil fuel interests in its advisor role to the UAE, which will preside over the Cop28 climate talks in Dubai starting next week.
The company’s client list includes some of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies, including Saudi Aramco, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell, according to court filings in the US, where McKinsey is being sued alongside Big Oil. McKinsey rejects the accusations.
In more recent years, McKinsey has advised polluters, including oil and gas companies, on how to use the carbon market to offset their emissions or raise revenue. A 2022 internal McKinsey document, seen by Climate Home, names Chevron and BP among clients of its carbon market business line.
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In Africa, the consultancy is behind a push to significantly grow the continent’s carbon offset offering, working closely with both GEAPP and SEforAll.
In 2021, McKinsey supported the Rockefeller Foundation to design and establish GEAPP, according to a McKinsey document seen by Climate Home. The following year, GEAPP asked SEforAll to hire McKinsey to develop the African Carbon Market Initiative for $1.5 million as part of its grant to the organisation, Climate Home understands.
Launched at Cop27 in Egypt, the initiative aims to scale carbon markets on the continent 19-fold by 2030.
While GEAPP and SEforAll publicly sponsored the initiative, McKinsey described its role in a sustainability report as “shaping and refining the initiative’s ambition” and “developing its strategy”. McKinsey’s concept note for the Africa Climate Summit elevated carbon markets to a core theme.
President Ruto appointed Joseph Ng’ang’a, GEAPP’s vice president of Africa, CEO of the summit.
President William Ruto has appointed Mr Joseph Ng’ang’a, Vice President of Africa at the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP, as Chief Executive Officer of the inaugural Africa Climate Summit, which will take place in Nairobi from 4- 6 September 2023.… pic.twitter.com/eKtjGri5s8
— Kenyan Wallstreet (@kenyanwalstreet) June 12, 2023
Climate campaigners denounced the focus on carbon markets as “a dangerous distraction” from African climate priorities and accused McKinsey of working to protect the interests of its western corporate clients.
McKinsey has repeatedly dismissed these allegations, arguing there is no way to deliver emissions reductions without working with high-emitting industries and that it has rigorous policies to manage conflict of interests.
A spokesperson for the company said “sustainability is a mission-critical priority for McKinsey”, which has “committed to rapidly scale this work to help clients in all industries reach net zero by 2050”.
A GEAPP spokesperson said it was established “to unite a diverse range of partners” to rapidly facilitate a global shift towards renewable energy. In doing so, it “leverages a spectrum of… experts and consultants”.
A close relationship
McKinsey’s rapidly growing climate work in Africa has been facilitated by a close relationship between its African Sustainability Practice lead Adam Kendall and SEforAll’s CEO Ogunbiyi, who also serves as a UN special representative for sustainable energy.
Before joining SEforAll, Ogunbiyi worked closely with Kendall, who led McKinsey’s natural gas practice in Lagos, Nigeria. He helped build the Nigerian vice president’s advisory power team and worked with the Rural Electrification Agency, which Ogunbiyi both headed.
A McKinsey document describing its previous work for SEforAll said the firm “provided strategic support to Ms. Ogunbiyi during her transition” into her new CEO role, starting in January 2020.
Weeks later, Kendall was invited to co-facilitate an SEforAll leadership retreat in London and subsequently developed the organisation’s 2021-2023 business plan, effectively for free.
Thanks @Shell for hosting our Leadership Team meeting and @RockyMtnInst and @McKinsey for facilitating #SEforALL 3.0 strategy in making. pic.twitter.com/BPue9Fhyez
— Sustainable Energy for All | #SDG7BeBold (@SEforALLorg) January 24, 2020
The same year, McKinsey seconded employee Ugo Nwadiani to SEforAll. An SEforAll recruitment note shows he was directly appointed Ogunbiyi’s special assistant.
Whistleblower report
An anonymous complaint prepared by several SEforAll staff raised concerns about these developments.
A source said the complaint was backed widely among employees and sent to the organisation’s whistleblowing account and to one of its major funders.
It described “a culture of fear” at SEforAll, and accused Ogunbiyi’s leadership of being “marked by favouritism”, including towards McKinsey.
During the business planning process, McKinsey “had direct access to SEforALL financial information and organizational systems and processes” putting the company “in a privileged position” to apply for any future tender, it said.
It raised concerns that McKinsey had been the only firm asked to comment on terms of reference for work to update Nigeria’s integrated energy plan which SEforAll was seeking to contract out. McKinsey had worked with the Nigerian government on the first version of the plan the previous year. It was eventually hired for the job.
Responding to the complaint at the time, SEforAll’s management said it had strengthened procurement oversight and put in place mechanisms to help “create a climate of trust”.
Since then, SEforAll has hired McKinsey to work on at least three of its five core initiatives in Africa: developing energy transition plans, scaling up the carbon market, and boosting renewable energy manufacturing capabilities.
Francesco Starace, chair of SEforAll’s governance board, said the board was satisfied with the outcome of a review process following the complaint. “We are confident with the integrity of the SEforALL procurement process and the leadership demonstrated by the CEO and the executive management team,” he said.
McKinsey’s work in Nigeria
McKinsey’s extensive work for SEforAll in the early days of Ogunbiyi’s leadership set it up for further opportunities.
In Nigeria, McKinsey provided the modelling which underpins the country’s energy transition plan pro bono, working with SEforAll and the former government. A new government, which came into office in May, has warned that it will need a lot more investment to deliver
Chukwumerije Okereke, a Nigerian climate governance expert, said the exercise was a “cautionary tale”. The use of McKinsey-owned tools prevented robust scrutiny of the assumptions in the model, he told Climate Home. And the “closed door” process and lack of consultation may partly explain diminished political momentum to implement it, he added.
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More recently, SEforAll and Kendall’s McKinsey team have sought funding to develop energy transition plans in up to ten developing countries, according to a 2021 joint concept note for funders, obtained by Climate Home.
With support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the pair has developed a plan for Ghana, and is working to do the same in Kenya and Barbados using a joint open-source model. In Kenya, draft plans, seen by Climate Home, would increase gas power capacity in the 2040s.
SEforAll told Climate Home these plans were procured through an open and transparent process, rigorously peer reviewed and subject to civil society consultations.
For Okereke, international consultants can bring quality and gravitas to energy planning. “But it’s about the way they do it.”
The post Leaks reveal how McKinsey drives African climate agenda appeared first on Climate Home News.
Claver Gatete is Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa. Jason Veysey is Energy Modeling Program Director and Senior Scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute. Lisa Sachs is Director of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment at Columbia University.
The case for global energy transition has rarely been clearer. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year exposed the cost of unplanned, fossil-dependent systems, while the falling cost of renewables, the rising penetration of electric vehicles, and the growing value of demand flexibility have made the direction of travel obvious. The benefits of a clean, secure, integrated system are no longer in dispute. What remains unclear is how to build it.
Countries around the world have called for faster renewable energy deployment and alternative energy arrangements. A secure, affordable, resilient, decarbonised system requires specific investments in specific places in a specific sequence, optimised across sectors and borders. But very few governments have the analytical foundation to translate those imperatives into investment.
The two instruments that are supposed to determine investment priorities for decarbonisation – Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and country platforms – cannot answer the most basic question facing any country undertaking an energy transition: what should the energy system look like?
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To close this gap, every country needs a bankable, economy-wide optimisation model for its energy system. A model is not a plan, but it can help answer the critical question of what the future energy system should look like. It shows how optimal scenarios vary as assumptions and policies are adjusted, calculates investment requirements and sequencing, and quantifies how system costs are affected by assumptions, policies, and exogenous variables like trade policy and financing terms.
Tool for efficient investment
Optimisation is a simplified way of simulating an energy system, but it can be an extremely powerful tool for moving energy planning from reactive (how do we manage the disparate actions in the energy system?) to intentional (what energy system underpins our national objectives?). A model can show how optimal scenarios vary as assumptions and policies are adjusted, and how investment requirements are quantified and sequenced.
Optimisation models can treat the energy system and the sectors it serves as an integrated whole, optimising across sectors and projects in ways that can be mutually reinforcing. If considered independently, growth in industrial demand, transport electrification, and digital infrastructure can add stress to the energy system. But an optimised plan can arrange these and other changes in an efficient, synergistic way.
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New load can be added where low-cost power is available; industrial customers can ensure the viability of investments in energy supply; electric vehicle charging policy can smooth load curves and reduce costs for all consumers.
Additionally, optimisation modeling can also change the financeability of investments. Taken alone, each project faces uncertainty about the rest of the system, which raises the cost of capital and causes projects to stall or unwind after contracts are signed. A coherent, optimised plan makes visible the coordination that private capital would otherwise have to bet on: identified offtake, sequenced and committed transmission, contracted power supply, and so on.
What COP31 and COP32 should do
The upcoming COPs in Turkey and Ethiopia can shift the center of gravity of international climate cooperation from fragmented commitments to planning. Three moves are urgently needed.
First, optimised, economy-wide, long-term energy system planning must be the foundation on which any meaningful NDC, country platform, or finance commitment rests. NDCs are typically drafted by environment or single-line ministries, with limited cross-sectoral input from ministries of energy, finance, and planning. They contain targets, derived from sectoral strategies or national commitments, not from an analytically grounded picture of what the energy system should look like and what investments would make it work. Country platforms are generally a portfolio of investments assembled from existing project pipelines, rather than derived from a system-level analysis of what an optimised, decarbonised energy system would require.
Second, recognise regions as a key planning unit. Modern integrated energy systems are inherently regional. Renewable endowments are unevenly distributed; balancing variable supply across borders lowers aggregate cost, reduces redundant backup capacity, and unlocks economies of scale no individual nation can achieve. Many energy investments in Southeast Asia, East Africa, Southern Africa and Central Asia may only be financeable in a regional context. Assessing domestic infrastructure without regional optimisation perpetuates the perception that decarbonisation is more expensive than it is.
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Third, finance the planning capacity. A coordinated commitment by multilateral development banks, bilateral donors, and philanthropic partners to help every region and its constituent countries develop and maintain their own modelling capability, with open-source tools and regional analytical hubs, would close the most consequential gap in the current architecture. The cost is small relative to current spending on country platforms, failed project preparation, and misallocated infrastructure investment.
This includes supporting regional institutions such as the ASEAN Centre for Energy, the African Energy Commission, regional power pools, and the Latin American and Caribbean Energy Organization to determine what optimised regional systems require. Country-by-country pledging, repeated at every COP, will not deliver what meaningfully integrated systems can.
The 2026 energy crisis made the cost of unplanned, fossil-dependent systems newly visible. That window of clarity will close. The international community should seize the moment to build the planning foundation that has been missing for thirty years, rather than commissioning another round of NDCs or pledges, striving for outcomes neither was designed to deliver.
The post Every country needs a model to help optimise its energy transition appeared first on Climate Home News.
Every country needs a model to help optimise its energy transition
The world is currently experiencing what is expected to become the strongest El Niño on record – dubbed a “super El Niño” by many.
El Niño is the warm phase of a recurring climate pattern in the tropical Pacific that releases heat from the ocean into the atmosphere.
This temporarily raises global temperatures and reshapes rainfall and extreme weather around the world – impacting the lives of billions of people.
The current El Niño event began in June and is expected to last into 2027.
El Niño is part of a wider climate pattern called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle.
The ENSO cycle also has a cool phase, known as La Niña, as well as a “neutral” phase. El Niño and La Niña events typically last between nine and 12 months, but can go on longer.
Below, Carbon Brief explains how the ENSO cycle works, its impacts on extreme weather and global temperatures and why this El Niño event is projected to be the most intense since records began.
The post Explainer: How the ‘super El Niño’ will reshape the world’s weather appeared first on Carbon Brief.
https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/el-nino-explainer/index.html
The second-largest reservoir in the US reached a record-low water height on Saturday – just days after the country’s largest reservoir broke its own record.
Both Lake Mead and Lake Powell are located on the Colorado River.
They provide water for populations across seven US states in the south-western US, with around 40 million people getting some or all of their municipal water from the Colorado River.
The river also provides water for around 5.5m acres (22,258 square kilometres) of farmland across Colorado, Arizona, California and the other states in the river basin.
Experts tell Carbon Brief that climate change, population growth and over-consumption are all contributing to the current record-low levels of the reservoirs.
Record lows
At full capacity, Lakes Mead and Powell can hold a combined 68 cubic kilometres of water – enough to supply all household consumption in the contiguous US for nearly 1.5 years. However, the water level in both reservoirs has been declining for decades.
The chart below shows the water level of Lake Mead, in metres above mean sea level. The reservoir, which began to fill in 1935 following the construction of the Hoover Dam, has a “full pool” maximum capacity of 347.60 metres. The water level in Lake Mead reached a record low of 317.11 metres on 7 August.
The following chart shows the water level of Lake Powell, in metres above mean sea level. Lake Powell’s full-pool level is 1,127.76 metres.
While the reservoir reached its maximum capacity several times in the 1980s, it has not done so since. On 15 August, the water level in Lake Powell was recorded at a new record-low of 1,072.87 metres.
Both reservoirs have continued to decline in the days since breaking their respective records. The downward trend will largely continue in both lakes until next spring, when the snowpack in the mountains of the Upper Colorado River Basin begins to melt, says Dr Jack Schmidt, a senior research scientist at Utah State University’s Center for Colorado River Studies. He tells Carbon Brief:
“The big dilemma of the moment is that we’re only in the middle of August, and we have no assurance of what the coming winter will be. The only thing we can be sure of is that we will be depleting overall total basin reservoir storage from now until, roughly, early April.”
Compounding factors
The record lows across the two reservoirs are the result of several compounding factors, experts tell Carbon Brief.
Since the turn of the 20th century, the amount of water flowing along the Upper Colorado River has declined by about 20%. Research suggests that half of this decline can be attributed to human-induced climate change.
Most of the river’s streamflow comes from the snowpack of the Upper Colorado River Basin, which stretches across five western US states but is primarily located in Colorado and Utah.
This region has been gripped by a historic “megadrought” for more than a quarter of a century. Nearly half of the megadrought’s intensity over 2000-18 is attributable to climate change, according to a 2020 study.
At the same time, the increasing population in the US south-west has put added pressure on the Colorado River’s water supply. The number of people obtaining some or all of their water from the Colorado system has grown by 15 million (around 60%) since 1992.
Schmidt tells Carbon Brief:
“There’s an ultimate cause of the present water crisis, and there’s a proximate cause. The ultimate cause is a warming climate, a warming planet and a pretty clear correlation between warming conditions and decreased runoff in the Colorado River Basin.
“The proximate cause is that in this messy democratic republic of ours, big policy decisions that match the variability of the climate occur painfully slowly – with intense political negotiations – and only incrementally.”
On 31 July, the US Bureau of Reclamation, which manages water resources in the western US, released an environmental impact statement on its proposed post-2026 strategy for managing Lakes Powell and Mead. The strategy itself has not been released yet.
Schmidt notes that the statement does appear to give the Bureau flexibility to “respond to crisis” by reducing the delivery of water to several states. However, he adds:
“They acknowledge it won’t work if we just stay critically dry, and of course every climate model for the 21st century, especially with a continually warming planet, says that that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
The post Analysis: The two largest reservoirs in the US have hit record-low levels appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: The two largest reservoirs in the US have hit record-low levels
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