Zimbabwe is planning to ramp up its use of coal and gas to meet its energy needs after the worst drought in decades dried out the water supply to the hydropower plant, which powers the country.

As a result, the Southern African nation is failing to meet its power demand, the government wrote in a new climate plan to cut emissions by 2035 submitted to the UN earlier this month.

The 1,050 MW Kariba South hydropower plant, which accounts for around 40% of Zimbabwe’s installed electricity generation capacity, is operating at 185 MW because of water shortages, it said in its submission.

To reduce the power deficit, the government said it “intends to refurbish the old generating units at the coal-powered Hwange Power Station in 2025… raise its efficiency to around 40% and increase the capacity by 400 MW”. It also plans to build a new 720 MW coal plant.

Zimbabwe’s energy emissions are expected to increase sharply to a peak in 2026 before starting to decrease as gas power ramps up to replace coal and wind and solar energy projects are deployed, according to the plan. Overall, the government says it aims to reduce emissions by at least 40% per capita by 2035 compared to a business-as-usual scenario.

‘Victim of circumstance’

Zimbabwe is “a victim of circumstance”, Kuda Manjonjo, just transition associate at advocacy group Power Shift Africa, told Climate Home News. Like other African countries, Zimbabwe is squeezed “in a very tight spot between providing energy but at the same time…not getting the financing that they need to actually transition” to clean energy sources, Manjonjo said.

With little resilience against climate-related shocks, Zimbabwe has been experiencing severe drought conditions – attributed to the El Niño weather pattern – in recent years, causing higher temperatures, a notable reduction in rainfall and effectively drying out lakes used for electricity generation in the country.

At its worse two years ago, “we were going through 23 hours a day of no electricity,” explained Manjonjo, who lives in the Hwange area in northwestern Zimbabwe. “It would be very hard for any government in the world to justify not producing coal, which is there with the [power] plants, when people do not have electricity.”

Neighbouring Zambia, which is also affected by drought and reduced hydropower capacity, is similarly “doubling-down on coal” to provide electricity to its people.

Manjonjo said this return to coal reflects a global failure to deliver just energy transitions in developing countries at a time when the US – the world’s largest historic emitter – is pulling back from its climate finance commitments and is making a dash to extract more fossil fuels.

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This week, Bloomberg reported that almost all projects under a major US initiative to increase electricity access in Sub-Saharan Africa, known as Power Africa, are being terminated.

At the COP28 climate talks in 2023, countries committed to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030 and transition away from fossil fuels, with the world’s biggest emitters expected to do so faster than poorer nations like Zimbabwe.

Perpetuating a vicious cycle

Zimbabwe was the only African country to submit its 2035 climate plan, also known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), on time to meet a UN deadline of February 10.

But African climate analysts say it could give a flavour of what is to come.

Zimbabwe’s plans is both “disheartening” and “disappointing”, said Manjonjo. But it is “a symptom” of a bigger trend in which African countries are likely to be more “blatant” about relying on fossil fuels to meet their power needs than in previous rounds of UN climate plans, he added.

Can a different approach to risk accelerate the energy transition in the Global South?

At the Mission 300 energy summit in Tanzania in January, African leaders adopted a joint statement, citing gas as one of the energy sources needed to unlock “Africa’s full energy potential”.

Green groups on the continent part of the Don’t Gas Africa campaign described the statement as “ironical”, adding that despite renewable energy’s exponential growth globally, “the Mission 300 pledge seems to entrap Africans in a fossil gas-based system”.

This “vicious cycle” of climate shocks leading to more fossil fuel use, which in turn worsens climate impacts is inevitable without more climate finance reaching developing countries, said Daniel Sithole, director of the Zimbabwe-based Green Shango Environment Trust.

Without necessary support, “short-term economic advantages of fossil fuels will outweigh the long-term benefits of renewable energy” for most African countries, Sithole told Climate Home. Unless there is a concerted global effort to provide transition financing tailored to the unique contexts of African nations, the pursuit of fossil fuels will continue to provide a “short-term solution to immediate economic challenges”, he added.

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Zimbabwe plans to expand coal use to address drought-induced blackouts