10 October 2026 10:21 pm
Soon, there will be so much electricity from renewables

Soon, there will be so much electricity from renewables

Jul 22, 2026

Aerial view of solar panels in a vast solar farm under bright sunlight. by K via Pexels

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Soon, there will be so much electricity you might be paid to use it

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By Amin Al-Habaibeh, Nottingham Trent University

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Imagine a perfect summer weekend day: a cloudless blue sky with a gentle breeze. Solar panels are at full capacity, wind turbines are turning offshore – and many people are out and about, in gardens or parks. Electricity supply is high, but demand is low.

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Simon Collins / shutterstock

 

 

Electricity systems must balance supply and demand in real time. In the above scenario, when renewables are producing lots of electricity but there isn’t much demand, energy companies may need to curtail output – disconnecting their turbines or panels from the grid, and essentially wasting clean energy that could have been generated. Hours later, when demand rises, that energy is no longer available.

In the UK, wind farms are already being paid to switch off on days when supply outstrips demand. Similar curtailment of renewable generation already happens regularly in places with lots of solar power such as California, Spain or Australia. As renewable energy continues to grow – and in the UK’s case, as cheap plug-in solar panels become available – this could happen a lot more often.

For example, April 22 2026 was a sunny day in the UK, with moderate wind. Solar generation reduced the demand for gas-generated electricity to almost zero. Had the wind speed been any higher, there could have been more electricity generation than demand.

The limits of supply and storage

One option would be to control the supply to try and match demand. When electricity mostly came from fossil fuels, this was easy enough – power plants would just burn less coal or gas. But you can’t control the weather, and you certainly can’t keep sunlight in a pile of fuel to use later. The electricity it generates is either used, stored or lost.

Another option would be to simply store that excess electricity until it’s needed. There are lots of approaches available, ranging from huge battery banks to pumped-storage hydro schemes that store energy by pumping water uphill before generating electricity when needed. Millions of electric car batteries could even become part of the grid.

But all these technologies remain expensive and limited in capacity. Not all surplus power can be saved for later.

Without other solutions, this mismatch can increase reliance on fossil fuels at times of high demand. The UK’s National Energy System Operator (Neso) recently warned it will need to use “more tools, more often” to keep the grid stable.

A simpler solution

A third option is to shift when people use electricity.

The use of renewable energy has made balancing the grid depend not just on supply – weather conditions – but on user behaviour. If people consume electricity when renewable energy is available, there would be less need for other sources of energy or for big investments in energy storage. That’s why shifting electricity demand is one of the simplest and cheapest ways to balance the grid.

Smart meters are already able to vary electricity prices throughout the day. In our summer weekend scenario, when electricity is cheap and plentiful but demand is minimal, a smart meter might advise you that prices have gone right down – or even turned negative – creating an incentive to heat water, wash clothes or charge electric cars. In effect, households would be paid to absorb excess renewable energy.

This would encourage people to install smart meters and change when they use electricity. It should be particularly useful for low-income households. And at the national level such payments can be cheaper overall than investments in energy storage or curtailing wind or solar farms and unleashing them later.

Paying people to use electricity may sound odd, but it represents the cost of keeping the system balanced.The Conversation

Amin Al-Habaibeh, Professor of Intelligent Engineering Systems, Nottingham Trent University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Green Colonialism and Africa’s Quest for Energy Equity

Green Colonialism and Africa’s Quest for Energy Equity

Jul 15, 2026

A solar-powered street light set against vibrant green conifer trees, symbolising sustainable energy.  by finix photographer via Pexels

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Green colonialism and Africa’s renewable energy push: pathways to sustainable green technology partnerships

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By implementing rights-based policy safeguards, African nations could unlock sustainable green technology partnerships that expand access to clean and reliable energy and create green jobs.

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By Damilola S. Olawuyi

Published on Jul 14, 2026 – APRI

Summary

  • Endowed with abundant natural resources and a growing youth population, Africa has the potential to become the global hub for solar, wind and green hydrogen investments.

  • With about 600 million Africans still lacking access to electricity, the continent offers significant investment opportunities in renewable energy technologies and solutions that deliver clean, reliable energy to underserved communities, unlocking green jobs and other economic opportunities.

  • Despite the prospects of emerging green technology partnerships, significant concerns arise regarding their design and implementation.

  • While emerging green technology partnerships may offer African nations short-term financing and technology access, in the long term, they risk entrenching green colonialism, i.e., the production of clean energy in a manner that exploits Africa’s natural resources, prioritises the needs of other world regions and undermines social, environmental and human rights safeguards, especially in Indigenous communities.

  • Unclear domestic legal frameworks on green investments, a lack of human rights safeguards, inadequate negotiation capacity and a lack of supportive policies on local content and clean technology entrepreneurship risk re-entrenching green colonialism, technology dependence and unsustainable debt accumulation, and could hinder local innovators from playing active roles in shaping Africa’s green energy future.

  • To catalyse just, inclusive and sustainable green technology partnerships, African nations must: embed robust human rights due diligence requirements within green technology agreements in alignment with international best practices; develop national strategies and safeguards on debt sustainability; prioritise local content initiatives aimed at addressing barriers to homegrown clean technology entrepreneurship; and invest in training and capacity development programmes and resources to enhance the institutional capacity of relevant agencies and ministries involved in the negotiation and implementation of green technology partnership arrangements.

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Introduction

Endowed with abundant sunshine, wind and hydropower resources, Africa has significant potential to become the next global hub for solar, wind and green hydrogen investments, offering a path to both energy and economic diversification. In 2015, the 24th Ordinary Assembly of the Heads of State and Government of the African Union adopted Agenda 2063, a transformational plan aimed at tapping this potential and advancing economic, social and environmental development in Africa by 2063. One of the key priority areas of the agenda is to ‘ensure modern, efficient, reliable, cost-effective, renewable and environmentally friendly energy to all African households, businesses, industries and institutions’. Agenda 2063 builds on Goal 7 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 7), which aims to advance clean, stable and affordable energy for all by 2030.

To achieve the objective of delivering reliable, modern energy to the approximately 600 million Africans who still lack access to electricity, several African countries have identified investment in renewable energy infrastructure and technologies as core priorities. Some have already released national visions and strategies to promote investment in renewable energy and clean technologies as pathways to open up other economic sectors. For example, a central aspect of Nigeria’s Energy Transition Plan is to create jobs to ‘lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty and driv[e] economic growth’. Similarly, economic diversification is a key priority area in South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Investment Plan (JET IP) for 2023-2027, which aims to create ‘quality jobs in new sectors like electric vehicles, green hydrogen, renewable energy and manufacturing’. Similar framing of the green transition as an economic opportunity, and not just a climate imperative, is found in policy visions in Morocco, Ghana, Malawi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, some of which have already made progress in promoting homegrown solutions that deliver clean and reliable energy to underserved communities, while unlocking green economic opportunities.

Yet, as shown in the United Nations’ technology needs assessment (TNA) reports, many African countries still lack the homegrown renewable energy technologies needed to accelerate the low-carbon energy transition. Green technologies, such as solar panels, require response and grid control software and smart distributed energy resource management systems (DERMs) that are simply not available on the continent. This forces countries to import technologies they could otherwise manufacture domestically. Nigeria, for example, imported over four million solar panels in 2023 alone, at a cost of more than USD 200 million annually, making solar energy less affordable to businesses and households, especially in poor and underserved communities.

As part of efforts to address these technology gaps, African countries are increasingly entering into new partnerships aimed at attracting green technologies and investments needed to develop and maximise the continent’s renewable energy resources. In addition to a solar partnership agreement with the Netherlands, Nigeria has recently announced a new EUR 7.6 billion green energy agreement with China to develop green hydrogen, a clean energy source produced from renewable electricity. In 2024, Tunisia signed a memorandum of understanding with European conglomerates – TotalEnergies, EREN Groupe and VERBUND – to develop green hydrogen for export to Central Europe. Tunisia has also entered into green hydrogen arrangements with Saudi Arabia and several European countries. Other African countries such as Namibia, South Africa, Egypt and Morocco have announced green technology partnerships focused on leveraging their renewable energy potential to unlock a green and sustainable energy future, while also creating jobs and economic benefits domestically.

Meanwhile, China has invested more than USD 13 billion in clean energy projects across Africa since 2000. Furthermore, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union have announced Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs) aimed at mobilising financing and technology assistance for African countries to transition to clean energy. These JETPs have included a USD 8.5 billion pledge for South Africa, USD 2.5 billion for Senegal and proposals to support renewable energy technology development in other African countries such as Senegal, Egypt, the Ivory Coast, Kenya and Morocco.

However, despite the prospects of these emerging green technology partnerships, significant concerns arise regarding their design and implementation. While these partnerships may offer African nations short-term financing and technology access, in the long term, they risk entrenching green colonialism, i.e., the production of clean energy in a manner that exploits Africa’s natural resources, prioritises the needs of other world regions and undermines social, environmental and human rights standards, especially in Indigenous communities.

This paper, therefore, addresses two questions: What are the risks of green colonialism in Africa’s renewable energy partnerships, and what policy safeguards should African countries adopt to address them? To do so, the paper relies primarily on publicly accessible partnership agreements and reports by surveyed African countries (Egypt, Namibia, Nigeria, Tunisia, South Africa, Morocco, Kenya, the Gambia, Tanzania and Zambia) to assess the drivers and implications of green colonialism risks in emerging partnership agreements. Furthermore, the paper adopts an analytical review of the published literature to unpack and analyse emerging policy responses to the risks of green colonialism in these countries. Owing to its scope and the nature of the methodological approach, the paper cannot be regarded as representative. That said, since the survey is combined with the literature review, it provides an analytical profile of and insights into the drivers of green colonialism risks in Africa’s renewable energy partnerships.

The paper proceeds in three sections, Section I being this introduction. Section II unpacks the four key manifestations of green colonialism trends and risks in the design and implementation of green technology partnerships. Section III discusses the need for a holistic reform process that places transparency, accountability, and public participation at the heart of green partnership agreements, from design and approval through to implementation, to achieve just, sustainable, and inclusive outcomes.

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More technology partnerships, less sustainable development? Drivers of green colonialism risks

Although Africa is not a homogeneous geographical unit, the growing demand across the continent for foreign technologies and finance to expand access to clean and reliable energy provokes questions about the potential risks of emerging green technology partnerships. Four key concerns emerge: i) high external debt obligations; ii) export-driven energy production; iii) adverse impacts on water, energy and land resources; and iv) restrictive fiscal and contractual terms.

The first key question is the extent to which green technology partnerships involve new external debt obligations. Without adequate safeguards, emerging green technology agreements risk exacerbating debt levels. Estimates indicate that African governments already spend close to USD 163 billion every year on debt service, with countries such as the Gambia, Egypt, the Ivory Coast and Kenya projected to be at risk of severe debt distress in 2026. Green partnership agreements that involve new loans could significantly increase this risk. Nevertheless, as they grapple with ageing energy infrastructure, rising energy poverty, and limited domestic funding alternatives, African countries are increasingly embracing green technology partnerships, even when these result in new debt obligations. For example, the recent announcement of a USD 5 million loan from the Government of Canada and the International Finance Corporation to finance solar hybrid mini-grids in northern Nigeria has prompted questions regarding its potential to exacerbate Nigeria’s rising debt profile.

At the same time, China’s growing influence in green partnership agreements across Africa is raising concerns about unsustainable debt traps. Such high debt burdens risk re-entrenching the colonial legacy of ‘debt-trap diplomacy’, whereby colonial powers lent excessive amounts of money to African countries and obtained significant leverage over collateralised national infrastructure and political decision-making processes when those nations struggled to repay their debts. Green energy partnerships that cede financial, social or political sovereignty will not only undermine sustainable development but also make it difficult, if not impossible, for African countries to achieve energy security. SDG 17.4 specifically calls on developed countries to ‘assist developing countries in attaining long-term debt sustainability through coordinated policies aimed at fostering debt financing, debt relief and debt restructuring by 2030’. Achieving this target will require new forms of green technology diplomacy and partnerships that do not lead to unsustainable debt accumulation.

The second consideration is the extent to which green technology partnerships boost domestic energy access and technology manufacturing capacity. Green partnership agreements that primarily focus on exporting renewable energy produced in Africa to meet the energy needs of investing countries also risk entrenching green colonialism. Green hydrogen technology investments in Tunisia, Namibia, South Africa, Egypt and Morocco have attracted criticism on this front, despite their economic and financing prospects for delivering low value addition to local communities through enhanced domestic energy access, local content, empowerment and entrepreneurship.

The very premise of developing Africa’s renewable energy resources for export to meet energy needs in China, Europe, and other regions outside Africa introduces a complicated resources-for-money arrangement, whereby Africa’s natural resources are exchanged for financial, technological, security, and other forms of support. Meanwhile, the resources return to African countries as finished technologies or products that Africans themselves cannot afford. Such deals are not new in Africa. In fact, they mirror colonial-era power asymmetries, which saw Africa’s natural resources exported to other regions under often foreign-dictated concessions. For many years, the stranglehold over resource production, with little or no local value addition, by large international oil companies (IOCs) – known as the Seven Sisters, who came mainly from the USA, Canada, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and China – undermined African states’ resource sovereignty, i.e., their ability to make decisions on their own natural resources. The current rush for Africa’s renewable resources risks re-entrenching this legacy and could trigger a new resource curse, this time in renewable energy.1

The third risk associated with trends in green technology partnerships concerns adverse impacts on water, energy, and land rights. This is particularly concerning when land grabbing leads to forced displacement, especially of Indigenous groups. A recent report documents the growing evidence that clean energy projects in Africa, especially hydropower projects, are linked to human rights violations, including land grabs, modern slavery and forced labour. Furthermore, a high incidence of workers’ protests over poor working conditions associated with Chinese investments in Kenya, the Gambia and Zambia are attracting scrutiny of the design of green energy partnerships which lack social and human rights safeguards to ensure rights-based implementation. These developments are in danger of re-entrenching the colonial legacy of state-aided dispossession of African peasants, pastoralists, nomads and Indigenous communities from ancestral lands for foreign capital.

The fourth risk arises when green technology agreements include restrictive clauses and provisions that may constrain a country’s ability to adopt and implement new environmental or human rights regulations. A recent UN report has highlighted how stabilisation provisions in Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) and clean energy agreements, which freeze states’ ability to update existing laws or contracts, may constrain countries’ ability to develop new legislation or regulations. Tanzania, for instance, is currently facing three arbitration proceedings by international companies as a result of new legislation passed in the country to regulate green investments in the mining sector. Eight similar disputes have been filed against the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Mozambique and Niger.

The courtroom battles and arbitration proceedings arising from green technology partnerships underscore the need for African countries to carefully ensure that current or new green technology investments do not delay or constrain their ability to regulate such projects in the future. Previous studies have documented how inadequate access to information about green technologies and insufficient legal capacity to negotiate fair and transparent investment agreements often result in a cycle of investment arrangements that exacerbate technology dependence, limit regulatory autonomy and lead to costly disputes and legal liability. Such lopsided agreements risk re-entrenching the colonial legacy of inequitable resource and technology partnerships, from which it may take African countries decades to detach.

The question, therefore, is how to ensure that Africa’s green technology partnerships deliver just and inclusive social, economic and environmental benefits that unlock a sustainable energy future for the continent.

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Placing justice and equity at the heart of Africa’s green technology partnerships

Addressing the risks of green colonialism in Africa’s renewable energy partnerships will require a holistic reform process, one which closes the governance gaps that drive and deepen the vulnerabilities of many African countries to these risks in the first place. The danger is that effective implementation of green partnership agreements will be marred by perennial barriers to good governance, which would otherwise strengthen transparency, accountability and public participation (TAP) in resource development and management.

According to a 2021 resource governance index, virtually all African countries score very low on law and governance structures that promote TAP in the natural resource sector. Many resource-rich African countries have consequently fallen prey to a resource curse, whereby corruption and illicit financial flows not only rob them of the resources needed to implement infrastructure development and renewable energy programmes, but also contribute to the poverty and economic scarcity which drive rising debt levels. For example, despite Nigeria’s dominant position as Africa’s largest oil producer and exporter, many years of corruption and resource mismanagement have left the country with a high debt burden, wealth inequality, technological dependence and growing poverty. According to a 2025 World Bank report, approximately 139 million Nigerians (about 62% of the population) live in poverty.

To prevent such trends, the African Union Panel of the Wise encourages all African countries to ensure that ‘transparency and accountability mechanisms are in place prior to, and during, initiatives to develop and exploit natural resources’. According to the panel, ‘these mechanisms should include full reporting on the revenues collected from natural resource activities and on the allocation of these revenues to programmes, governments and communities’. Addressing the risks of green colonialism will therefore require investments and agreements that place public interest and national sovereignty at the heart of the emerging green technology agenda. At the core of these initiatives will be transparency, accountability and inclusivity, as outlined below.

Transparency requires enhancing the availability, accessibility, and accuracy of information on green partnership arrangements. As noted earlier, some of the concerns associated with emerging green partnership arrangements in the countries surveyed for this paper relate to a lack of publicly accessible information on the potential benefits, costs, health impacts and public benefits of such agreements, especially for local communities. This fuels public concerns and perceptions of colonial-era scenarios of unequal trade relationships. For example, while information on the Canada-European Union Green Alliance is publicly accessible, accessing information on the green finance loan from Canada to Nigeria does not yield any publicly accessible result on government portals. As the African Union Panel of the Wise states, promoting transparency in the context of green partnerships will require African countries to release publicly accessible reports on the nature, scope, elements and financial details of green partnership alliances in a manner that sustains public confidence and trust.

Enhanced accountability, which the AU Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption emphasises as a mechanism to promote good governance, includes establishing processes at the design, approval, and implementation phases to monitor the outcomes of green partnership agreements against their stated objectives. At the design phase, rather than prioritising tax and fiscal incentives to deliver low-cost energy for other regions of the world, the central focus of Africa’s green technology partnerships and investments should be on enhancing domestic energy security, thereby providing a reliable, affordable and accessible clean energy supply to Africa’s energy poor. During the approval phase, technology partnerships should include adequate safeguards to ensure debt sustainability. African countries should develop national strategies and policies that limit the approval of new debt and integrate debt restructuring into new green partnership agreements.

Regarding implementation, one innovative approach to enhancing access to financing for green technologies and projects without incurring additional debt is the use of debt-for-nature swaps. Several African countries, such as the DRC, are already following this path, seemingly inspired by initiatives across the globe. Costa Rica, for instance, has successfully leveraged debt-for-nature swaps to conserve rainforests since the 1980s. More recently, Belize has recorded progress in using debt-for-nature swaps to fund ecological restoration programmes, which have reduced the country’s external debt by 10% of gross domestic product (GDP). Leveraging such innovative financing solutions in Africa’s green technology partnerships could unlock similar financial, environmental and economic co-benefits for the continent. This will enrich the mix of increased green financing, debt forgiveness and other concessional lending initiatives that will help reduce the debt burden in Africa and free up financing for the green transition. This mix should be strategically integrated into African countries’ negotiations of green partnership agreements.

Advancing accountability also includes embedding robust human rights and sustainability measures into green technology agreements in strict adherence to international human rights standards and the United Nations’ guiding principles. This alignment involves conducting thorough human rights and environmental impact assessments across the negotiation, planning, funding and execution stages of green technology investment initiatives, and swiftly addressing any negative impacts or risks that may arise. By embedding human rights safeguards in the approval processes for green technology investment initiatives, African countries, together with local communities and other stakeholders, could better assess the implementation of green partnership agreements to prevent adverse impacts.

There is also a need to enhance public participation in implementing green partnership agreements through active energy citizenship. Excessive dependence on imported green technologies by African countries creates imbalances in power relationships that exacerbate the risks of green colonialism. Previous studies indicate that, due to unclear legal frameworks for green investments, a weak investment climate and a lack of supportive policies for clean technology entrepreneurship, domestic capacity for green technology remains weak across the continent. African countries are simply unable to attract the sustained flow of private sector investments and technologies needed to drive the transition to sustainable economies and societies. The result is a perpetual cycle of dependence on imported technologies.

African countries must therefore prioritise local content initiatives that address the barriers to homegrown clean technology entrepreneurship. A starting point is to undertake comprehensive assessments of the legal and institutional barriers that weaken private-sector participation in green technology development. Supportive commercial and investment laws that simplify the process of business formalisation, registration and participation in transition programmes should be established. In addition to these legal reforms, financial incentives should be provided to encourage entrepreneurs to unlock homegrown green solutions. These can be in the form of direct grants, concessional or low-interest loans, investment tax credits or reversed taxes, or de-risking instruments such as insurance, all of which should be geared towards supporting the upfront capital investment needed to develop clean technology initiatives.2

Finally, addressing the risks of green colonialism in Africa’s renewable energy partnerships will require enhancing the institutional capacity of the agencies and ministries involved in the design and implementation of green technology partnership arrangements. Negotiating win-win agreements will require African countries to invest in training and capacity-development programmes and resources for officers across a wide range of legal domains, including sustainable development, international trade and investment, treaty negotiation, diplomacy, and technology. International development organisations can support this process by making Africa-focused knowledge materials, such as the newly published Sustainable Development Law, more accessible to African policymakers, for example, by supporting their translation into local languages. Higher education institutions and professional societies also have key roles to play in developing tailored courses on green diplomacy, international law and sustainable development. These courses will offer hands-on executive knowledge and skills to African negotiators, deepening their expertise in green technology development and deployment.

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Conclusion

The abundant natural resources of the African continent, coupled with its significant workforce and youth population, make it an attractive hub for new green energy investments and partnerships. However, several barriers risk re-entrenching green colonialism, unsustainable debt accumulation and technology dependence. These include unclear legal frameworks for green investments, weak human rights safeguards, limited capacity for negotiation, and inadequate policies to support local content development and clean technology entrepreneurship.

Africa’s green technology partnerships must ultimately be designed, implemented and led by Africa, with the support of international stakeholders interested in unlocking just, inclusive and sustainable green investment opportunities. Overcoming green colonialism will therefore require strong political will on the part of African countries to implement supportive domestic laws and policies that move the continent beyond being a passive recipient of green technologies and investments towards becoming a co-creator of homegrown green technologies. By establishing rights-based policy measures, African nations can refocus green technology partnerships on domestic value creation and sustainable development priorities. These partnerships can then help diversify their economies and boost reliable, affordable access to modern energy.

Endnotes

[1] The ‘resource curse’ describes the tendency of countries with abundant energy resources to underperform in energy security, economic growth and other development outcomes.

[2] Olawuyi, D. S. (2024, December 30). Private sector investment crucial for just energy transition in Africa. Hamad Bin Khalifa University.https://www.hbku.edu.qa/en/news/private-sector-investment-in-africa

About the Author
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Professor Damilola S. Olawuyi

Professor Damilola S Olawuyi SAN is an international lawyer, professor, and policy adviser specialising in business and human rights, energy, natural resources, and environmental law.

More Than 90% of New Renewables Are Cheaper Today

More Than 90% of New Renewables Are Cheaper Today

Jul 4, 2026

A young child playing on a rocky terrain near solar panels in Greece under a clear sky. by H O M A D via Pexels

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IRENA: More than 90% of new renewables are already cheaper than any fossil fuel power plant

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By Energía Estratégica • July 3, 2026

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The agency warned that solar and wind energy are not only consolidating their cost advantage, but have also become a key factor in reducing exposure to gas volatility and strengthening energy security.

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IRENA: More Than 90% of New Renewables Are Cheaper Today

IRENA

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Renewable energies consolidated their leadership as the most competitive option for adding new electricity generation capacity by 2025. But, in addition to the economic factor, they are beginning to play an increasingly strategic role in a scenario marked by geopolitical conflicts, volatility in fuel markets, and greater demands for energy security.

This is according to the report “Renewable Energy Generation Costs in 2025” , published by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), which concludes that more than 90% of the large-scale renewable capacity added during the year was cheaper than the lowest-cost fossil alternative .

The organization argues that the competitive advantage of clean technologies is no longer limited to the cost of generation: it also represents protection against international uncertainty and fluctuations in oil and gas prices.

Wind and solar power extend their lead

The report’s data shows that solar photovoltaic energy maintained an average cost of US$44/MWh , while onshore wind reduced its costs by 4% , to US$33/MWh , consolidating itself as one of the most competitive technologies on the market.

In the case of offshore wind , costs also continued to fall and reached US$78/MWh , 3% less than the previous year.

The contrast with fossil technologies was even more marked.

IRENA points out that the global shortage of turbines has practically doubled the capital cost to build new combined cycle power plants in the United States, while in markets with high gas prices, such as Germany, Italy and Japan , generation costs exceeded US$100/MWh .

Added to this is the uncertainty stemming from the crisis in the Middle East, which continues to put pressure on international gas markets.

A shield against energy crises

Beyond the cost of producing electricity, the report focuses on another growing benefit of renewables: reducing dependence on imported fuels.

According to IRENA, the currently installed renewable capacity made it possible to avoid purchases of fossil fuels of around US$480 billion during 2025 , reducing the exposure of numerous countries to the volatility of international markets.

“Every additional megawatt of renewable energy strengthens economic protection against fuel price fluctuations and protects consumers, businesses and public finances,” said Francesco La Camera, Director-General of IRENA.

The organization believes that the expansion of renewable energy generation has become a strategic investment both to improve economic resilience and to strengthen the competitiveness of countries.

The impact of the crisis in the Middle East

The report also analyzes the effects of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz that occurred in early 2026, which triggered a sharp increase in international prices for gas and other energy commodities.

In that context, existing renewable energy generation helped to mitigate the economic impact of the crisis.

In Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines alone, renewable energy installations avoided approximately US$5.7 billion in coal and gas purchases during 2025.

If those same volumes had been acquired during the peak prices recorded between March and May 2026, the cost would have amounted to approximately US$6.5 billion .

China leads the world in savings

IRENA’s analysis of the top twenty economies shows that renewable energy avoided US$377 billion in fossil fuel purchases during 2025.

China topped the ranking by a wide margin with US$177 billion , equivalent to almost half of the total savings.

Behind them were the United States , with US$35 billion , Brazil , with US$32 billion , Germany and India , with US$18 billion each, and Japan , with US$15 billion .

Costs will continue to fall, albeit more slowly.

Since 2010, solar photovoltaic energy has reduced its costs by 89% , while onshore wind power has fallen by 71% , concentrated solar power by 72% , and offshore wind power by 63% .

However, IRENA warns that the pace of that reduction could slow down.

The reorganization of the manufacturing industry in China, the increase in the prices of raw materials and components, the fall in investments in new factories and a trade context marked by greater tariff tensions are beginning to put pressure on installation costs.

Even so, the agency’s projections indicate that renewable technologies will continue to reduce their costs until 2035 , although at a slower rate than that recorded during the last decade.

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Strengthen Regional Cooperation on Urban Resilience

Strengthen Regional Cooperation on Urban Resilience

Jun 30, 2026

Scenic view of the historic Kasbah in Algiers, capturing the old architecture at sunset with warm tones. by Adem via Pexels

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Arab States strengthen regional cooperation on urban resilience and risk-informed development

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UNDRR 30-06-2026
Source(s): United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction – Regional Office for Arab States

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Photo of workshop participants with screen presentation
UNDRR ROAS

 

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Representatives from governments, regional organizations, United Nations agencies, technical institutions and city authorities gathered in Algiers for a three-day regional workshop on urban resilience, smart cities and risk-informed development, reaffirming their commitment to building safer, more resilient and sustainable cities across the Arab States.

Organized alongside the inaugural meeting of the Arab Urban Resilience Committee, the workshop provided a regional platform to exchange knowledge, strengthen institutional coordination, and identify practical approaches for integrating disaster risk reduction into urban planning, governance and investment.

The event was organized by the League of Arab States (LAS), the Arab Centre for the Prevention of Earthquake and Other Natural Disasters (ACPEND), the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), UN-Habitat, and regional partners, reflecting a shared commitment to advancing risk-informed urban development in support of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Advancing risk-informed urban resilience

The workshop focused on translating global commitments into practical action at the national and local levels, emphasizing the need to strengthen governance, improve risk-informed planning, and promote investments that enhance urban resilience.

Participants explored regional priorities for addressing urban risks, integrating disaster risk reduction into urban development policies, strengthening institutional coordination, and reinforcing collaboration between national and local authorities to better anticipate, manage and reduce current and emerging risks.

Discussions also highlighted the growing importance of resilient cities in addressing the interconnected challenges of climate change, rapid urbanization, infrastructure development and disaster risk, while ensuring that resilience is embedded within sustainable development planning.

From commitment to implementation through MCR2030

UNDRR facilitated a dedicated session on the Making Cities Resilient 2030 (MCR2030) initiative, showcasing progress across the Arab region and demonstrating how cities are translating global commitments into concrete local action.

The session highlighted practical tools and approaches for strengthening urban resilience, including the MCR2030 roadmap, the Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Cities, resilience action planning, disaster risk financing, disaster loss and damage data systems, and the Early Warnings for All initiative.

Participants also exchanged experiences from cities including Salalah and Alexandria, illustrating how local leadership, peer learning and partnerships are helping cities move from resilience planning to implementation. The discussion underscored the value of city-to-city cooperation and regional knowledge exchange in accelerating resilience action across the Arab region.

Building greener, smarter and more resilient cities

Participants explored how nature-based solutions, smart city approaches and digital innovation can strengthen resilience while supporting sustainable urban development.

Sessions examined the growing impacts of climate-related hazards, including extreme heat, flooding, drought and environmental degradation and highlighted the importance of resilient infrastructure, integrated urban planning, sustainable finance and community engagement in reducing disaster risk.

The workshop reaffirmed that resilient cities require coordinated action across all levels of government, supported by strong partnerships with academia, the private sector, civil society and local communities.

Strengthening regional cooperation

A key outcome of the meeting was the establishment of the leadership of the Arab Urban Resilience Committee, marking an important step towards strengthening regional cooperation on urban resilience.

Recognizing the leadership demonstrated by the City of Salalah through its engagement in the MCR2030 initiative and its contribution to advancing urban resilience across the region, the Sultanate of Oman was selected to chair the Arab Urban Resilience Committee, with Algeria and the State of Palestine serving as Vice-Chairs. The Committee will provide a regional platform to promote collaboration, facilitate knowledge exchange, and support the implementation of risk-informed urban resilience policies and practices across the Arab States.

The workshop concluded with renewed commitment from participating countries and partners to strengthen regional cooperation, enhance technical exchange, and accelerate the implementation of risk-informed urban development.

By connecting global frameworks with national policies and local action, participants reaffirmed that resilient cities are fundamental to protecting development gains, reducing disaster risk, and advancing sustainable development throughout the Arab States.

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Editors’ recommendations

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AI Sovereignty: Collaborate Globally for Success

AI Sovereignty: Collaborate Globally for Success

Jun 28, 2026

Three professionals in traditional and modern attire collaborate on a project in a contemporary office setting. by Mikhail Nilov via Pexels

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AI sovereignty: Collaborate globally, govern locally

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Carlos Vargas, University World News – 26 June 2026

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Governments across the wealthy world are drafting national strategies for artificial intelligence, and nearly all of them approach sovereignty the same way: as something a country builds and buys.

Compute clusters, sovereign cloud, domestic energy, national champions, a venture fund to convert research into firms. The logic is coherent and, on its own terms, sound. Prosperity and security increasingly belong to nations that can build and govern AI rather than rent it.

The instinct to control the machine is not the error. The error is what the approach leaves out: the capacity to govern knowledge, which no amount of hardware supplies.

The strategies are written around an economic priority, and that priority is real – but it is a short-horizon reading of it. A country can attract the data centre and train the workforce and still find, a decade on, that the science it produces is analysed, owned and monetised elsewhere.

Knowledge governance is the capacity that protects the long return on exactly the economic bet these strategies are making. Leaving it out is not a competing vision of the economy; it is the part of the same vision that pays out later, and that the rush to stand up infrastructure now tends to discount.

Canada’s ‘AI for All’ strategy

Canada’s ‘AI for All’, launched in June 2026, is among the most sophisticated of these strategies, which is precisely why it shows the pattern cleanly.

It is candid about the country’s dependencies and serious about closing them.

It assigns universities four jobs, and all four point downstream: a literacy engine training a million students, colleges as applied-AI upskillers, institutions as nodes in workforce alliances aligned to industrial demand, and research universities as the origin point for AI-native companies fed by capital.

Each role is legitimate. None is the role on which sovereignty actually turns. Read together, they reduce the university to a pipeline – a supplier of talent and intellectual property to an economy that someone else governs.

This is not a Canadian failing. The OECD’s recent work on science and innovation describes member countries reorganising research policy around competitiveness, industrial strategy and national security, and within that shift valuing universities for two outputs only: the workers they train and the research they commercialise.

The pipeline view is becoming the default way the wealthy world understands what a university is for. What that view cannot see is the function on which sovereignty actually rests.

The function the strategies omit

Call it knowledge governance: the capacity to produce research, decide the terms on which it crosses borders, and capture the value it generates. It is the difference between a science system that controls its own knowledge cycle and one that merely feeds someone else’s.

A country that governs its science moves through the whole cycle – it collects the data, analyses it, publishes first, and captures the value. A country that cannot, becomes a supplier of raw material. It generates biodiversity records, genomic data, climate observations, and loses control over who analyses them, who publishes, and whether the findings ever serve local priorities.

As I argued in a technology profile on connectivity and digital sovereignty in the Global South, written for the International Science Council’s Centre for Science Futures, sovereign infrastructure determines whether institutions can conduct, analyse, publish and benefit from their own research, or whether they remain field stations generating data for processing elsewhere.

That was written about the Global South, but the mechanism is universal and it transfers directly to AI. Data is the bloodline of the system, and governance is decided less by who owns the hardware than by who controls the country’s data, identities and research environments – the platform that authenticates a researcher, the cloud that stores a dataset, the environment in which a collaboration takes place.

A recent review of 775 non-United States data centre projects found that US companies operate close to half of them when weighted by investment value.

The study concluded that building a data centre on home soil does not secure digital sovereignty if a foreign entity runs it: the operator’s nationality becomes a jurisdictional hook, letting its home government compel access to the data inside whatever country it sits in.

A nation can own the compute and still cede the science if its universities authenticate, store and collaborate on platforms configured and operated elsewhere.

Owning the machine is not the same as governing what is done on it. This is the gap in AI national strategies, and it is a strange one: a document can detail a university’s place in alliances and standards bodies while saying nothing about the systems its laboratories actually run on.

That silence is where sovereignty is conceded – the identity platform, the cloud tenancy, the data environment chosen years ago for convenience and never revisited, each one a governance decision made by default in favour of whichever vendor arrived first.

Here a distinction matters. The argument is not that universities should run national AI policy; they will not, and claiming otherwise would overclaim. The steering of AI – what gets funded, deployed, regulated, sold – runs through firms, ministries and capital, and the university sits at the periphery of that steering, despite the research and trained people it supplies to all of it.

Nor is the claim that universities will train frontier models; the capital required for state-of-the-art clusters has largely priced them out, and the foundational models of 2026 are built in private labs, not faculties.

But knowledge governance is a different function from strategic direction, and it is the one the strategies have left unassigned. No firm holds it. No ministry can manufacture it.

It lives, latent and unfunded, in the institutions that produce the open, public-interest knowledge a country cannot buy back once it has been ceded – the methods, the datasets, the trained researchers, the science that was never anyone’s product.

The pipeline view does not just undervalue the university; it leaves the governance function homeless.

Why this begins abroad

And here is the part the AI strategies invert most completely. Having decided that sovereignty is built by accumulating infrastructure inside one’s own borders, they treat international engagement as the channel through which dependency arrives – foreign cloud, foreign models, foreign recruitment – and route whatever ambition remains through trade missions and national firms. The university as an international actor in its own right disappears.

But the capacity these strategies want cannot be built behind a border. AI is possible at all only because of an open global knowledge system, in which researchers share methods and solve problems that belong to no single nation.

Knowledge governance worth the name, therefore, does not begin with domestic control and reluctantly admit collaboration; it begins with collaboration and builds control on top of it. International engagement is not a risk to sovereign AI. It is the precondition.

The instruments already exist, and they are institutional and international at once. The hardest gap for most countries is compute itself – the frontier clusters are scarce, expensive and, as the US restrictions on advanced chips to China have made plain, subject to control by whoever holds the supply.

But a nation that cannot build its own cluster is not therefore shut out, because the networks are what make scarce compute reachable and keep the data that runs on it under local terms.

RedCLARA connects the national research and education networks of Latin America, linking their universities to GÉANT in Europe, Internet2 in the United States, and partner networks in Africa – the UbuntuNet Alliance and WACREN among them.

Through that infrastructure it provides federated identity, dedicated high-speed circuits between laboratories, and secure environments for large-scale data exchange. AfricaConnect ties the continent’s regional networks into the same global fabric.

The logic is identical in each case: institutions that could never individually afford intercontinental cables or computing clusters pool their demand, build jointly, and meet dominant providers from greater collective strength – owning capacity rather than renting it.

Europe’s digital sovereignty

These networks are how nationally funded supercomputers are reached and allocated across institutions that could never each own one, and how the datasets those machines run on stay under terms a country sets rather than rents. They are the layer that makes sovereign compute usable, and the reason a country short on compute is not thereby short on sovereignty.

The Global North understands this perfectly when its own autonomy is at stake.

GÉANT, the body that operates Europe’s pan-continental research and education network, defines one of its strategic pillars as maintaining control over intercontinental connectivity in support of European digital sovereignty, and European policy analysts treat research-network infrastructure as a deliberate instrument for reducing dependence on US and Chinese suppliers.

Europe has gone further than rhetoric: EuroHPC pools national money into shared supercomputers, and the European Open Science Cloud builds the federated data layer to match. Most national AI strategies have not followed, even as their own universities sit as nodes in the same federated system and could be resourced to make it carry sovereign AI.

The point holds with most force where resources are scarce. For a wealthy country, these networks amplify a system that already works.

For an under-resourced one, they are the precondition for engaging the global system at all – a university without the capital to build its own compute can still work at the frontier as a node in a shared network, and cannot if it stands outside one.

That a university cannot afford a frontier cluster is the case for federation, not against it: pooled demand is how institutions reach compute none of them could buy alone, and the network is what keeps their data under local terms while they reach it.

So the instruction reverses depending on where you stand. The wealthy country is told international engagement is a dependency to manage; the under-resourced one finds it is the only road to the capacity in question.

For these countries the strategies are not merely incomplete but backwards: the collaboration they treat as a vulnerability is the single route to the sovereignty they say they want, because there is no domestic substitute for it to fall back on.

The harder truth

More collaboration is not automatically better.

The same OECD work that records the securitisation of science also records its cost: international collaboration has lost momentum after three decades of growth, and a chilling effect now pushes institutions to avoid flagged partnerships on thin guidance and researchers to steer clear of important but high-risk fields.

A blanket application of research security measures, the OECD warns, threatens the quality, productivity and integrity of the national research system. Sovereignty pursued through walls has well-documented failure modes.

The remedy is to build the instrument well, not to set it down.

The security-first case deserves a straight answer. That case runs as follows: open standards are how sensitive work bleeds to adversaries, so walls are a necessary quarantine. The answer is that federation governs one dimension of the problem and not the whole of it.

Interoperability and control are not opposites. Federated infrastructure is what makes selective control possible – data held in local custody rather than on a foreign vendor’s servers, access governed institution by institution, sensitive environments segmented from open ones on shared foundations.

It does not, on its own, address the parts of research security that have nothing to do with where data sits: researcher vetting, dual-use fields with direct military application, intellectual property that leaves through a person rather than a server. Those need their own instruments, and federation is no substitute for them.

But on the dimension it does govern, the logic holds: a country that runs its science on systems it does not control has no quarantine to offer; it has already exported the thing it means to protect. The choice is not between openness and security. It is between governing the terms of exposure and not knowing what they are.

That distinction sets the two kinds of sovereignty apart. One breaks interoperability and isolates. The other leaves the shared foundations intact and governs what is built on them – global connectivity on locally governed terms, which is the footing sovereign AI actually requires. The remedy is not less internationalisation but internationalisation built for equity rather than extraction.

That is the version of sovereignty these strategies keep missing. They locate it in infrastructure they can announce and capital they can attract, and treat universities as suppliers and international engagement as a threat to manage.

Buying technology is the visible move. The decisive work is institutional and, paradoxically, external: universities capable enough, connected enough and trusted enough to operate at the frontier on terms they help set.

Sovereignty in a domain with little respect for borders is not won by building higher ones. It is won by science systems that can collaborate globally while governing locally – a capacity that does not begin at home, and that lives, in every country now drafting one of these strategies, in the institutions those strategies have reduced to a pipeline.

Carlos Vargas is the founder of Societas Partnerships, a higher education advisory firm based in Panama City, and the author of a technology profile on connectivity and digital sovereignty in the Global South written for the International Science Council’s Centre for Science Futures. He previously spent 14 years in senior internationalisation roles at the University of Toronto, Carleton University and the University of Calgary in Canada.

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