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Recently, I participated in the national conference organized by the Petroleum Authority of Uganda (PAU) and the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development (MEMD) in collaboration with the Uganda National Oil company (UNOC) and International Oil Companies (IOCs) for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) working in the oil and gas sector in Uganda. This was in line with ensuring effective participation and involvement of stakeholders in oil and gas developments.
The objective of the conference was to provide key updates on oil and gas developments (all projects) in Uganda and deliberate on vital aspects related to oil and gas developments. Other issues also included the energy transition drive vis a vis Uganda’s quest for oil and gas development as well as enabling civil society organizations to share their perspectives and experiences in the same feat to enable government, IOCs, and the CSOs to appreciate each other and generate balanced views on the issues going forward.
Notably, Uganda’s oil and gas sector developments have progressed following the signing of key agreements for the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) in April 2021, and the announcement of the Final Investment Decision (FID) for the upstream and midstream oil and gas project of Uganda in February 2022).
A lot of high value investments have been have undertaken to-date, and more are yet to be done. This has also witnessed great delivery of massive value to citizens through employment, business contracts and payment for services accessed by the players in the sector among others.
In the same vein, the government of Uganda launched the Energy Transition Plan at the recently concluded COP28 discussions in December 2023, in Dubai. The key objectives of the plan include: establish an energy system needed to support Uganda’s rapid economic development; articulation of a realistic, yet ambitious scenario for providing universal access to electricity and clean cooking in line with SDG7; provision of the groundwork for Uganda to undertake an Integrated Energy Resource Plan; serve as a tool to engage with international actors on Uganda’s energy needs related to development, energy security, managing affordability, and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions; and inform conversations on unlocking more finance, especially in the context of Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETP) among other strategies.
Uganda’s expansive ETP agenda holds the promise that its future energy system will look very different from today, with universal access to electricity and to clean cooking achieved by 2030, a key benchmark in the transition plan. However, today only 15% of Uganda’s population has access to cleaner cooking technologies.
Around 95% of the population primarily cook with solid biomass such as wood, charcoal or other vegetal and animal residues, with only one in ten of those using improved biomass cookstoves, while the remainder still relies on traditional, harmful and inefficient stoves (e.g. three-stone cooking fires).
Just over 5% of the population uses modern clean fuels such as Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG), electricity mostly concentrated in the urban areas of Kampala and the Central Region or biogas from biodigesters for cooking.
In 2022, the government launched a drive to distribute at least one million Liquefied Petroleum Gas cylinders and burners to Ugandans in a bid to use of clean energy. The UGX 900 billion LPG promotion, supply and infrastructure intervention aimed at targeting Ugandans to convert to LPG for cooking from 1% to 20% by 2030 at household level.
However, few Ugandans have the capacity to sustain the refilling of the LPG cylinders which has led to the continued dependence on biomass which has resulted in massive reduction of forest cover which is currently manifesting through prolonged dry spells.
The Uganda Energy Transition Plan can be achieved by phasing out the financing for carbon intensive energy projects and also setting clear timelines to end support to oil and gas in the country. The investment in the sector risks locking Uganda into a high carbon pathway, imperiling our economic future and the global climate efforts. First, after decades of continually rising carbon emissions, there shouldn’t be room for more fossil fuels of any type.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) argued last month that to meet the Paris Agreement goals, there should be no investments in new gas, oil, or coal production. Second, the costs of renewable energy have fallen dramatically, and renewables are now cheaper than fossil fuels in most of the world.
In other words, we have missed the opportunity to cross by bridge, but we don’t actually need one anyway. Besides, gas is more like a wall than a bridge, impeding rather than enabling the energy transition because over 65% of the people live in rural areas where decentralized renewable energy is a better, cheaper option for electrification. Providing clean cooking fuels for the over 25 million people relying on dangerous solid biomass is an urgent priority, but costly plans to expand natural gas connections to residential consumers may prove obsolete as the cost of renewables.
The transitioning to clean cooking technologies, such as improved biomass cookstoves and electric stoves, can significantly improve health issues and reduce premature deaths by limiting exposure to harmful indoor smoke, which disproportionally impact women and children.
It also lessens the time and effort spent on collecting traditional fuels, decreases the risk of violence against women during the collection process, and contributes to environmental conservation by reducing GHG emissions, limiting deforestation and protecting ecosystems.
Therefore, to achieve the Uganda’s ETP and ensure the uptake of improved and modern cooking solutions, targeted policies that address economic and sociocultural barriers to clean cooking are necessary.
The government should also ensure that the technical expertise and government institutions are in place, and key policy reforms, like the launched Energy Policy demonstrate Uganda’s commitment to achieve its ambitious targets as well as developing the National Clean Cooking Strategy which includes provisions for all relevant clean cooking technologies tailored to different consumer categories and locations.
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