Let Them Eat Solar Panels

Ex-Im’s $900 million loan for a solar project in Angola is green colonialism

Last week, during a speech at a high-dollar fundraiser for the League of Conservation Voters in Washington, D.C., President Joe Biden exulted about a solar project in Angola. According to a transcript of his speech that can be found on the White House’s website, Biden said:

“We have plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean.  We have plans to build in — in Angola one of the largest solar plants in the world. I can go on, but I’m not. I’m going off-script. I’m going to get in trouble.”

Ignore, of course, Biden’s gaffe about building a railroad across the Pacific. Ignore, too, his statement that he was “going to get in trouble” for going off script. Joe Biden is the president of the United States. He commands a huge arsenal of warships, warplanes, and nuclear weapons. With whom, exactly, might he be getting in trouble?

Instead, focus on the part about the solar project in Angola. Biden didn’t give any details, but he was referring to a $900 million loan commitment that was announced on June 1 by the Export-Import Bank of the United States that will back the construction of a 500-megawatt solar project in Angola. In a press release touting the deal, the Ex-Im Bank claimed the project will “generate over 500 megawatts of renewable power; provide access to clean energy resources across Angola; [and] help Angola meet its climate commitments.”

You can be forgiven for not knowing that Angola, an impoverished country of 32 million people where more than 60% of the population doesn’t have access to electricity has made any climate commitments at all.

You can also be forgiven for not knowing that Angola is a member of OPEC and has enormous oil and gas reserves. Further, you can be forgiven for not knowing that Exxon Mobil may invest as much as $15 billion in Angola to develop a new offshore oil field and that Angola exports tens of thousands of barrels of oil per day to the United States. Finally, as can be seen in the graphic above, you can be forgiven for not knowing that the average Angolan resident is emitting a paltry 0.6 tons of CO₂ per year and that U.S. per capita CO₂ emissions are about 15 tons per year, or 25 times more.

The Ex-Im Bank loan for the Angolan solar project — and Biden’s crowing about it to the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), which is one of America’s richest dark-money climate NGOs — drips with irony, hypocrisy, and green colonialism.

At the same time the U.S. is importing about 47,000 barrels of crude oil per day from Angola to fuel its fleets of F-150s, 737s, and Harley-Davidsons, the Biden administration is only willing to help fund a solar project in Angola because, well, you know, climate change. I’ll return to Angola in a moment.

First, it’s important to put Biden’s June 14 appearance at the LCV “Capital Dinner” which was held at Washington’s swanky Anthem at the Wharf venue, into context. The LCV said the event will celebrate the “most pro-environment president in American history.” The group sold sponsorships for as much as $100,000. A “Climate Victory Circle” sponsorship, for $50,000, bought you two tables and “membership in the Environmental Majority Council.” The cheapest ticket for the event was $1,000.

In 2013, the Center for Public Integrity called the LCV a “dark money heavyweight.” Back then, it reported that “little is known about the sources” of the group’s funding and it noted that the LCV spent “a record $36 million” in 2012. Since then, the group’s budget has soared. Between 2020 and 2021, the outfit’s budget jumped from $78 million to $115 million. That is a huge amount of money and it puts the LCV among the richest anti-hydrocarbon, anti-nuclear NGOs in the U.S. For comparison, that $115 million annual budget is larger than that of these trade associations: Nuclear Energy Institute, American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, National Mining Association, American Gas Association, Propane Education and Research Council, and many others.

Much of the LCV’s funding is coming from the anti-industry industry’s vast dark money network. As I reported in these pages in March, that dark money network “has a skein of overlapping funders, directors, and employees” and it is funding many of the NGOs that are pushing for bans on natural gas in homes and businesses.

In 2021, LCV received $18.9 million from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, one of the left’s richest dark money groups. In 2021, the Sixteen Thirty Fund had revenue of $191 million. It received much of that sum from very large donors. Its Schedule B shows 28 donations of $1 million or more, with one donor kicking in a whopping $33.4 million. Of course, none of those donors were identified.

Sixteen Thirty Fund is part of a network of NGOs that are closely tied to Arabella Advisors, which, according to Influence Watch, guides “strategy, advocacy, impact investing, and management for high-dollar left-leaning nonprofits and individuals.” In 2021, the New York Times published an article which said Arabella “has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars through a daisy chain of groups supporting Democrats and progressive causes. The system of political financing, which often obscures the identities of donors, is known as dark money, and Arabella’s network is a leading vehicle for it on the left.”

Biden’s speech to LCV is important because the anti-industry industry has been pushing for a decade to prohibit the Ex-Im Bank from financing hydrocarbon projects overseas. That effort is part of a broader trend in international finance in which multilateral and bilateral lenders in Western countries are refusing to finance hydrocarbon projects of any kind due to concerns about climate change.

In 2021, during the COP 26 climate summit in Glasgow, the U.S. joined a group of some 20 countries that agreed to stop funding oil and gas projects in developing countries. As explained by one news outlet, the move “could take billions of dollars away from future fossil fuel production and redistribute it to low-carbon energy projects such as wind and solar. The agreement covers ‘unabated’ projects, which generally refers to fossil fuel facilities that don't capture carbon dioxide emissions... The announcement goes beyond a separate agreement by the world’s largest economies last weekend to end public financing for international coal power development.” Also in 2021, the U.S. Treasury Department issued guidance for multilateral development banks “aimed at squeezing off fossil fuel financing except in certain circumstances.”

Financial institutions are “squeezing” hydrocarbon projects even though using hydrocarbons, and natural gas in particular, is often more economical, and can provide more energy services to more people, than renewables alone.

A 2014 study by Todd Moss and Benjamin Leo, who were then working at the Center for Global Development, found that millions of additional people in poor nations could gain access to electricity if bilateral lenders like Ex-Im were allowed to invest in electrification projects that rely on natural gas instead of only being allowed to finance renewable projects. Moss and Leo estimated the amount of generation capacity that would be built under an investment portfolio of $10 billion. They found “A natural gas–only portfolio could provide an additional 42,000 MW of electricity versus 4,200 MW in a renewables-only portfolio.” If we use that study as a benchmark, and Ex-Im spent that same $900 million on gas-fired generation, Angola could have about 900 megawatts of gas-fired generation instead of 500 megawatts of solar capacity. That gas-fired capacity would be able to produce far more power, and do so more reliably, than the solar project.

Angola has plenty of gas to fuel the plant. Proven gas reserves in the country total some 301 billion cubic meters or about 10.5 trillion cubic feet. That much gas could last the country for decades.

African leaders are declaring their right to use more gas. Yesterday, N.J. Ayuk, the executive chairman of the African Energy Chamber, published an article in which he reminded readers that 600 million Africans don't have access to electricity, nearly 900 million don’t have clean cooking facilities, and “dozens of African nations” are totally dependendent on hydrocarbons. “African industrial development,” he said, “can't move forward unless it's powered by fossil fuels.”

He continued:

“not all fossil fuels have the same impact on the environment. Natural gas is a cleaner-burning fossil fuel than oil or coal, and it can play a significant role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It has a critical role to play in just energy transitions for many developing nations, including those in Africa. To truly support developing nations, wealthier nations must accept that reality. Unfortunately, that's not what we're seeing…the green agenda ignores how important natural gas is to bringing life-changing prosperity to the continent in the form of jobs, business opportunities, capacity building, and, yes, electricity.

In 2022, the Wall Street Journal published an article by Uganda's President Yoweri K. Museveni titled, "Solar and Wind Force Poverty on Africa." In the article, Museveni wrote, “Africa can't sacrifice its future prosperity for Western climate goals.” He continued, saying the “Western aid-industrial complex, composed of nongovernmental organizations and state development agencies, has poured money into wind and solar projects across the continent. This earns them praise in the U.S. and Europe but leaves many Africans with unreliable and expensive electricity…”

Last year, on the Power Hungry Podcast, Vijaya Ramachandran, the director for energy and development at the Breakthrough Institute, told me that the efforts by international lenders to stop financing hydrocarbon projects are part of a “double standard.” She said the wealthy countries are burning massive amounts of hydrocarbons while imposing bans on “the poorest countries, which are also the lowest emitting countries. I find that to be a form of ‘green colonialism.’”

Yesterday, I talked to Joyashree Roy, an economist at the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand, as well as a coordinating lead author of the most recent IPCC report. She told me the type of lending that Ex-Im is doing in Angola is “just delaying the development process. Angola is rich in hydrocarbons. They should be using those hydrocarbons to produce more electricity.” She continued, “This is another example of the rich trying to solve the climate challenge on the backs of the poor.”

Alas, people like Ayuk, Museveni, Ramachandran, and Roy were not invited to the $1,000-per-plate LCV dinner last week to express their views. Indeed, when it comes to lending, electrification, and climate policy in places like Angola, the world’s energy poor often don’t have a seat at the table.

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