The bill backs what it terms "an appropriate mix of power solutions to provide sufficient electricity access to people living in rural and urban areas in order to alleviate poverty and drive economic growth."
But not everyone is happy with this ode to bipartisanship. And it's that "appropriate mix of power solutions" -- an all-of-the-above openness to providing electricity through coal, natural gas and oil, as well as renewables like water, wind and solar power -- that some environmental advocates find anything but appropriate.
Take The Nation, which calls the bill "a giveaway to the fossil fuel industry." Or Earthlife Africa, which -- The Nation notes approvingly -- posits that by 2050, renewable energy could be providing for 50 percent of Africa's energy needs.
Let the word ring forth in the darkened villages and the unlit streets of urban Africa: Hang in there. Your energy problem will be -- halfway -- solved, in just 26 years. It's a smug solution from First Worlders who fancy themselves as saving Humanity from itself. Just don't let the odd breath-drawing man, woman or child get in the way of the crusade.
But let's look beneath the Green slogans at what the absence of access to electricity means for far too many Africans. It means mothers burning animal dung for heat, even while long-term exposure to the airborne particulate matter in dung cake "has been associated with increased rates of acute respiratory infections, chronic obstructive lung disease and cancer." As for burning wood for fuel, according to the United Nations, 12 million hectares is lost each year to desertification, most of it in Africa. The lack of electric refrigeration in vast parts of Africa limits the diets of malnourished children, raises the prospect of food-borne illness and prevents the storage of life-saving medications.
It's not hyperbole to say that the lack of power is a leading cause of early death in Africa.
But give some Green groups a choice between an energy company getting a contract today to build a coal power plant or a natural gas pipeline to bring power to a rural village in Chad or Guinea-Bissau, or waiting until 2050 to bring renewable power online, and the answer is depressingly predictable. It's wind and solar hands-down, and good luck to an entire generation of African children hoping to live into adulthood.
But we all know that governments wherever they are cannot do everything for everyone. So let's look at the question of cost, advanced by some of Electrify Africa's congressional opponents. The Congressional Budget Office scored out Electrify Africa as saving $86 million over six years -- $14 million a year -- factoring for the foreign aid it would replace. And even if the bill cost the U.S. $14 million a year, in a federal budget that spends more than $10 billion a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, Electrify Africa would cost approximately two minutes' worth of federal spending -- less than the U.S. spends in the time it took to read this column.
Perhaps Congress can flex some bipartisan muscle when it returns from recess and pass the Electrify Africa Act in the Senate. There are at least 1,099,755,000 reasons to get it done.
