It may not be on the official agenda at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt, but the thorny question of whether African nations should receive financial support to produce, use and export natural gas as part of a clean energy transition is on everyone’s lips.
member countries – which include Algeria, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea and Mozambique – agreed that COP27 and next year’s COP in the United Arab Emirates, also in the , present “a great opportunity” to make the case for gas in the energy transition and efforts to meet global development goals. But advocates for renewables are calling for no more investment in gas – especially in new infrastructure that would facilitate its export to European countries, which have been seeking fresh supplies since committing to cut their use of gas from Russia by two-thirds this year after it invaded Ukraine.