For a while, it looked like Zambia had achieved a status that almost any nation would envy.
Drawing hydropower from the massive Zambezi River and its tributaries, the country could meet its energy needs while producing almost zero planet-warming emissions. It was renewable energy of the best kind — cheap and seemingly abundant. Zambia’s recently departed environment minister touted the country’s green credentials in dozens of speeches for international crowds.
But that was all before an epic drought that slowed the Zambezi to a trickle and brought water levels to nearly the lowest point on record.
Intermittent outages started in March and gradually intensified as the hydropower generators switched off.
And Zambia, for several months now, has plunged into near-total darkness.
Factories shut down. People struggle to find water and cook. And measures aimed at short-term survival wind up damaging the environment.
In almost any scenario where the planet meets its climate goals, hydropower plays a major role. But one 2022 study, led by researchers at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), found that 26 percent of existing dams are located where there’s a medium to very high risk of water scarcity. By 2050, the study projects, climate change will push that figure up to 32 percent.
Zambia has moved quickly to double the capacity of an existing coal-fired power plant that, when the expansion is completed in two years, will give the country a modest energy boost. It has also rush-ordered diesel generators, distributing them in markets across the capital of Lusaka. But in the meantime, there’s an even dirtier fuel that is booming in demand: charcoal.
Collins Nzovu, who served previously as the environment minister said that charcoal now flows into the capital unabated — a problem “much worse than coal.”
“We are losing so much forest,” he said.
Zambia doesn’t have oil or gas, but it sits on large reserves of coal. It operated a 300-megawatt coal-fired power plant before the hydropower shortfall; its capacity will rise to 600 megawatts. Because many international lenders had sworn off funding coal, Zambia tapped its national pension fund to help finance the work.