For a visitor, it can be difficult to ignore an unsettling smell that emanates from the fumes produced by coal power stations, built into the heart of Hwange, a town in Zimbabwe’s Matebeleland North province.
The collapse of the coal plant in Lamu last year led to a major sigh of relief for the thousands of locals who had put up a spirited fight over the last four years to stop the ICBC-backed coal plant.
Up until 2018, Cambodia had been generating most of its electricity from hydroelectric dams. However, the fast-tracked approval of two new coal power plants last year signals a dramatic shift in its energy policy. A wave of investments from international investors, including the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), has made this possible.
Fifty-seven-year-old Nurjannah has been living and working on a plot of land in Teluk Sepang village, Bengkulu, for decades. She started her small-scale farm in the early 2000s and expanded it in 2013 into a small palm oil plantation.
Over the past several years, the construction and operation of coal-fired power plants across Turkey are believed to have caused a rapid increase in cancer cases in the country, residents and studies have revealed.
Since residents of the Kenyan coastal town of Lamu won their fight against a new coal plant, the government seems to be making small steps towards a more efficient and sustainable energy future.
When the plan to build a coal plant in Lamu was first introduced, it was part of a broader conversation on Kenya: its economic development, infrastructure, and future as a “newly industrializing, middle-income country,” to use the language of the national Vision 2030 agenda that initiated the project.