Climate facades and African awakening: unmasking geopolitical double standards in energy policy

The global conversation on climate change and energy transition has taken on the urgency of a moral crusade. But behind the banners of “net-zero” and “climate emergency,” a more complex reality is unfolding: one driven less by a dispassionate assessment of global public benefit and more by geopolitical anxiety, financial opportunism, and a frantic race for technological dominance. The rhetoric of a shared planetary mission often serves as a convenient veil for the industrial strategies and security imperatives of the Global North.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Europe. The European Union’s flagship REPowerEU plan, a massive EUR 300 billion initiative, was not born from a climate summit but forged in the fires of geopolitical crisis. Its explicit purpose, as stated in the EU’s own documents, is to eliminate dependency on Russian fossil fuels in response to the war in Ukraine. This is a rational security objective for Europe, but it is not a universal climate blueprint.

What Africa needs now is not just energy realism, but sovereign visions for the continent’s transformation. We need an unapologetically pragmatic energy strategy that serves as the engine for a great national project: rapid industrialization, economic diversification, and continental transformation. For a continent where the most immediate and devastating emergency is not climate urgency but development stagnation, and where Africa contributes less than 4 per cent of global CO2 emissions despite hosting nearly 19 per cent of the world’s population, our priorities must be our own, ruthlessly focused on guaranteeing accelerated development.

Security, politics, and profit

To chart our own course, we must first deconstruct the narratives being sold to us. The energy policies of the world’s major powers are not uniform, nor are they altruistic. They are tailored to their specific economic and security needs, and understanding this divergence is the first step toward asserting our own sovereign interests.

The EU’s green sprint is fundamentally a security strategy masquerading as a climate strategy. Launched in May 2022, the REPowerEU plan was a “direct response to the hardships and global energy market disruption caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.” Its primary objective is to build a “geopolitical firewall” by ending reliance on Russian energy before 2030.

The plan’s pillars are instruments of geopolitical self-preservation. They include diversifying gas supplies to partners like Norway, Algeria, and the United States, rapidly expanding infrastructure for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), and even reshoring clean technology supply chains to reduce dependence on China. The aggressive targets, such as achieving a 45 per cent share for renewables in the energy mix by 2030 and doubling the deployment of heat pumps, are presented as climate leadership. While they do have climate benefits, their true impetus is the quest for energy independence.

The EU has masterfully framed its security policy as a “co-benefit” for the climate. However, the reverse is more accurate. Climate policy has become the publicly acceptable vehicle for achieving geopolitical security. The climate goals of the European Green Deal existed long before the Ukraine war, but the EUR 300 billion in urgent, large-scale spending was triggered by the security crisis, not a climate report. This distinction is critical. When Europe exports its “climate solutions” to Africa, we must recognize them for what they are: tailor-made answers to a European security problem that Africa does not share. A copy-paste policy approach is therefore not only inappropriate but strategically naive.

The American recalibration

Meanwhile, the new administration in the United States has pivoted sharply away from subsidized renewables, offering a starkly different model that ironically validates many of the concerns long voiced by the Global South. An executive order issued on July 8, 2025, dismantled key renewable tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act, effectively ending federal support for many wind, solar, and EV projects.

The justifications for this move are telling. The order argues that renewables are “expensive and unreliable,” and that American taxpayers should not be forced to “subsidize markets for billionaires and global financiers.” It also cites national security, stating that “green” subsidies make the United States “dependent on supply chains controlled by foreign adversaries” - a clear reference to China’s overwhelming dominance in critical minerals and clean-tech manufacturing.

This policy reversal is bolstered by a stark Department of Energy report warning that the premature retirement of firm baseload power sources like natural gas and coal could increase the risk of power outages by a factor of 100 by 2030, jeopardizing the grid stability needed for American reindustrialization and the AI race.

The convergence of arguments is striking. When we in Africa raise concerns about the intermittency of renewables, the dependence on foreign supply chains, and the prohibitive cost of the transition without subsidies, we are often accused of climate denialism or of obstructing progress. Yet, when a major Western power raises the exact same concerns to protect its own economic and national interests, it is framed as pragmatic, “America First” policy. This exposes the profound double standard at the heart of the global climate debate and underscores that there is no single, settled Western consensus that Africa is obliged to follow.

Pressure from the Global North: A case in point

The pressure on Africa to conform to this Northern-driven narrative is relentless, often amplified by influential voices that frame fossil fuels as an existential threat while overlooking the developmental imperatives of the Global South.

For instance, in a recent LinkedIn post, UN Secretary-General António Guterres declared that the fossil fuel age is “flailing and failing,” warning that countries clinging to it are “sabotaging” their economies by driving up costs, locking in stranded assets, and missing the “greatest economic opportunity of the 21st century” in renewables. He portrayed clean energy as an unstoppable “fact,” urging a “just energy transition” powered by trade, investment, and finance.

Such pronouncements, while well-intentioned, exemplify the moralizing rhetoric that pressures developing nations to abandon reliable energy sources like gas, ignoring how this could exacerbate energy poverty and stall industrialization in Africa, where universal access remains elusive for millions. This one-size-fits-all messaging reinforces a persistent blind spot, portraying fossil reliance as economic suicide without acknowledging the North's historical emissions or Africa’s minimal contribution to the crisis. African leaders must resist this, viewing it as another layer of geopolitical distortion that prioritizes Northern timelines over Southern sovereignty.

Asserting independent thought

The double standards evident in Northern energy policies create a blind spot for Africa: the assumption that climate urgency must dictate our path, even as it serves others’ geopolitical ends. European and US strategies, for example, REPowerEU’s security pivot and America’s subsidy rollback, reveal how climate rhetoric masks self-interest, from reducing Russian dependence to avoiding Chinese supply chains. African policymakers must see through this fog, recognizing that imported models risk perpetuating underdevelopment. By asserting independent thought, we can craft strategies that prioritize our realities, fostering collaboration on our terms for true equity in the global transition.

The true emergency is development stagnation. The global energy transition must be reframed, not as a one-size-fits-all sprint toward arbitrary net-zero targets, but as a differentiated, pragmatic journey toward sustainable prosperity for all.

We cannot afford to be caught in a transition model designed to solve Europe’s insecurities or underwrite Western tech empires. We need energy strategies rooted in developmental realism, technological pluralism, and global equity. For Africa, this means charting a sovereign, responsible, and cost-effective energy path that reflects our needs, not others’ fears.

The true emergency we face is not climate urgency; it is development stagnation. And overcoming that emergency, by powering our industries and bringing light to every home, is the most profound and urgent act of climate and social justice we can undertake.

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Obinna Onyekwena is Deputy Director for Infectious Diseases Advocacy at the Gates Foundation, and a traditional leader in Ufuma, Anambra State, Nigeria. He works at the intersection of global health, local leadership, and systems change, advocating for equitable development grounded in agency, innovation, and sustainability. He contributed this article in his personal capacity.