At the most important meeting of its kind since the Grand Inga project was conceived, African governments and the world’s largest banks and construction firms have, at a conference in London, been mulling over plans to construct the most productive dam ever conceived – a 40 GW, $80bn hydro power project on the Congo river in DR Congo which would double the electricity capacity of the African the continent.
The Grand Inga dam in the Democratic Republic of Congo would generate twice as much electricity as each of the world’s current largest dams, the Three Gorges in China, and the Itaipu in Brazil. It is also seen as vital to industrial development on the continent, and to the task of bringing electricity to hundreds of million of people. Environmental groups however warned that it could bypass the most needy and end up as Africa’s most ruinous white elephant, consigning one of the poorest countries to impossible indebtedness.
The project would exploit the largest fall of water by volume anywhere in the world – nine miles of rapids which lie 90 miles from the mouth of the Congo where the world’s second largest river drops nearly 100 metres in just eight miles. Two hydroelectric plants, known as Inga 1 and Inga 2, were constructed there in the 1970s and a third is planned, but Grand Inga would dwarf them all. One feasibility study suggests the dam would be 150m high, and harness 26 000 cubic metres of water a second.
Grand Inga was first proposed in the 1980s but has been stalled for years mainly because of political turmoil in central Africa. But now it stands a chance, according to Gerald Doucet, secretary general of the World Energy Council thin ktank, which is convened the London meeting. “It is the greatest sustainable development project, offering Africa a unique chance for interdependence and prosperity,” said Doucet. “It’s much more feasible now than ever. There is a peace settlement in Congo, and economic and technical studies have all shown it is possible.”
A primary influence on the increasing prospects of financing Grand Inga has been the profits to be made from the emerging global carbon offset market and UN climate change credits. Banks, private companies and whole states have found they can earn high returns from them. In return for investments in clean power, rich countries such as Britain hope to be able to offset their own greenhouse gas emissions against the renewable energy that dams such as Grand Inga would produce. “The banks and the City of London see that Grand Inga is serious. The G8 countries are behind it because they can get UN clean development mechanism [CDM] credits to offset their emissions. Chinese, Brazilian and Canadian dam-building companies, as well as the World Bank, are all interested,” said Doucet.
But groups opposed to the scheme are repeating their claims that the plans ignore local people and could leave Congo with massive debts rather than a sustainable industrial base.
“The project would be a magnet for corruption in one of the world’s least stable regions. Its enormous budget and large contracts could devolve Inga into a corruption-riddled white elephant. Inga will centralise a vast store of the region’s electric and financial power, a development model that can foster tensions and civil wars,” said Terri Hathaway, Africa campaigner with International Rivers (a watchdog group monitoring the project) in a report by UK newspaper The Guardian. Hathaway said that the 94% of people in Congo DRC and the two thirds of Africans who have no electricity now were unlikely to benefit because the dam depends on exporting its electricity to existing centres of industry, especially in South Africa where there have been power shortages. “As it stands, the project’s electricity won’t reach even a fraction of the continent’s 500 million people not yet connected to the grid. Building a distribution network that would actually light up Africa would increase the project’s cost exponentially. It would be very different if rural energy received the kind of commitment and attention now being lavished on Inga,” she said.
Reports such as this resonate with people living locally to the existing dams because they themselves have no electricity supply despite living within sight of the power lines stretching away from Inga. It has been Congo’s policy for years to export its electricity, sometimes across the continent, to areas where it can earn the most foreign currency. The product fo the dam, say campaigners, must not bypass the people of the Congo, or the project will fail.
