President Cyril Ramaphosa says the amount of money required for South Africa’s transition from coal to clean energy is far more than the cash pledged so far by Western nations.
Ramaphosa was speaking ahead of the start of the COP27 climate talks on Sunday in Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt.
Ramaphosa says South Africa will be a model for other developing countries in the transition to solar, wind and other forms of energy.
The president says South Africa is determined that no South African is left behind in the just transition.
US, EU and others will invest to speed SA’s transition to clean energy: US President Biden
The head of a US House panel in November 2021 subpoenaed four major oil companies and two lobbying groups for documents related to their actions on global warming as part of a year-long probe into potential climate deception by the energy industry.
Representative Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat and the chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, issued subpoenas to Exxon Mobil Corp, Chevron Corp, BP America and Shell Oil, and to industry body the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the US Chamber of Commerce.
The committee had asked the companies and organisations on September 16 for documents on issues including their role in contributing to climate change, their marketing and lobbying efforts, and any funding of third parties to spread disinformation on climate.
“To date, none of the entities has substantially complied with the committee’s requests,” Maloney said.
Maloney had announced last week at the end of a hearing on Big Oil and climate disinformation that she would subpoena the companies and organizations, saying much of what the committee had received were publicly available documents.
Maloney and other Democrats on the committee say oil companies have reaped huge profits for decades while they misled the public on climate change and prevented action to curb it. The companies and organisations deny the assertions.
The panel has received some documents from former Exxon lobbyist, Keith McCoy, who was secretly recorded by environmental group Greenpeace saying the company’s support of a carbon tax was a ruse, since the company believed the idea would never become law.
Democrats are modelling the probe on the Big Tobacco hearings of the 1990s which took place over many months and eventually revealed that companies buried evidence that cigarettes are addictive and harmful.
In response to the subpoena, Exxon spokesperson Casey Norton said the company is cooperating and has now provided almost130,000 pages of documents “including internal emails”.
Shell spokesperson Curtis Smith said Shell will continue to cooperate with the committee. Chevron spokesperson Braden Reddall said the company has been working to collect and produce the documents and will respond to the subpoena “appropriately”.
A BP America spokesperson, J.P. Fielder, said BP is reviewing the subpoena and will continue working with the committee. BP has provided more than 17,000 pages of documents including internal materials.
Matt Letourneau, spokesperson for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said “we will review” the subpoena.
API spokesperson Bethany Aronhalt Williams said the group will work with the committee.