Why Tunisia’s renewable energy strategy is facing resistance | Renewable Energy

The Russia-Ukraine conflict and the United States-Israel conflict over Iran have revealed how energy is built on dependence and foreign markets.

The problem of oil crisis and low oil prices should encourage countries that depend on imported electricity to overcome the shortage of electricity and reduce the poverty it causes among citizens. And very few are taking the bold steps needed for independence.

Tunisia is not one of them. The country’s energy deficit is about $3.8bn – about 51 percent of its total trade deficit – and has grown every year since 2000, driven by rising domestic demand and a systemic failure to build real energy. However, the Tunisian government is following the wrong policy to solve the problem.

They are still investing in the energy industry, as shown in the recent approval of five renewable energy projects. These projects allow foreigners to profit from renewable energy production at a cost to Tunisians. This strategy will not solve Tunisia’s energy crisis; on the contrary, it will increase dependence on its power while transferring public wealth into private hands.

Five bad things about letting go of energy

On January 29, five new renewable energy contracts were submitted to the Tunisian parliament for approval.

The five solar plants – Khobna and Mezzouna in Sidi Bouzid in central Tunisia, El Ksour and Sagdoud in Gafsa in the west, and Menzel Habib in Gabes on the coast – will have a total capacity of about 598 megawatts, with an investment of $560m. They will be handed over to foreign countries.

In the months that followed, concerns about the jobs they wanted grew. On April 21, the Electricity and Gas Federation, a trade union, held an urgent meeting to explain the concrete machinery on what the parliament was asked to approve. They said the approval would reduce STEG, Tunisia’s public utility, to a grid operator, while power generation would be outsourced to foreign companies. Operating costs are paid by the public, while profits go to companies.

This is a standard, imported model from the 1990s playbook, now repackaged in the language of the green revolution.

In addition, according to the Tunisian Economic Observatory, these five concessions could benefit from tax exemptions and permanent rulings that would undermine Tunisia’s economic governance. There would be no meaningful transfer of technology, weak integration in the area, and limited job opportunities, which cause great concern for the development of these jobs.

The observers pointed out that under these agreements, the carbon money released through the reduction of emissions in the Tunisian sector could be sent to different countries instead of being a public asset.

Concerns about the practice had already begun to challenge the five resolutions before they reached parliament. Last year, the Electricity and Gas Federation staged a protest against the transfer of carbon credits to private producers. Despite opposition, these five administrations implemented and expanded this system, allowing project developers to take out loans and use them to obtain foreign subsidy programs. Incentives that were intended to support the country’s energy transition could be taken by ordinary people to increase their profits.

Public information that the organization and independent media organizations encouraged people to oppose and accept. Workers and activists protested outside the parliament building. However, the five proposals were voted down, and the agreements were ratified. The minister of energy and the head of the ministry of industries were fired in order to anger the people and distance the government officials from the difficult projects.

The right answer to the right deficit

The agreement was extended due to the country’s need to reduce its energy deficit, to reduce its dependence on Algerian gas, which currently supplies about 60 percent of the country’s natural gas needs, and to meet its commitment to reach 35 percent renewable energy by 2030.

At first glance, this may sound logical, but it boils down to selectively reading the numbers and deliberately limiting what they contain as an answer.

What is left out is what the deficit looks like. About 73 percent of Tunisia’s energy comes from petroleum (oil and diesel), which is mainly consumed by transportation built around special roads.

Addressing it requires a variety of choices: Investing in public transportation, banning imported cars, higher taxes on used cars, and so on. It also means thinking differently. Lowering the price of petroleum requires strengthening domestic refining capacity, especially investing in and upgrading the Tunisian Petroleum Industries Company (STIR). This calls for a re-examination of the type of regional cooperation that was possible.

In 2012, for example, Tunisia and Libya discussed a refinery project located on the coast of the Skhira Sea that would be an energy boost for both countries. The $2bn project was put on hold due to the conflict in Libya, which made the raw materials uncertain. In the end, it was quietly abandoned not because it disappeared, but because the region’s independent cooperation threatened the interests of European countries that benefited from the export of refined oil products to the region.

Libya exports crude oil but exports refined products; Tunisia, which has a very small economy, is caught by the same idea, and exports primary products (manufacturing and agricultural products) and less industrial or manufactured products while relying on the export of valuable industrial and technological products. A shared refinery would disrupt the power sector, to some extent.

Countries that remain under foreign rule are rarely allowed to industrialize, rise above the cost of living, or build the kind of independence that would reduce their dependence on foreign markets and empower them to resist imperialism. The buried refinery is an example of how the regime works – not only to stop it directly, but also through a gradual, systematic shutdown of other processes.

The five solar terms are another iteration of the same concept. Satana is the real problem of the lack of power in Tunisia. They do not build domestic industrial capacity. They don’t change skills. What they do is open new frontiers in international fundraising clothed, as it were, in the language of change, sustainability, and development.

Change – but whose words?

Few would dispute the rapidity of the transition to renewable energy. The important question is how, who, and in whose interest.

Tunisia’s energy crisis is real. But the answer is not to develop the state’s economy under foreign control and neocolonial policies. What is needed is a very different choice: public control of energy production and distribution, real technology transfer, investment in domestic industries, energy-efficient food transitions and public transport, and regional cooperation that creates control rather than increasing dependence.

The neoliberal-led model has shown its limits in economic crises, epidemics, and the global upheaval that is reshaping the global economy. Every new problem should be an alarm. Instead, it is often used as an excuse to double down on the same failed idea.

We have to change. But we must insist on change for our reasons and people’s rule, democratic management, and the real inclusive development that is defined by the needs of the many, not the limits of the profit of the few.

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect Al Jazeera’s influence.