"No room for coal in Africa’s renewable future: Akinwumi Adesina"

African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina on Tuesday unveiled ambitious plans to scrap coal power stations across the continent and switch to renewable energy at United Nations climate talks...Addressing a gathering of leaders and officials from almost 200 countries in New York, Adesina outlined efforts to shutter coal-fired power plants and build the "largest solar zone in the world" in the arid Sahel belt. "Coal is the past, and renewable energy is the future. For us at the African Development Bank, we're getting out of coal," Adesina told delegates to the Climate Action Summit in Manhattan this week. The Bank's $500 million green baseload scheme will be rolled out in 2020 and is set to yield $5 billion of investment that will help African countries transition from coal and fossil fuel to renewable energy, said Adesina.

 Adesina also talked about plans for $20 billion of investments in solar and clean energy that would provide the region's 250 million people with 10,000 MW of electricity...Presidents, princes and government ministers from around the world attended the UN's climate summit, as they faced mounting pressure to reduce heat-trapping gas emissions and slow the global rise in temperatures.