Corrected: John Kerry in Egypt, and bonus climate coverage

Hi Quartz Africa readers!

An earlier version of this email misattributed a quote by Johns Hopkins University energy lecturer Paul Sullivan to US climate diplomat John Kerry. We regret the error! Here’s that quote again with the correct attribution, plus some additional reading from our coverage of the climate economy.

“The population is growing and they’re trying to industrialize. You can’t capture that with solar. If Egypt leaves its oil and gas in the ground, that could severely impact its economic stability. I do not envy the massive, complicated, and emotional trade-offs they have to deal with.” —Paul Sullivan, energy lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, and former faculty member of the American University in Cairo.

Sullivan was remarking on the occasion of John Kerry’s visit to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates this week, in a tour aimed at drumming up support for climate action ahead of COP26, the global summit in Glasgow in November.

In an interview with Quartz’s Tim McDonnell on his way out of Cairo, Kerry lauded Egypt’s work on building out solar and wind farms, but he also cautioned president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s government against continuing to rely on fossil fuels for economic development.

Egypt is currently scrambling to to attract foreign investment in oil and gas production, and has inked fossil fuel deals worth $74 billion since 2014, including with US companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron. In 2019, thanks largely to the 2015 discovery of large offshore gas deposits, Egypt became a net energy exporter, and the country is now jockeying for position in the global race to supply liquified natural gas to Europe.

In the absence of large-scale carbon capture technology, Kerry told Quartz, that development strategy “presents a very real long-term challenge to raising our ambition on the climate crisis.”

More climate coverage we like:

🚗  Volvo wants to beat other automakers to climate-friendly steel

💪  It’s time for G7 countries to put up or shut up on climate

😬  Tesla’s rebounding China sales aren’t proof its PR crisis is over

🔋  The rare earth industry is drawing supply chain lessons from the semiconductor shortage

🌍  These African countries are among the world’s worst hit by climate change

Thanks for reading (again)! Our best wishes for a productive and ideas-filled week ahead. Please send any news, comments, suggestions, ideas, recommendations of supply chain lessons, and semiconductors to africa@qz.com. You can follow us on Twitter at @qzafrica for updates throughout the day.