<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/29/worlds-first-oil-town-baku-fossil-fuel-legacy-cop29>
"Just a few miles from the site of the next UN climate conference in Baku,
Azerbaijan, is a district that for more than a century was known as Black City.
Every house and factory was thickly stained with soot, from the oil that was
extracted and refined here, by the shores of the Caspian Sea.
Baku was the world’s first oil town: pioneering wells were dug in the 1840s,
followed by refineries from 1859. Alfred Nobel and his brothers came in that
decade and established what became a major industry, some of the profits from
which Alfred spent on establishing the Nobel prize. People take pride that oil
produced here helped win the second world war, supplying the Soviet army
fighting Adolf Hitler on the eastern front.
There are still oil wells in Baku, their piston pumps nodding in rhythm while
the flares of refineries stand out clearly against the night-time skyline.
Today, fossil fuels make up 90% of Azerbaijan’s exports: the petrostate pioneer
is still one of the top 10 most oil- and gas-dependent economies in the world.
Gone, though, are the black-stained buildings that gave the city its nickname.
In the past two decades, an intensive cleanup operation has turned central Baku
into White City. Soviet-era blocks have been reclad in gleaming beige facades.
So convincing is the 19th-century styling that it is hard to believe most of it
is barely 10 years old – the only clues are on a few streets where the
transformation has yet to be completed, and the neat new fronts contrast with a
back view of flaking concrete.
Azerbaijan is hoping to effect the same transformation in the energy sector,
first on its own, and then on the rest of the world’s oil-drenched economies.
President Ilham Aliyev has declared his country “in the active phase of green
transition”, with targets to generate 30% of electricity from renewable sources
by 2030, up from about 7% today. The government is building vast solar farms in
the plains near Baku, and has ambitious plans for an interconnector to export
low-carbon power to Georgia, and then under the Black Sea to Romania and
Hungary."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
