By Roger Pielke and Daniel
Sarewitz* - Financial Times
Having failed to stem carbon emissions in rich countries or in rapidly
industrialising ones, policy makers have focused their attention on the only
remaining target: poor countries that do not emit much carbon to begin
with.
Legislation to cap US carbon emissions was defeated in Congress in 2009.
But that did not prevent the Obama administration from imposing a cap on
emissions from energy projects of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a
US federal agency that finances international development. Other institutions of
the rich world that have decided to limit support for fossil fuel energy
projects include the World Bank and the European Investment Bank.
Such decisions have painful consequences. A recent report from the
non-profit Center for Global Development estimates that $10bn invested in
renewable energy projects in sub-Saharan Africa could provide electricity for
30m people. If the same amount of money went into gas-fired generation, it would
supply about 90m people – three times as many.
In Nigeria, the UN Development Programme is spending $10m to help “improve
the energy efficiency of a series of end-use equipment ... in residential and
public buildings”. As a way of lifting people out of poverty, this is fanciful
at best. Nigeria is the world’s sixth-largest oil exporter, with vast reserves
of natural gas as well. Yet 80m of its people lack access to electricity.
Nigerians do not simply need their equipment to be more efficient; they need a
copious supply of energy derived from plentiful local sources.
Or consider Pakistan, where energy shortages in a rapidly growing nation of
180m have led to civil unrest – as well as rampant destruction of forests,
mostly to provide firewood for cooking and heating. Western development agencies
have refused to finance a project to use Pakistan’s Thar coal deposits for
low-carbon natural gas production and electricity generation because of concerns
over carbon emissions. Half a world away, Germany is building 10 new coal plants
over the next two years.
These examples emerge from a larger, uglier background: a widely shared
assumption that poor nations need not aspire to the sort of energy consumption
seen in North America, western Europe and other wealthy regions. For example,
the World Bank’s action plan for energy access fails to foresee that residents
of a poor nation such as Chad might eventually aspire to use more than, say, a
10th of the energy consumption enjoyed by a middle-income nation such as
Bulgaria.
Aspirations are critical here. If two lightbulbs, a fan and a radio are the
goal – a standard measure of “energy access” used by the UN’s Sustainable Energy
for All initiative – then a couple of solar panels or windmills might do the
job. But if the rapidly urbanising poor are to have any chance of prosperity,
they need access to energy on the same scale as all modern economies.
Climate activists warn that the inhabitants of poor countries are
especially vulnerable to the future climate changes that our greenhouse gas
emissions will cause. Why then, do they simultaneously promote the green
imperialism that helps lock in the poverty that makes these countries so
vulnerable?
If, in coming decades, Africa was to achieve rapid economic growth of the
kind that China has experienced, it would lift hundreds of millions of people
out of poverty. But as the rich world can attest, economic growth both requires
energy consumption and leads to more of it – most of which must be provided by
fossil fuels.
Last year China’s 1.4bn people were responsible for more than 10bn tonnes
of carbon dioxide emissions, while the 1bn people on the entire African
continent emitted just a 10th of that amount. Africa’s population could exceed
China’s within a decade; it could be double China’s by the middle of the
century. The prospects of these billions of people depend in large part on
growth in their energy production and consumption.
Nations such as China and Brazil have big aspirations. They have not
accepted a future without fossil fuels. If we are to reduce emissions without
condemning vast swaths of humanity to unending poverty, we will have to develop
inexpensive, low-carbon energy technologies that are as appropriate for the US
and Bulgaria as they are for Nigeria and Pakistan. Even this will involve
sacrifice; it will require an investment of significant resources over many
decades.
Until these technologies are brought to fruition, we must work with what we
have. We in the rich world have chosen economic growth over emissions
reductions. It is cruelly hypocritical of us to prevent poor countries from
growing, too. If we are forced to adapt to life on a planet with a less
hospitable climate, the poor should at least confront the challenge with the
same advantages that are enjoyed by the rich.
*The writers are, respectively,
professors at the University of Colorado and Arizona State University
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