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Developing countries can leapfrog to a clean energy economy

Fossil fuel subsidies must end for a clean energy transition to take root everywhere, insists Frank Rijsberman, head of the Global Green Growth Institute

All countries must play their part in tackling climate change. Developing countries have the double challenge of pulling their populations out of poverty by giving them access to electricity while at the same time avoiding emissions. The South Korea-based Global Green Growth Institute is supporting poorer countries to go directly to renewables, bypassing fossil fuels

Lack of information:
Policy makers in many developing countries are unaware of recent significant changes to energy economics: renewable energy today delivers cheaper electricity than newly built coal power stations

Back to work:
Bringing online renewable energy is not just about electricity and emissions, it also creates more jobs than fossil fuel operations in the local economies most in need of them

Key quote:
There are lots of ways renewable energy can create green jobs and do so much more than giving light and charging phones.”
Developing countries are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They are on the front line of climate change and already suffering significantly from reduced rainfall and increased drought. Yet, at the same time, economic growth through industrialisation remains the well-trodden route out of poverty and reliance on small-scale subsistence farming. Development tends to mean more greenhouse gas emissions from more factories and increased urbanisation and transportation. The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), an intergovernmental organisation based in South Korea says developing countries can solve this quandary. Its mission is to help them leapfrog to economic growth without breaching the Paris climate agreement. GGGI was launched as a think tank in 2010 by the then Korean President Lee Myung-bak and became an international treaty-based organisation in 2012 at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20 Summit, in Brazil. Since 2016, Frank Rijsberman has headed the organisation and its efforts to help developing countries adopt models of green growth based on renewables and energy efficiency. GGGI works across four priority areas considered essential to transforming national economies, namely sustainable energy, water and sanitation, sustainable landscapes and green cities. We need to get rid of fossil fuel subsidies,” states Rijsberman unequivocally. But acknowledges this is not a given” for some countries and that part of his job is still explaining that climate change is real. A big issue in developing countries is that even when the fact of climate change is accepted, officials are not necessarily aware of the leaps forward in renewable energy technologies nor that prices of wind and solar have plummeted in recent years and generally produce cheaper energy in these countries than that generated by fossil fuel power stations. Another issue is that governments in developing countries tend to deal with the same interlocutors from more developed nations, who can be keen to keep poorer countries locked into fossil technologies for their own economic gain. In many developing countries, people are not aware how significantly the economics of renewable energies have changed,” says Rijsberman. The fact coal is no longer the cheapest energy … is news in countries such as Vietnam. Politicians go to the last person they spoke to and all stories have a grain of truth.” Getting electricity to developing countries is vital. Sixty-two per cent of people in the least developed countries have still not got access to the grid,” says Rijsberman. Changing this is a no brainer.” In particular he highlights the fall in the cost of solar energy. Cheap electricity from solar power can replace diesel.” And not only are kilowatt hours from solar cheaper, people hosting solar panels on their roofs can receive payment for delivering energy to distribution networks and the new industry can create jobs, leading to triple wins”, he states.

Six steps to green energy:

A Global Green Growth Institute report from January 2019 on how green growth can help achieve the goals of the Paris climate agreement included six main recommendations for developing countries:

  1. All countries need to redirect public policies and finance to achieve deep decarbonisation.
  2. G20 countries should ensure the Green Climate Fund, set up under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, is regularly replenished by donor countries. It represents only a small share of the total funding required, but can play a role in bringing other forms of finance (concessional development finance, domestic public investment, institutional investors, and venture capital) to participate in climate action through blended finance.
  3. Effective climate change action will include phasing out fossil fuel subsidies in all forms, introducing carbon pricing and using a share of the public revenues generated to facilitate a just energy transition that fairly distributes the benefits to all sectors of the population.
  4. G20 countries should establish mechanisms, such as expanded credit guarantees and credit enhancements, to enable and increase private and institutional green investments in developing countries. The only source of finance large enough to close the climate finance gap is managed by banks and institutional investors. Increasing private investment in the green transition in developing countries, including domestic private finance, is critical. Developing country governments have a vital role to play in enabling private investments through targeted government policies, the removal of policy obstacles, public procurement, and public-private partnerships.
  5. The green transformation will need to provide hundreds of millions of green and decent jobs, particularly to enhance the role of women in the labour market and provide opportunities for the next generation. All governments can support a just transition through education, (re)training, and the promotion of green innovation and entrepreneurship, and ensuring it is easy to do business.
  6. Civil society and consumers play a key role in the green transformation: directly as conscious capitalists, through green lifestyle choices, and as part of a social movement that encourages governments and the private sector to take action while holding politicians and businesses accountable. G20 governments should champion and support public awareness campaigns in developed and developing countries to increase citizen engagement in green growth.

Market creation

Given the potential for large-scale solar in developing countries, which can help move whole economies to a clean footing, Rijsberman is reluctant to back small-scale solar initiatives led by non-profit organisations as long-term solutions for these countries. NGO plans for solar meet the energy criteria of the Sustainable Development Goals [SDG 7 aimed to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all],” he says. And between not having and having electricity it is a good solution.” But, says Rijsberman, small-scale individual homes solar packs do not create jobs or energy for productive uses, such as for irrigation”. He adds: There are lots of ways renewable energy can create green jobs and do so much more than giving light and charging phones.” He highlights fragile grids as an issue in many countries. Lack of an interconnected grid with sufficient capacity leaves everybody reliant on diesel generators as back up. These could be replaced with solar photovoltaic panels on roofs coupled with batteries, says Rijsberman. Not only would the solution reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it would also lower costs for local businesses and create a market for local companies to install and maintain rooftop solar. Rijsberman sees deep, scalable solar” as the technology of choice for developing countries. It can be here tomorrow.” This does not mean there is not a place for other technologies, but solar is cheap and easy to deploy. The next step is wind, but there are bigger hurdles as it means much bigger projects and bigger investors.” To enable this clean energy transition, Rijsberman calls for stable policy frameworks and financing support from developed countries that can be blended with other sources of investment, including from local banks, to open doors and allow developing countries to leapfrog directly to renewable energies without needing to pass via coal and diesel first. Rijsberman is clear that while the energy transition is going at breakneck speed” in some countries, things still need to happen faster. We all need to think bigger,” he says, urging greater focus on the potential for creating green jobs in developing countries through the energy transition.

Writer: Philippa Nuttall Jones