Lots of poorer countries may be gearing up to largely skip fossil fuel reliance in favor of renewables, if a report released last week is any indication.
It’s long been assumed that developing nations — particularly those in Africa and Asia — would need to follow the same course as the United States and other western powers, relying on traditional fossil fuels to build their economies before transitioning onto renewable energy. It’s one of the reasons many critics think efforts to keep global warming under 2°C are either doomed or would be hopelessly destructive.
But according to Climatescope 2014 — a worldwide analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) of 55 countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa — developing countries’ renewable energy capacity grew 143 percent between 2008 and 2013. By contrast, the wealthy western nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) — in North America, Europe, Australia, and so forth — saw only 84 percent growth. This was while total grid capacity for the nations covered by the Climatescope analysis rose over 30 percent, but grew only 9.6 percent for the OECD countries.
The report focused on forms of renewable power other than large hydroelectric plants, because those can take years, if not decades, to install, while wind only requires two to three years and solar needs only a few months. But when large hydroelectric is thrown in, Climatescope nations now have 666 gigawatts of clean energy installed, and OECD nations have 806 gigawatts.…
“Clean energy is the low-cost option in a lot of these countries,” Ethan Zindler, a Washington-based Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst, told Bloomberg news. “The technologies are cost-competitive right now. Not in the future, but right now.”Climate Progress
Like they leapfrogged over landlines to cell phones and to digital transactions bypassing traditional banking services.
How Renewables In Developing Countries Are Leapfrogging Traditional Power
Jeff Spross
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