The rich world’s message to the poor: Fossil fuels for me but not for thee
The rich are choking off funding for any new fossil fuels in the developing world
Bjorn Lomborg, Special to Financial Post
Publishing date:
Jul 27, 2022 • July 27, 2022 • 4 minute read • 21 Comments
A single person in the rich world uses more fossil fuel energy than all the energy available to 23 poor Africans. The rich world became wealthy by massively exploiting fossil fuels, which today provide more than three-quarters of its energy. Solar and wind deliver less than three per cent.
Yet the rich are choking off funding for any new fossil fuels in the developing world. Most of the world’s poorest four billion people have no meaningful energy access so the rich blithely tell them to “leapfrog” from no energy to a green nirvana of solar panels and wind turbines. This promised nirvana is a sham consisting of wishful thinking and green marketing. The world’s rich would never accept off-grid, renewable energy themselves — and neither should the world’s poor.
Consider the experience of Dharnai, a village Greenpeace tried to turn into India’s first solar-powered community in 2014.
Greenpeace received glowing, global media attention when it declared that Dharnai would refuse “to give into the trap of the fossil fuel industry.” But the day the solar electricity was turned on the batteries were drained within hours. A boy remembers wanting to do his homework but there wasn’t enough power for his family’s one lamp.
Villagers were prohibited from using fridges or TVs because they would exhaust the system. They couldn’t use electric cookstoves so had to continue burning wood and dung, which create terrible air pollution. Across the developing world, millions die from indoor pollution that the World Health Organization says is equivalent to each person smoking two packs of cigarettes every day.
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Greenpeace invited the state’s chief minister to admire its handiwork. He was met by a crowd waving signs demanding “real electricity” (the kind you can use to run a refrigerator or stove and that your children can use to do their homework) and not “fake electricity” (meaning solar energy that could do none of these things).
When Dharnai was finally connected to the power grid, more and more people dropped their solar connections. An academic study found a big reason was that the overwhelmingly coal-powered grid electricity was three times cheaper than the solar energy.
What’s more, it could actually power appliances people wanted, like TVs and stoves. Today the disused solar power system is covered in thick dust and the project site is a cattle shed.
To be sure, solar energy can charge a cell phone and run a light, which can be useful — but it is often expensive. A new study on solar lamps in India’s most populous state shows that, even with hefty subsidies, for most people solar lamps are worth much less than they cost. In rich countries like Germany and Spain most solar and wind would never have been installed if not for subsidies |
