How to Build a Low-Carbon Future in Developing Nations

By: 
Sarah Bardeen
Wind turbines.
Wind turbines.
International Rivers

Today, International Rivers is releasing the report, “Designing Low Carbon Electricity Futures for African and Other Developing Economies”, at a joint event with Sierra Club and Oxfam America.

This report, written by researchers at UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group, makes a thorough and persuasive case that African and other developing economies could leapfrog over risky, 20th-century energy technologies such as fossil fuels and large hydropower and build their energy future on wind and solar power on a much larger scale than previously thought.

The authors, Ranjit Deshmukh and Grace C. Wu, also provide a blueprint for how developing nations could make that energy future happen.

The report finds that the changing economics of wind and solar technologies are making them increasingly cost-effective, while coal and large hydroelectric projects are becoming riskier investments due to significant cost overruns, uncertainty in future fuel costs, and climate change.

The paper presents evidence that developing nations have large potential wind and solar resources, and it discusses how to develop them with low social and environmental impacts. The authors also highlight emerging strategies to manage the variability and uncertainty of large-scale, grid-connected wind and solar energy generation, in particular the regional integration of renewable energy systems, better siting of wind and solar plants, and smart grids that can more flexibly respond to fluctuations in electricity supply and demand.

"By leveraging these strategies, practices, and technologies early in the evolution of their electricity grid systems," Wu and Deshmuk say, "African and other developing economies have the potential to leapfrog to clean, reliable, low-impact, and cost-efficient energy systems and avoid increasingly riskier investments in coal and large hydroelectric dam projects."

Perhaps most importantly, today’s event sees anti-dam and anti-coal campaigners from International Rivers, Sierra Club and Oxfam coming together to champion wind and solar. 

For many years, stopping a dam might mean reigniting a coal-fired power plant project, or vice versa. Environmental activists who were usually in agreement could sometimes find themselves on opposite sides of a campaign, squeezed by a country's dire need for electricity and the lack of energy alternatives.

Today, these three groups are standing together to say that the answer to stopping coal isn’t destructive dams, and the answer to stopping destructive dams isn’t coal. The future is here, and it looks as bright as the sun on a solar panel – or the turning blade of a wind turbine.

Date: 
Thursday, October 29, 2015