EMERGING ECONOMIES TAKE LEAD ON GOING GREEN, BUT INVESTMENT NEEDED

A 600MW solar power farm in Charanka, Gujarat, India.

Emerging economies are increasingly taking the lead in shifting the world onto a cleaner development path, a senior World Bank official said, pointing to the role of China and India in pushing down the cost of producing solar power.

In India, for example, recent auctions to construct and run solar plants have seen prices for solar energy drop as low as for coal-fired power, tilting the economics of the electricity market towards renewables.

John Roome, senior director for climate change at the World Bank, said India had evolved from a decade ago when it was seen as part of the problem, insisting on its people’s right to develop above all else. In the last two years it has become a leader on clean energy and climate action, he said.

“They see the co-benefits between dealing with congestion, air pollution and other development needs, and they see the falling costs of the technology, and they see the opportunity for getting ahead of the curve to create new jobs in developing an electric vehicle industry, an air-conditioner industry, a battery industry,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the sidelines of a conference in Barcelona.

But India and other big developing countries cannot make the transition alone, he added.

For example, February’s Indian solar power auction in Madhya Pradesh - where the cost of solar fell to a level equal with fossil fuels for the first time - was aided by World Bank help to acquire the land for a solar plant to be constructed.

Major improvements in energy efficiency, alongside new technologies, can enable poorer countries to grow in a green way, Roome noted, “but it’s going to take very concerted work between the policies, the incentives, the financing (and) focusing on developing the markets”.

He and other experts at the Innovate4Climate conference pointed to trillions of dollars now sitting in low-yielding investments or cash, looking for higher returns - much of which could be channelled into making economies greener and more resilient.

A study released last November by the International Finance Corporation showed the Paris Agreement on climate change, adopted in 2015, helped open up nearly $23 trillion in opportunities for climate-smart investments in emerging markets through to 2030. 

SOURCE: www.eco-business.com