At the end of last year, the International Energy Agency sounded the alarm on China and India’s developing power sector.
“China’s and India’s surging fuel consumption poses a growing challenge to the world’s energy systems and, unless curbed, will strain global oil trade, push up prices and lead to substantially higher carbon dioxide emissions in coming decades,” the New York Times reported on the IEA’s World Energy Outlook report.
Ambuj Sagar is a researcher at Harvard University, working on developing sustainable policies for coal. It’s not an easy task, between the governmental bureaucracy, and the complex social and environmental issues involved. He said what bothers him most is when people point fingers at India and China for contributing to the greenhouse problem.
“This is me putting on my developing countries hat, this always irks me,” Sagar told me over the phone. “Yes, India and China are going to be developing, but Western nations already have an enormous base.”
Consider this: The world average of kilowatt (power) use per capita is 2,600. The average of the wealthy, well-developed OECD nations is 8,365 kilowatts (or 11,000 if you’re just averaging North America).
Meanwhile, India uses 480 kilowatts per capita. That’s an average of 7,885 fewer kilowatts per person. And China, which is significantly more developed, uses 1,800.
“When I hear the IEA say worry about India, yeah, we should worry for multiple reasons,” said Sagar. “But when you look at 480 [kilowatts per capita], it tells me that if I’m really concerned about global energy supplies, and the global coal supply, or the global energy crunch or the global greenhouse gas issue, I know where the focus has to be.”
So, okay, maybe our fingers should be pointed at ourselves. But here’s my question. Industrialized nations continue to use fossil fuel because we have a fossil fuel infrastructure. We have roads, cars, power plants, pipelines, and on and on. It’s a major block to working outside the box in terms of energy. But these things are just beginning to develop in India. With no infrastructure in place, India has the opportunity power itself on green energy. Do it once, do it right. Why not?
According to Sagar, the answer is that India is poor, and green technology is expensive. And that’s because industrialized nations have not done enough research to make the technology efficient, and they haven’t used it enough to make it affordable. Meanwhile, fossil fuel technology is readily available.
He said, “The richer countries that have the resources, and the stronger science base. They need to take the lead in developing new technology and deploying it. Because as you deploy new technology, the price goes down.”
But despite long, ongoing conversations about sustainable energy and sustainable development, that hasn’t happened. According to Sagar, research and development budgets have not had any significant increases since the discussion began in the early 90’s.
“So although everyone is saying that climate change is a problem, and energy technology is going to play a big role, they’re not putting their money where their mouth is,” Sagar said.
I asked Sagar if he was hopeful about sustainable development and finding a solution to global warming. “I oscillate between hope and despair,” he said. “Sometimes I’m hopeful and sometimes I think we’re really up the creek.”
As I understand this article, it is the duty for developed nations to cut greenhouse gases more than developing nations even if emissions from developed nations is more than offset by developing nations.
America and other western countries have been very slow to use alternative technology, even though scientists have warned about rising carbon dioxide emissions and the devistating effects this will have on the climate also the green technologies have been there long enough for them to be implimented. Its the old story, cost comes before any other reason.
I wonder what the real reason for Americas anxieties are, could they be higher oil prices, after all they are used to paying far less than we do.
We need to increase research and developement budgets in all countries to help developing countries obtain these technologies at a more affordable price.
Maggie
Maggie, I agree! People now talk about the prohibitive costs of fighting back global warming. But research and development is where a lot of those later, stop-gap costs can be defrayed.
Dr. Sagar mentioned that research and development budgets spiked significantly in response to the 70’s oil crisis, when the public was immediately alarmed about the costs of oil. I guess that means the current climate crisis is too far up in the atmosphere to shock our budgets into action.
If we take a backseat to communist countries, we will no longer exist. Altruism is not natural.
Keep in mind, one grows or dies. The communist countries of China and Russia will take us out if they can. Count on it. Nature abhors a vacuum.