Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus and visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. His latest book is False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.
Wind power stations of German utility RWE in front of RWE's brown coal fired power plants near Jackerath, Germany on Mar. 18.Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters
Every year, global climate summits feature a parade of hypocrisy, as the world’s elite arrive on private jets to lecture humanity on cutting carbon emissions. But this November’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Egypt will offer even more breathtaking hypocrisy than usual, because the world’s rich will zealously lecture poor countries about the dangers of fossil fuels – after themselves devouring massive amounts of new gas, coal and oil.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushed up energy prices even further, wealthy countries have been scouring the world for new sources of energy. The United Kingdom vehemently denounced fossil fuels at the Glasgow climate summit just last year, but now plans to keep coal-fired plants available this winter instead of shutting almost all of them as previously planned. Meanwhile, a new trans-Saharan gas pipeline will allow Europe to tap directly into gas from Niger, Algeria and Nigeria; Germany is returning to coal power plants; thermal coal imports by the European Union from Australia, South Africa and Indonesia increased more than 11-fold; and Italy is planning to import 40 per cent more gas from northern Africa. And the United States is going cap-in-hand to Saudi Arabia for more oil production.
At the climate summit in Egypt, the leaders from these rich countries will also encourage the world’s poorest to avoid fossil fuel exploitation and focus instead on green energy alternatives such as off-grid solar and wind energy. Indeed, in a speech widely interpreted as being about Africa, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said it would be “delusional” for countries to invest more in gas and oil exploration.
But every rich country today became wealthy thanks to the exploitation of fossil fuels. What’s more, the elite prescription for the world’s poor – green energy – is incapable of transforming lives.
That’s because sun and wind power are useless when it is nighttime, or there is no wind. Off-grid solar power can provide light, but typically can’t even power a family’s fridge or oven, let alone provide the power that communities need to run everything from farms to factories, the ultimate engines of growth.
A 2016 study found that almost 90 per cent of households in Tanzania that were given off-grid electricity just want to be hooked up to the national grid to receive fossil fuel access. The first rigorous test published on the effect of solar panels on the lives of poor people found they got a little bit more electricity – the ability to power a lamp during the day – but they did not increase savings or spending, did not work more or start more businesses, and their children did not study more.
Moreover, solar panels and wind turbines are useless at tackling one of the main energy problems of the world’s poor. Nearly 2.5 billion people continue to suffer from indoor air pollution because they have to burn dirty fuels like wood and dung to cook and keep warm. Solar panels are too weak to power clean stoves and heaters.
In contrast, grid electrification – which nearly everywhere is driven mostly by fossil fuels – has significant positive impacts on household income, expenditure and education. A 2009 World Bank study showed that electrified rural households in Bangladesh experienced as high as a 21-per-cent jump in income and a 1.5 percentage point reduction in poverty.
The biggest swindle of all is that rich world leaders have somehow managed to portray themselves as green evangelists, while more than three-quarters of their enormous primary energy production continues to come from fossil fuels, according to the International Energy Agency. Less than 12 per cent of their energy comes from renewables, with most from wood and hydro. Just 2.4 per cent comes from solar and wind.
Compare this with Africa, which is the most renewable continent in the world, with half of its energy produced by renewables. But these renewables are almost entirely wood, straws and dung, and they are really a testament to how little energy the continent has access to. Despite all the hype, the continent gets just 0.3 per cent of its energy from solar and wind.
To solve global warming, rich countries must invest much more in research and development on better green technologies, from fusion, fission and second-generation biofuels to solar and wind with massive batteries. The crucial insight is to innovate their real cost down below fossil fuels. That way, everyone will eventually switch. But telling the world’s poor to live with unreliable, expensive, weak power is an insult.