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One of the main arguments of the global climate change deniers is that switching to renewable energy would destroy any chance of developing countries to build u
by woodandsteel 7y ago
One of the main arguments of the global climate change deniers is that switching to renewable energy would destroy any chance of developing countries to build up their energy networks and escape poverty.
That's mistaken. Thanks to continuing declines in the price of solar and wind energy and also storage batteries, renewable energy has become for many places cheaper than fossil fuel electricity generation. And in fact the global loan and investment community as in the last couple of years realized this and has decided to stop financing coal generation plants.
What we are going to see in Africa is similar to how countries there leap-frogged past landlines and went straight to mobile phones. African countries are going to start building renewable energy facilities on a mass scale, and besides that many villages will simply install their own local fields of solar panels.
- technofiend 7y ago>destroy any chance of developing countries to build up their energy networks and escape poverty. You mean cross country networks? Long haul, high voltage networks? If power is ubiquitous because of local grids with solar-fed storage to buffer night time use that enables everyone but high power users, i.e. industrial users. So the implication is only power hungry industrial base will let Africa escape poverty? That seems like a very last century view.