Thank you.
Are green energy policies jeopardising the economies
of developing countries?
This is a hot potato.
The answer at the moment is very clearly no,
because developing countries in truth
have implemented almost no green energy policies,
partly because, at least until the Paris accord,
they didn't really have any obligations to do so.
It was deliberately structured up to then as a system in which
the developed countries had obligations -
not that they did much - and the developing countries didn't.
Up until now, a lot of developing countries
have been saying that it's all very well
for the developed countries to essentially say
we need to stop all the oil and gas industries
in order to combat climate change.
But that's completely unfair because the developed countries
have already taken all the benefit from energy extraction
and putting all that carbon into the atmosphere,
and they've developed.
What about the developing countries
that have yet to catch up, and frankly
don't have the money to spend on alternative forms of energy?
It was widely thought that green energy sources,
like wind power and solar farms, were
expensive luxuries that really only rich, developed countries
could afford.
That started to change quite dramatically since about 2015
when, for the first time the amount of global investment
in so-called new renewables, that's wind and solar power,
not older ones like hydro power dams,
actually was larger in developing countries
than it was in developed countries.
Here, a very significant player is
China, which has invested massively
in solar energy production and battery production.
One reason is they think this is going to be the new Industrial
Revolution.
It's the next stage in human development,
as it were, in the energy system,
which is the core of any modern economy.
And they feel, the Chinese very much so,
that if they're at the frontier of the new technologies,
ahead of everybody else, they move faster,
they're going to dominate them.
Over the last decade, China has committed something
like $780bn towards wind and solar energy.
So that's quite extraordinary.
But there are other developing countries that
are really catching up fast.
In fact, last year, 29 countries joined the billion-dollar club.
That's countries that invested a billion dollars or more
into wind or solar power, and it's become much cheaper
than it used to be.
So going for a wind farm or a solar farm
is not just quicker and faster to build.
It's not just cleaner, but it's actually cheaper.