* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The exciting and increasingly affordable combination of solar power, wind energy and electric vehicles is transforming the energy sector, says a leading researcher ahead of 2015’s largest meeting of climate scientists.
“The reduction in [clean energy] costs and therefore availability is a fundamental game changer…emerging economies have a real chance to follow a different developmental path than western economies,” said Michael Grubb, Professor of International Energy and Climate Policy at University College London and keynote speaker at the Our Common Future Under Climate Change conference, which aims to profile the latest climate science innovations ahead of December’s landmark UN climate conference in Paris.
“When you look at the aggregate global trends of energy and emissions, it looks very depressing. However when you look at specific contexts, you find lots of interesting opportunities for countries to get richer and cleaner at the same time – and plenty of growing examples.”
Many believe that ever since the industrial revolution, industrial development and economic growth means using more energy, said Grubb who is also Editor-in-Chief of the journal Climate Policy.
“What we have found is that this is not really true once a certain level of development and wealth is reached. Many industrialised counties have been able to grow their economies without increasing the amount of emissions per person from the level 25 years ago.”
Countries should focus on transforming their energy sectors through policies that focus on ‘efficiency, pricing, and innovation’, including investing in other sustainable alternatives such as wind and solar.
“By improving efficiency, not only will you reduce people’s bills, but as consumers they will feel like they have more control and involvement in their consumption and will become more conscious of how their energy is made,” said Grubb who has also co-authored a new book Planetary Economics: Energy, Climate Change and the Three Domains of Sustainable Development.
This is part of a blog series profiling climate scientists, economists, social scientists and civil society members who are presenting and discussing innovative climate science at Our Common Future. For more follow @ClimatParis2015 and #CFCC15 on Twitter.
Below is an edited transcript of an interview with Grubb, who can be reached for comment at m.grubb@ucl.ac.uk
Q: Your new book, Planetary Economics, looks at the history of the energy sector and discusses the need for policies that focus on ‘innovation, efficiency and pricing’. Could you explain what this means?
A: In a nutshell the ‘innovation’, ‘efficiency’ and ‘pricing’ pillars form a framework that helps us understand which policies would be most effective in relation to energy and environmental problems. Most economists expect the problem of energy efficiency to be solved by markets. Markets are seen as the most efficient way of allocating resources and therefore if there is a problem with carbon, the solution would be to raise the price, so that people will use less.
However, not only is this idea difficult to implement in practice, but we now know that the argument is flawed. People are already extremely wasteful in their energy use and they don’t respond to prices in the clear, rational, cost-minimizing way they do when they shop for a can of beans. By improving efficiency, not only will you reduce people’s bills, but as consumers they can have more control and involvement in their consumption and will become more conscious of how their energy is made.
Also, the energy sector has historically been one of the least innovative in our whole economy. And as we have seen with the last decade, fossil fuel price rises just increased the wealth of existing fossil fuel industry and gave them an incentive to find new ways of extracting more fossil fuels. There is huge scope for public policy to accelerate and innovation to accelerate innovation in low carbon directions.
Q: What will be the focus of your presentation at the conference?
A: For 200 years, industrialisation has gone hand-in-hand with more fossil fuel use. But one of the key themes of my presentation is challenging our assumption that economic growth continues to mean using more energy. This is not really true once a certain level of development and wealth is reached.
As countries have passed the $10-15,000 income per year per person threshold (which the rich countries reached decades ago and many emerging economies have reached), emission trends become far more varied. For the past quarter of a century, many rich countries have grown without increasing the amount of emissions per person. Initially, that was because they outsourced emissions. My presentation will show that many have now passed that point and their total ‘carbon footprint’ is starting to decline.
This is not only because of technological innovations and cleaner energy. Once our basic energy needs have been met in terms of housing, security and warmth, economic growth becomes more about information-rich, service-orientated activities – entertainment, dining out, and so forth - which consume much less energy. The global picture of energy trends and emissions has looked daunting from a climate perspective because it has been dominated by the industrialisation of the emerging economies - however when you look at specific contexts, you find lots of interesting opportunities for countries to get richer and cleaner at the same time.
In the industrialised world, for example, the Scandinavian economies rank amongst the most developed economies (and desirable places to live) in the world, but their energy and emissions have substantially declined. Amongst the emerging economies, Brazil stands out as an exceptionally low emitter, and continues to lead the world in biofuels and in low carbon transport, demonstrating that cities with integrated transport systems with exceptionally low emission patterns can be highly attractive.
Q: Do you think that bottom-up approaches would be the most effective way to transform the energy sector?
A: One of the reasons I used the term ‘Planetary Economics’ is that with climate change you are talking about a huge global issue, but when you look beneath the surface, there are lots of ecosystems and processes at work, at all levels. You cannot understand planetary forces without understanding these myriad processes. Once you understand them in their own right, you realise that there are many countries making their own progress on these issues, whether they are directly concerned about the impacts of climate change, whether they are facing environmental pressures in their own countries, or whether they are worried about fossil fuel import dependence.
However, there is a risk of the pendulum swinging from legally binding agreements and conventions to purely bottom-up action, but there needs to be both. The relationship between the two must be mutually reinforcing.
Q: What do see as the most significant advancement in the clean energy sector?
A: I think the biggest single development is solar energy. Fifteen to ten years ago, it looked like a great idea that was far too expensive to reach four fifths of the population. However the huge reduction in costs and therefore availability is a fundamental game changer.
It means that emerging economies have a real chance to follow a different developmental path than western economies. There is still a way to go and there are still many challenges, particularly around storage and its effectiveness particularly given the interseasonal mismatch in colder countries. Still, the exciting combination of solar power development, combined with wind energy and electric vehicles, could really transform the energy sector.
Q: What message do you hope people take from the conference?
A: I think one of the main messages that needs to be communicated from the societal level to policymakers forming a new climate treaty is the need to move away from the ‘blame and burdens’ mentality.
The politics of trying to identify who is most responsible for climate change has proven difficult and unproductive, particularly between the two worlds largest emitters, China and America. This mentality is slowly changing but there is still resistance.
I think the biggest prizes will go to those countries that are smart enough to realise the opportunities presented by climate change to transform their energy sectors to cleaner, more efficient alternatives.
Q: What do you see as the future role for climate science?
A: That is difficult to say because I do feel that there are still too many scientists who talk about climate change as one big problem that the world can go off and ‘solve’.
I think one of the best articles I have ever seen was by Jonathan Rowson, who said that ‘if there is one thing we have learnt is that the solution to this problem does not lie in simply repeating that there is a problem’. We need to craft solutions that align global needs to local politics and deal with the dissonance between people as citizens who are concerned about the future, and people as consumers who want more and cheaper energy.
Businesses will say that they are happy to be clean and green as long as they have the right government policies in place, but as soon as they have to pay for being emitters, they oppose it.
So science needs to help bridge the gap between the macro and the micro levels. What role is there for the natural sciences? Perhaps we need to look at the social science of communicating the hard science in an effective way to maintain momentum i.e. communicating climate change as an ongoing problem, a bit like sound economic management, rather than something to be dealt with every few years in a big UN conference.
A colleague mentioned to me that for the economy, there are established statistics available every month, like GDP, which summarise the state of the economic, but you don’t have anything like that in relation to the climate. Maybe if we had a regular cycle of reporting tangible indicators of both emission and climate change, the problems of energy use and waste would seem more far real to many people. And it could have all the more impact if linked to action – such a carbon price or low-carbon R&D spend indexed on these indicators.
