8/3/2019 Affordable Green Energy

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? MrordablegreenenergyPUBUC sceptidsmaboutglobalwanningmay be growing, but the sdentific con-sensus is as solid as ever: man-made cIi-mate change isreaL and weignoreitat ourper-il. But if that issue is settled (and it should be),there is an equally-large and important ques-tion thatremains: what should we doaboutit?

One prescription that isbandied about withI increasing frequency certainly ~ounds sensi-ble: the world should drastically cut theI amount ofgreenhouse gasesthat itpumps intothe atmosphere each day. Spedfically, we are

told the goal should be a 50% reduction inglobal caIbon-dioxide emissions by the middleof the century. Even its backers concede thatachieving this target won't be easy -and theyare right. In fact. they are so right that they arewrong. Allow me to explain.

Our dependency on caIbon-emitting fuelsis more than enormous. It is overwhelming.For all the talk about solar, wind and otherhyped green-energy sources, they make uponly 0.6% of global energy consumption: Re-newable energy overwhelmingly comes fromoften-unsustainable burning of wood and bio-mass by people in the Third World.Fossilfuels acmuntformore than four-fifthsof the world's energy diet. So, in order to cutglobal carbon emissions in half by the middle ofthe century, we would obviously have to startI getting a lot more of our energy from sources

I that don't emit caIbon.Can we do this? According to the Interna-l tional Energy Agency, here's what it wouldtake to achieve the goal of cutting emissions by~ 50%betweennowandmid-century:30newI nudearplants, 17,OOOwindrnills,400biomasspower plants, two hydroelectric fadlities the

size of China's massive Three Gorges Darn, andI 42 coal and gas power plants with yet-to-be-I developedcaIbon-capturetechnology.I Now consider this: this list does not describewhat we would have to build between nowand 2050, but what we would have to buildeachand everyyear until then!I One more thing: even ifwe managed to doall this (which we obviously cannot), the im-, pact on globaltemperatures would be hardlynoticeable by 2050. According to the best-

GUESTCOLUMNBJ0RNLOMBORG

. Toshave 0.10 C from global temperature,we would have to spend $5 trillion everyyear till 2050 on green energy sources. The right approach isto make greenenergy cheaper, such as improvingsolar energy efficiency by a factor of 10. So ifwe spend just $100 billion a yearon such research, we don't need tosubsidise anyone to shift to green fuel

known climate-economic model this vast un-dertakingwouldlikelywindupredudnggloba!temperatures by just one-tenth of 10 C (ont!-fifth of 10F), while holding back sea-level risesbyonly 1em (lessthanhalfaninch).That's not a lot of bang for the buck. Indeedthe projected costs of this approach - some$5 trillion annually by mid-century - are somuch greater than its likely benefits that itmakes no sense to callita solution at all.

Fortunately, there is a better; smarter wayto deal with global wanning. What if, insteadof spending trillions of dollars trying to buildan impossible number of power plants - or;more likely, condemning billions of peoplearound the world to continued Poverty by try-ing to make carbon-emitting fuels too expen-sive to use - we devoted ourselves to makinggreenenergycheaper?Right now, solar panels are soexpensive - .about 10 times more thanfossilfuelsin terms ofcost per unit of energy output - thatonlywell-

heeled well-meaning (and usually,well-sub-sidised)Westernerscanafford toinstallthem.But think where we'd be if we could im-prove the effidencyofsolarcellsbyafactorof 10- in other words, if we could make themcheaper than fossil fuels. We wouldn't have toforce (orsubsidise) anyone to stop burning coaland oil. Everyone, induding the Chinese andthe Indians, would shift to the cheaper anddeaner altematives-andglobal emission tar-gets would automatically be met.

Can we achieve this technological miradeover the next 20-40 years? In a word yes. Theprice of solar energy has been dropping steadilyfor 30 years - by about 50% every decade-and we could likely accelerate that declinefurther with suffidently large investments inresearch and development. How large? If wewere willing to devote just 0.2% of global GDP(roughly $100 billion a year) to green-energyR&D,Ibelievethatwecouldbringaboutgame- Ichanging breakthroughsnotjustforsolarpow-er, but also for a wide variety of other alterna-tive-energytechnologies.

This belief in the potential of technological IIprogress strikes some climate activists as naiveor even delusional. But is it really? Consider

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Ione of the mirades of the modem age: the per- Isona! computer. These devices didn't becomehousehold items because governments subsi- Idised purchases or forced up the price of type-writers andslide rules.No, what happened isthat, largely as a resultof the space race, the US government pouredlots 9f money into R&D for solid-state physicsand electronics engineering. The resulting Ibreakthroughs not only got Neil Armstrong tothe moon in 1969, but also made it possible forApple to introduce the first Mac in 1976 andIBM to debut the first PCfiveyears later.

We can do the same for dean energy. Forgetabout subsidising ineffident technologies ormaking fossil fuels too expensive to use. in-stead let's fund the basic research that willmake green energy too cheap and easy to resist.

(TheauthorisheadoftheCopenhagenConsensus Cenlrandadjunctprofessorat

CopenhagenBusinssSchooQ!:>Project Syndicate, 20 I 0

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