Green economy: Local economic development an opportunity to transform lives of hundreds of millions
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00:00Next, it's increasingly likely 2024 will be the hottest year on record in spite of July
00:06ending a 13-month streak of monthly temperature records.
00:11This coming from the EU's climate monitor this Thursday.
00:13The Copernicus Climate Change Service said last month that it was the second warmest
00:18on record books going back to 1940, only slightly cooler than July 2023.
00:31Climate is a big issue of course and joining us from New York is Ashvin Dayal, Senior Vice
00:36President of the Rockefeller Foundation.
00:39The Green Power Gap and the Energy Hypocrisy your report just concluded highlights shortcomings
00:43in expectation and execution of policy and practice.
00:48Always it's the poorer countries who come off worse, isn't it?
00:50Can you give us a sense of the problem as you see it?
00:53Clearly, we've been talking about climate change on a broader basis, but you're homing
00:57in on energy, renewable energy and those who are winners and losers.
01:02Well, thank you and good afternoon, yes.
01:05I mean, when we think about the term sort of climate hypocrisy, you know, we're faced
01:09with a situation where in fact the people suffering the most from those heatwaves are
01:14living in energy poor countries who are least responsible for the climate impact that we
01:19have today.
01:20So our report really points out that we have two futures ahead of us.
01:24We either have a future in which these developing countries, and we've studied about 72 countries
01:29that are energy poor, they have development aspirations, they want to grow their economies
01:34and they're going to need to consume in most cases about 10 times the amount of electricity
01:39per capita than they are today.
01:41And the question is, will that growth in demand between now and 2050 happen with a renewable
01:47clean energy pathway or will it happen on the basis of fossil fuel development, which
01:52is very much the right of these countries if that's the path that is chosen because
01:56there isn't the financing and political support made available for the alternative path.
02:01And so the report really points out what a massive effort the world needs to pull together
02:06in order to help 72 countries actually deliver clean, abundant energy and lift hundreds of
02:13millions of people out of the situations of poverty or vulnerability and improve their
02:18economic future.
02:20Developing nations always look to the fact that the countries that we today call the
02:24West, it started with Britain, didn't it, in 1750.
02:27They all industrialized using fossil fuels and of course as they became more modern,
02:31more industrial, the pollution went up.
02:34Now these days, as you've just intimated, that if the developing countries will develop
02:38using the same process, it might be something that the world cannot actually take in terms
02:43of the climate change that will enforce.
02:46So what is the solution?
02:49Is it the technology exchange?
02:51Because the renewable energy processes are there, aren't they?
02:54Yes.
02:55And so you're right.
02:56It is technology exchange.
02:57It is financing.
02:58It is political will.
02:59And the point you make is absolutely right, Mark.
03:02We don't want 72 energy-poor countries to grow their economies on the back of fossil
03:07fuels the same way that the United Kingdom did during the Industrial Revolution.
03:12We simply can't as a planet sustain that.
03:14We will probably go not just beyond two degrees, but beyond a two and a half degree scenario
03:19if that happens.
03:20Because as I said, these countries are going to grow their demand.
03:23They are going to grow their economies.
03:25The irony is that if you look at the continent of Africa, it has 60 percent of the solar
03:30resources available to it, yet it only gets less than 1 percent of the investment into
03:35solar technologies.
03:36These are expensive technologies, even though the prices have come down.
03:40But the good news is the way we electrify communities has changed.
03:44We have many more decentralized or local energy solutions.
03:47It doesn't have to be these large coal-fired power plants generating through centralized
03:52grids.
03:53We have the technologies.
03:54We have the business models.
03:55But we need the financing and the technology transfer that needs to be made available to
04:01many of these countries, or we will indeed end up in a two and a half degree planet world.
04:06You made me just think of my friends in Botswana who I've just been speaking to, journalist
04:10friends, to get the latest quote from their 200 meter runner winning a gold medal.
04:15They're celebrating there.
04:17On other sides in Botswana, I was there a couple of years ago, they were celebrating
04:21putting in a water main into the south of the capital.
04:24It seems unthinkable that people don't get running water into their homes, but that was
04:29something they were celebrating doing, a major advancement.
04:31Botswana trying to get into also the idea of creating its own Silicon Valley type structure
04:37within its country, trying to sort of move on two, three leaps to create its own sort
04:43of post-industrial revolution and make things happen there.
04:46Is that something that has to come from within Africa or something that needs that sort of
04:50impetus from the West, shall we say?
04:53Well, I think it's a global effort that is needed.
04:56I mean, what Botswana is trying to do is actually what many countries can try to do, which is
05:00leapfrog and take advantage of these new digital technologies, renewable technologies, battery
05:06storage technologies.
05:08Think about the mobile phone revolution 20 years ago and how so many countries were able
05:12to transform communications as a result of not relying on traditional mainline infrastructure.
05:19So, you know, the prices have come down, but no country around the world has actually fully
05:22electrified itself without a significant amount of public sector finance.
05:26And you're dealing with countries that are already heavily indebted, that have had promises
05:31made around financing for renewables, are being expected to deliver commitments around
05:37net zero and their nationally determined contributions in terms of what they will do to reduce their
05:42emissions, but are not being backed up with the support that's needed.
05:46I mean, we're very encouraged by the recent announcement, for example, by the World Bank
05:50and the African Development Bank to increase their financing to electrify 300 million Africans
05:56over the next six years.
05:59It's a mammoth task, and we're sort of getting behind them to try and make that effort a
06:03reality.
06:04But we're going to need a lot more partnerships and commitments like that around the world.
06:07And the impacts on the ground are transformational.
06:10This doesn't have to be a zero-sum game.
06:12I've personally traveled all over Africa and in South Asia and seen the transformation
06:17that clean energy can bring to a local community when farmers now have the ability to have
06:22cold storage on site so they can protect their produce rather than having to sell it at a
06:27lower price, where carpenters can move from manual appliances to mechanized tools and
06:32quadruple their productivity.
06:34This is local economic development.
06:35This is what the green economy, which is this sort of jargony term, actually means for people's
06:41lives.
06:42And we need a real opportunity for this to be the climate and development project of
06:47the next 10 years that can transform hundreds of millions of people's lives.
06:51Ashvin Dayal, thank you very much for telling us about this and flagging out to us the issues.
06:563.8 billion people across 72 countries with insufficient electricity to access modern
07:00opportunity and prosperity.
07:01We heard it from Ashvin and all about the possibilities of getting past that.
07:06And thank you, sir, for joining us.
07:07Ashvin Dayal of the Rockefeller Foundation.
07:10Thank you very much indeed.