The green opportunity

John Podesta

In countries around the world, the global financial crisis is crippling economies and making it more difficult for people to provide for their families on a daily basis. However, there is an opportunity presented by the financial crisis – an opportunity to transform the way we produce and use energy. The challenge of solving our mounting economic, energy, and global warming crises provides an extraordinary opportunity to reinvigorate the economy through investment in clean, sustainable, low-carbon energy sources.  There are two dimensions to resolving these challenges, each of which is explored below:

Transforming energy infrastructure to spur growth in advanced economies
In the US and other advanced economies, the transformation of our antiquated energy infrastructure can be the engine for innovation, economic growth, and job creation in the coming decades. This transformation can be structured to ensure that green economic growth is a tide that lifts all boats, both internationally and domestically – especially those in poverty and living in the most marginalised communities – and reinvests in strong urban and rural fabrics. This investment can offer pathways into the middle class, skills training, and help to rebuild career ladders by creating jobs with family supporting wages in the construction trades and in manufacturing within the industries of the future. Investing in renewable energy and energy efficiency creates, on average, nearly four times as many jobs per dollar invested as traditional fossil fuel-based generating technologies. The transformation of advanced economies to low-carbon production is necessary to meet the climate change challenge, but it is not sufficient.  Ultimately, a strategy is needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to rapidly green the economies of the rapidly developing world as well. The G20 can and must make this a priority issue. Countries around the world are making more than $2 trillion in new investments in an effort to recover from the current global recession, and it is imperative that this spending move the entire international community toward a low carbon future.

Eradicating energy poverty through green policies in the developing world
While reducing emissions, we must ensure that the energy needs of the poorest countries are also addressed. More than two billion people lack regular access to modern energy services, and 1.6 billion do not have electricity in their homes.  This extreme “energy poverty” undermines their ability to meet basic human needs, and places an increased burden on families, particularly the women and children who must use their labour to compensate by, for example, walking for hours to collect water and firewood.  The lack of access to clean, reliable and affordable energy supplies increases health risks and early mortality because people have no choice but to turn to “dirty” fuels for cooking and heating.  Meanwhile, energy poverty also impedes economic development by constraining production, trade, and the growth of viable local markets. The global focus on renewable energy sources and the development of new, low-carbon emitting technologies offers promise for a new energy future for the developing world.  The potential exists to develop renewable energy strategies that could both meet energy demand and reduce carbon emissions.  In so doing, the long unmet needs for energy in impoverished communities and countries could be addressed in ways that encourage development while helping to minimise climate change.

The world’s poorest countries have a right to development in a carbon-constrained world, and, as the primary contributors to global warming pollution, the world’s wealthiest nations have a moral responsibility to assist in this development. Without effective and reliable funding streams and international mechanisms that prioritise those in greatest need, the progress of the developed world could leave the developing world behind, replicating historical patterns of development that have excluded the world’s poorest countries. The consequences would not only lead to increased poverty, but would also deepen the already dangerous gap between the world’s haves and have-nots.

John Podesta is president and chief executive officer of the Center for American Progress in Washington