Developping countries leapfrogging to renewables

There are still over a billion and half people without electricity. What if developping nations of Asia, Latin America and Africa went directly from ” no reliable electricity ” to “ electricity from renewables only ” ?

According to Climate Progress :

(A)ccording to Climatescope 2014 — a worldwide analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) of 55 countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa — developing countries’ renewable energy capacity grew 143 percent between 2008 and 2013.

By contrast, the wealthy western nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) — in North America, Europe, Australia, and so forth — saw only 84 percent growth. This was while total grid capacity for the nations covered by the Climatescope analysis rose over 30 percent, but grew only 9.6 percent for the OECD countries.

(…) “Clean energy is the low-cost option in a lot of these countries,” Ethan Zindler, a Washington-based Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst, told Bloomberg news. “The technologies are cost-competitive right now. Not in the future, but right now.”

Along with the substantial supplies of natural resources developing countries often have, these numbers make renewable energy in the Climatescope nations an opportunity for investors and industry, according to the report. The Climatescope nations increased green energy investment to $122 billion last year, up from $59.3 billion in 2007.

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