Are green energy policies jeopardising the economies

of developing countries?

This is a hot potato.

The answer at the moment is very clearly no,

because developing countries in truth

have implemented almost no green energy policies,

partly because, at least until the Paris accord,

they didn't really have any obligations to do so.

It was deliberately structured up to then as a system in which

the developed countries had obligations -

not that they did much - and the developing countries didn't.

Up until now, a lot of developing countries

have been saying that it's all very well

for the developed countries to essentially say

we need to stop all the oil and gas industries

in order to combat climate change.

But that's completely unfair because the developed countries

have already taken all the benefit from energy extraction

and putting all that carbon into the atmosphere,

and they've developed.

What about the developing countries

that have yet to catch up, and frankly

don't have the money to spend on alternative forms of energy?

It was widely thought that green energy sources,

like wind power and solar farms, were

expensive luxuries that really only rich, developed countries

could afford.

That started to change quite dramatically since about 2015

when, for the first time the amount of global investment

in so-called new renewables, that's wind and solar power,

not older ones like hydro power dams,

actually was larger in developing countries

than it was in developed countries.

Here, a very significant player is

China, which has invested massively

in solar energy production and battery production.

One reason is they think this is going to be the new Industrial

Revolution.

It's the next stage in human development,

as it were, in the energy system,

which is the core of any modern economy.

And they feel, the Chinese very much so,

that if they're at the frontier of the new technologies,

ahead of everybody else, they move faster,

they're going to dominate them.

Over the last decade, China has committed something

like $780bn towards wind and solar energy.

So that's quite extraordinary.

But there are other developing countries that

are really catching up fast.

In fact, last year, 29 countries joined the billion-dollar club.

That's countries that invested a billion dollars or more

into wind or solar power, and it's become much cheaper

than it used to be.

So going for a wind farm or a solar farm

is not just quicker and faster to build.

It's not just cleaner, but it's actually cheaper.