Prudence Dato (IREGE/ University Savoie Mont
Blanc)
Recently, the Australian prime minister’s chief
business adviser, Maurice Newman, the chairman of Tony Abbott’s business
advisory council has accused the United Nations (UN) of using climate
change science to lead a new world order, while Ms Figueres, the top UN
climate negotiator is visiting Australia to urge the country to move away from heavily
polluting coal production[1].
Although Newman’s statements are habitually
provocative and
climate change skeptical[2],
this questions the geopolitics’ issues of a transition to a green economy. Geopolitics’ considerations could hinder the
transition to a green economy in the sense that energy transition may affect international
relations between energy producers and energy consumers by creating a new world
order.
The geopolitics of renewable energy may depend on the scarcity of
rare minerals that are needed to produce renewable energy[3]
and also on innovation in renewable energy technologies. For instance, China has monopole (97%) on
rare earth elements[4],
which are critical for the production of renewable energy equipment. Then an economy that relies on the sole use of
renewable energy will give more power to China while it reduces that of the
countries that currently dominate oil market. Although the energy transition can
potentially improve social welfare, some countries (those having rare mineral
resources) are winner while others (those having only oil for instance) are
loser. In this regard, one needs to consider those disparities when negotiating
international agreements on climate change. Otherwise, some countries may not keep
their promises or may not even make promises on reducing or on eliminating their
dependency on polluting sources of energy. What if international agreements
consider the redistribution of the gain from energy transition to compensate
the losers?
Are rare materials enough to dominate the new world order of
renewable energy? Renewable energy is also
capital-intensive and its production efficiently depends on innovation. As a
result, countries that are not endowed with rare minerals, can count on their capital
and /or their investment in innovation. Concerning capital, USA and Germany
were the countries that invested the most in 2008 respectively in new clean
technologies and in classical renewable equipment (photovoltaic solar panels
combined with wind energy). And Germany develops innovation as well as it owned
the highest share (24%) of the awarded patents in the wind energy-industry
between 2001 and 2005, while in the solar energy-industry Japan owned the
highest share (50%) of all patents[5].
Without efficient exploitation of the rare minerals resources to produce the
renewable energy, energy transition could not be sustainable[6]
and could generate reverse results in the long term. Hence, investments should
be more dedicated to innovation so that the transition to a green economy makes
less pressure on rare materials and becomes economically, environmentally and
socially efficient.
But as countries will have to
secure energy that is important to support their economic growth, they will
explore all the possible means to efficiently get renewable energy. Then, those
countries endowed with rare materials, or those having appropriate innovation
to produce renewable energy with less cost or those having capital to invest
more in renewable energy can probably dominate the new world order. This may well
generate political conflicts or war depending on the power concentration. How
will poor countries without endowment, capital or innovation act in this new world
order?
[1] http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/05/08/climate-change-australia-idUKL4N0XZ1I220150508
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/maurice-newman
[3] For more details,
see the previous post on: http://ethkf.blogspot.fr/2014/12/is-renewable-energy-really-inexhaustible.html
[4] de Ridder,
Marjolein. The Geopolitics of Mineral Resources for Renewable Energy
Technologies. The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, 2013.
[5] Criekemans, David.
"The geopolitics of renewable energy: different or similar to the
geopolitics of conventional energy?." ISA Annual Convention. 2011.
[6] Vidal, Olivier,
Bruno Goffé, and Nicholas Arndt. "Metals for a low-carbon
society." Nature Geoscience 6.11 (2013): 894-896.
