Another myth of broken coal as developing countries turn to renewable energies

New study challenges myth that developing countries around the world are keeping coal-fired generators on fire, revealing that emerging economies not only drive investment and development in renewable energy, but also cut in half their new coal plant.

The data, collected in the latest Bloomberg New Energy Finance Climatescope survey, shows that cutting technology costs and developing innovative policies has enabled developing countries to gain leadership in the field of technology. clean energy emanating from richer countries.

The report shows that in 2017, developing countries added a record of zero-carbon generating capacity of 114 GW, of which 94 GW in wind and solar – another record.

At the same time, they have put in use the least new electricity generation capacity from coal since at least 2006, with new coal construction in 2017 that was 38% lower than that of coal. 39 previous year, at 48 GW.

This figure, says BloombergNEF, represents not only half of what was added in 2015 when the coal market put into operation peaked at 97 GW, but almost half of the solar and wind capacity added by these countries in 2017.

This is bad news for the governments of developed countries like the Australian coalition Morrison, who wants to say that if Australia does not burn its coal in new plants, other countries will do it, like China and China. India, as well as our neighbors, Indonesia.

According to the BNEF, these countries – which, unlike many developing countries, are experiencing a high demand for electricity – play a leading role in the construction of cheap renewable energies and in the reduction of electricity. additional cost of these energy technologies.

The report says that this shift in global leadership in clean energy is motivated by the rapid improvement of the economy of clean energy technologies, including wind and solar.

"Thanks to the exceptional natural resources of many developing countries and dramatically reduced equipment costs, new renewable energy projects are now supplanting the new fossil fuel facilities with price, without subsidies," he says.

This trend has been most apparent, he says, in the more than 28 GW subscribed during calls for tenders in emerging markets in 2017, involving developer offerings to provide wind turbines for as few as $ 17.7 / MWh and solar energy for only $ 18.9 / MWh.

Climatescope also revealed that clean energy dollars were pouring into more countries than ever before, with some 54 developing countries registering investments in at least one wind farm and 76 countries securing funding for solar projects of 1.5 MW or more throughout the year.

"It's quite a turnaround," said Dario Traum, BNEF senior partner and Climatescope project manager, in comments accompanying the report.

"A few years ago, some argued that less developed countries could not, or even should not, develop energy production with zero-carbon sources, because they were too expensive,"

"Today, these countries are at the forefront in deployment, investment, policy innovation and cost reduction."

But that does not mean that the global climate challenge is less daunting.

While new coal capacity rose to its lowest level in more than 10 years, real output from coal-fired plants rose 4% in 2017 to 6.4 TWh.

And despite ample evidence that newly constructed renewables can underestimate the price of newly built coal-fired plants, 193 GW of coal is currently under construction in developing countries, according to Coalswarm data.

According to the BNEF, with regard to the climate, the real challenge for renewable energies is not only to exploit the new coal-fired power plants to create new construction opportunities, but also to replace the existing coal-fired power plants, many of which come just to be put into service.

Indeed, the same challenge seems to be facing us here in Australia – although in our case, these coal plants are at the end of their life, not at the beginning.