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Driving a Green Economy
C ooperation between countries that have similar economic, environmental and social aspirations is increasingly being seen as a key method of identifying solutions to address today’s sustainable development challenges. In addition to the countries advancing their own green economies, such regional cooperation can also deliver ideas and resources to advance the global transformation to an inclusive green economy.Since energy use and energy access are seen as characteristics of a green economy, it is logical that growth in these sectors will be one of the drivers of a regional green economy. Regional power pools can be a key tool in tackling energy poverty in aggregates of populations facing similar problems eg. in rural Indian or in Sub-Saharan Africa’s end users. These regional power pools can mitigate risks, foster cost-efficient production and allow for shared use and financing of energy infrastructure such as power plants and grids. Infrastructural investments that would otherwise be expensive for individual countries, could work for cooperation between countries in the same region. This aspect of building regional capacity is especially important for fostering maturity of national renewable energy capacities to make them cost-competitive with fossil sources. Regional energy trade is not a new concept and has been in existence in Western Europe for the past 12 years. The Nord Pool Spot is a formalised platform that has successfully integrated the national power system operations in a unified regional electricity market where energy trade occurs 1. Even excess renewable energy from intermittent sources in one country of origin can be sold in the market. Not only does this encourage green investment and creation of green jobs (as seen in the figure below), it also reduces GHG emissions – all characteristics of a green economy.
Of more relevance to the Indian context is the existence of the same formalised platform for energy trading existing in south-south cooperation in the West African Power Pool (WAPP) since the year 2000 2. While the challenges between Nord Pool and WAPP are different, the aim of creating a regional green economy was the same. Solar exports from one country to the others in the pool enhance regional energy integration. Supporting renewable energy targets and regional energy integration can be done through targeted analysis and concrete policy recommendations. Identifying one electricity sub-sector as an important driver of the national economy has implications for poverty reduction and environmental protection. For example, a key policy tool which drove the south-south regional energy trade in WAPP was the Ghana Renewable Energy Law which aimed to reduce the risk of renewable energy investments by means of feed-in-tariffs and related investment guarantees3.UNEP’s Green Economy Scoping Study (GESS) specifies renewable energy investments, research and capacity development and energy efficiency and conservation measures as key actions by which the electricity sectors can enhance a green economy transition 4. Transposing these key actions into a theoretical Indian regional energy market, one can extrapolate that encouraging energy trade between Indian states and surrounding neighbouring countries could very well create a regional green economy. References to this regional market have been made in recent international dialogues too.In any case, a green economy has to focus on the triple bottom line of economics, environment and social equity. The discourse has now evolved from questioning the need for a green economy to questioning how to instil processes that will help make the transition to a green economy easier. One demonstrable successful way is to prioritise regional cooperation as the basis of advancing a global green agenda. Within that regional cooperation, it is to identify a major driver – be it a sub-sector or a tool – which can be the engine behind cementing that regional cooperation. In this way, one can get a step closer to realising the holy grail of a green economy. q Rowena Mathew Endnotes 2 ICAfrica. 2014. West African Power Pool. 3 UNEP. 2013. Building inclusive green economies – Success stories from South-south Cooperation. 4 Green Economy and Trade. 2012. Solar energy export potential. |