On Climate, Developing Countries Need More Than Betting Billions on Clean Energy Breakthroughs

When the heads of state gathered in Paris at the beginning of the climate talks last week, there was much excitement over the launch of Mission Innovation, a program to "reinvigorate and accelerate public and private global clean energy innovation with the objective to make clean energy widely affordable."

This was a welcome step and, frankly, long overdue — total public energy R&D expenditures of the major industrialized countries are still lower than the peaks reached after the oil shocks of the 1970s.

Yet at the same time, it is symptomatic of the flawed global approach to address climate change. We move forward in some ways but sidestep the key issues — in this case, the provision of adequate and suitable support to developing countries to quickly begin a transition to low-carbon energy. The result is that we leave large gaps in our attempts to avoid dangerous climate change....

Continue reading: https://theconversation.com/on-climate-developing-countries-need-more-than-betting-billions-on-clean-energy-breakthroughs-51972