SPECIAL FEATURE
Amir Lebdioui
provide a new lease of life to oil wells. These are small criticisms, however. This hugely informative book remains a must- read for any national or international policy-maker tasked with balancing climate planning with economic development – a roadmap to global economic justice via “heresy” and green innovation. Profile: https://www.qeh.ox.ac.uk/ person/amir-lebdioui Watch the author’s trailer here: https://youtu.be/bPcOWJ9x4V0 Read the full open access book on Cambridge University Press here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/ elements/survival-of-the-greenest/F0 A8EDD3878C262B24FAEC1A9CE1CA 18#A-sec-8 Amir Lebdioui is Associate Professor of the Political Economy of Development and Director, Technology and Management Centre for Development at the University of Oxford, UK. A development economist, his research has focused on the economic diversification of resource-dependent nations, green industrial policy and low carbon innovation, commodity value addition and biodiversity- based development models. An Algerian national, he holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK.
“Oil and gas reservoirs can be reconverted for carbon storage... while petroleum refineries can be repurposed as biofuel refineries.”
Amir Lebdioui, Director, Technology & Management Centre for Development, Oxford University
Even the well-endowed should proceed with care, warns Lebdioui. He counsels caution for the coming “superpowers” of the green transition, urging among others Chile (for its lithium) and Rwanda (for its tantalum) to avoid the fate of Nauru. A small island nation in the Central Pacific with 10,000 people living on just over 20 km 2 , Nauru grew rich from phosphate mining in the late 20th century – at one point generating the world’s highest GDP per capita. Yet its deposits were soon exhausted, leaving its environment in ruins and the economy in freefall. Beyond such cautionary tales, Lebdioui presents a long list of inequalities and not just between the Global North and South. By 2021, Africa had captured less than 2.5 percent of global jobs in the renewable energy sector, for instance, while China boasted 42 percent. The same year renewable energy investment per capita was less than US$1 in sub-Saharan Africa but more than US$100 in the USA, Canada, Japan, China and the EU. So what can be done to speed up and scale up climate financing across the Global South? Many experts from various fields suggest “de-risking” as a way to get more private sector actors on board, either by reducing or transferring the burden of investment risk. Lebdioui agrees but with caveats, stressing the need to balance policy incentives with strict conditionality (as per the winning formula of the Asian Tiger economies in the late 20th century). The alternative
is clear, warns Lebdioui, citing how almost half the projects in South Africa’s renewable power purchase program had failed by 2023. Accessible and digestible at only 73 pages, Survival of the Greenest is meticulously researched, clear and comprehensive. Yet there are one or two glaring omissions. There is barely any mention of nuclear power, despite its small land footprint, low-carbon emissions, high-energy density and overall reliability. There is also next to nothing on grid-scale batteries or geothermal energy, which can backstop the intermittent nature of wind and solar power generation or even (theoretically)
Expert view
Photo: JWPC
Gernot Wagner, Faculty Director, Climate Knowledge Initiative, Columbia Business School, USA
“Amir Lebdioui nails the mandate of the green transition beginning with the opening quote by Charles Darwin: As uncomfortable as that is for most, perhaps especially for politicians the world over, none of this is if , it’s when economies adjust to the new climate realities. Despite this inevitability, there are, of course, plenty of choices along the way. Proactively managing the low-carbon transition clearly beats passively awaiting one’s fate. That’s also where the details begin to matter, and one hard truth is, for example, that the virtuous cycle of ever cheaper solar photovoltaics, battery, and other renewables prices creates a vicious cycle for energy companies. It’s a lot easier to make a lot of money when the price of energy basically remains constant, as it has been for coal for the past 200 years. Climate costs get externalized, profits get internalized. Solar photovoltaic producers like China’s LONGi have been instrumental in driving down the cost of solar PV, but their own bottom line is suffering as a result.”
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