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View all search resultsGreen power can’t drive COVID recovery
Recovery must focus not on cheap and dependable conventional power sources, they tell us, but on unreliable and costly wind and solar power.
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O
n Thursday, July 9, the International Energy Agency (IEA) is hosting its Clean Energy Transitions Summit, an on-line event that IEA executive director Fatih Birol calls “the most important global event on energy and climate issues of 2020.”
It will bring together high-ranking representatives of the world’s largest economies as well as developing nations, accounting for 80 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The IEA says that “discussions will be informed by the IEA's World Energy Outlook Sustainable Recovery report …”
Among the recommendations of this document? “Accelerate the growth of wind and solar PV [photovoltaics].”
This idea will be supported by politicians and activists across the world who, for months now, have been calling for a ‘green recovery’ from the COVID-19-induced economic shutdown. We must return to a ‘new normal,’ they say, one in which action on climate change is put front and center.
That would be a serious mistake. Consider the following analogy.
Imagine you are travelling in the safest, most powerful ocean liner in the world. One day, in the midst of a severe storm, the captain announces, “To ensure your safety, we’re scuttling the ship. Man the lifeboats!”
A deck-hand explains to the incredulous passengers, “The Captain believes that big vessels like ours are making storms worse. So, we must sink the ship!”
