While fossil fuel interests continue to cling to 19th century technology in developed nations, the developing world increasingly is betting on the technologies of the 21st century.

IPS News:

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jun 13 2013 (IPS) – Emerging economies such as Mexico and India are shifting energy investments into renewable resources while industrialised countries hesitate, noted two new United Nations reports released Wednesday in Nairobi, Kenya.

“There is a structural change in the global energy sector underway,” said Ulf Moslener, head of research of the Frankfurt School in Germany.

“Costs are dropping radically. Renewables represented 6.5 percent of all electricity generated and reduced carbon emissions by 1 billion tonnes in 2012,” said Moslener, co-author of Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2013, a report sponsored by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).

Developing countries are finding installing green energy to be far less expensive than relying on fossil fuels, Moslener told IPS. Poorer countries want to reap the benefits of stable energy costs, new jobs, improved air quality and reduced health and climate damage.

While political debates about the future of green energy preoccupy countries such as the United States, United Kingdom and Germany, developing countries have embraced cleaner energy. The move is reflected by a narrowing investment gap. In 2012, developing countries invested 112 billion dollars in clean energy, compared to developed economies’ 132 billion dollars.

Investors understand that clean energy no longer costs more than fossil energy. As such, there is a lot of excitement about the potential of large-scale projects in wide range of countries.

Nevertheless, investments in clean energy in 2013 would have been higher had governments in Europe and North America not abruptly pulled back from green energy policies.

“No industry has been treated as badly as the clean energy sector, particularly in Europe,” Liebreich said in an interview.

Frequent and sometimes wholesale changes in renewable energy policies create market uncertainty, he said, so investors hold back, waiting for clarity and stability.

Such changes are being driven by polarised politics and a fact-free debate about future energy choices, particularly in the United Kingdom, United States, Australia and Canada. These countries are going to be five years behind the shift to low-cost, clean energy, he said.

Liebreich highlighted Canada’s obsession with its tar sands as good example of a government’s failure to comprehend that future economic success will be based on clean energy sources. “They are not serving the public interest,” he said.