Multiple challenges impeding green transformation

By Dilan Pamuk

ISTANBUL (AA) - The greatest challenge for green transformation is the reluctance of countries to give up on fossil fuels, according to an American economist.

Although a great number of countries have been gravitating toward greener energy sources as part of the recent agreements on climate policies, challenges still remain.

"If you're going to have a renewable-dominant energy infrastructure, you have to solve intermittency," Robert Pollin, a professor at the Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts, told Anadolu Agency.

He said the sun does not always shine, and the wind does not always blow. "So that means we have to have high quality, affordable storage."

Pollin stressed the developments in solar panel technologies are gradually making a renewable-dominant system more possible every day.

"The technology showed us the data on the costs of solar having come down 80% in the last decade."

Citing reports, he said, the efficiency of solar panels has doubled from 18% to 40% and the cost has come down to three cents per kilowatt/hour from six cents.

- ‘Zero-energy buildings possible even in cold climates’

He said another challenge hindering the use of renewable energy was land constraints.

"In the US’ the Great Plains States, that is South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Nebraska, there already the farmers are putting up turbines on their agricultural land. They can still operate the agricultural land maybe 95% of what they were with before they put up the turbines," he said.

"And the same thing with solar; you can put up a solar array and grow crops underneath it and crops will flourish with shade," he said.

Pollin went on to say: "I think that in a country that is land-abundant like the US (...) we can get more than 50% of electricity generation in a high-efficiency economy from putting solar panels on roofs on highways and parking lots."

Mentioning that a similar practice was implemented in the building where his office is at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Pollin said: "My building is net-zero-emissions building. And we're in a cold climate. We don't have a particularly high level of sunlight or wind. We have solar panels on the roof. And we have geothermal energy. So, if it can be done in Western Massachusetts to create a zero-emission building, basically, you can do it any place."

- Some countries to import clean energy

Pollin anticipated that countries with land constraints will have to import clean energy from countries with higher potential to reach their net-zero goals, focusing on the example of Germany.

"We can't assume that Germany is going to be able to put up all the solar panels to run 100% of their economy, so there will be imported renewable energy. So that entails having the high-quality transmission system," he said. "We're talking about importing from North Africa, which is not land-constrained. You have the whole Sahara Desert that you can generate solar energy (on)."

He noted that such a transformation cannot be expected to take place immediately. "But it can happen over one to two decades through understanding how to build energy-efficient structures, how to make use of geothermal energy as a supplemental source using the combination of wind and solar as your primary source."

"And that's really the project, I think," he added.

- Mineral sources should be acquired without environmental costs

Pollin said another great challenge impeding green transformation is the mineral use for renewable energy sources.

"If we're really building out 100% or 90% global renewable energy, we're going to have demands for minerals that we don't have now."

Noting that cobalt and lithium have great importance in terms of renewable energy sources, Pollin said: "Where do we get these supplies? Can we actually ramp up the demand 6-7-fold without creating huge other environmental costs, without exploiting labor in the south? I don't think that one is solved yet."

- ‘Problem of financing can easily be overcome’

Touching on the difficulty of financing in the field of renewable energy, Pollin said finance can be overcome easily when evaluated from a technical perspective.

"If my calculations are vaguely correct, and they correspond with other models, 2.5% of GDP to finance the green transition, it's not hard to find that money," he said.

"I mean, during the COVID lockdown in the US, the Fed Reserve pumped in 20% of GDP to bail out Wall Street, with no discussion in a matter of weeks. So, to find 2.5% of GDP is easy," he added.

- Personal interests: Greatest challenge

Evaluating the economic value of the fossil fuel industry, Pollin said the personal interests of the sector manipulate climate politics. "The pure politics is, you have a massive self-interest from the fossil fuel industry and the industry overall, including public and private ownership, is $14 trillion," he said.

Recalling COP26, in which over 40 countries worldwide pledged to phase out the use of coal in the upcoming decades to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees above the pre-industrial average, Pollin said: "And what would be so-called stranded assets? Oil, coal, and gas that they own, that they can't burn. Would be a lost revenue of $14 trillion; that's a lot of money. Nobody wants to give up $14 trillion. But they have to. So that is the biggest issue."