How Grid Investments Will Aid World's Developing Countries

Poorer countries usually lack highly developed electrical distribution systems. Oddly enough, the additional grids now being built in the developed world will help improve living standards in these less developed countries.

Representatives of these countries have recently begun demanding that richer countries help finance their struggles with global warming.

In these poor countries, people use very little energy per capita.

But they face special damage from the climate changes caused by burning hydrocarbon fuels in other countries.

An island country with most of its territory only a few feet above sea level, for example, could be completely wiped out if melting glaciers and polar ice raise the sea level several feet. Major, heavily populated, parts of other developing countries are also threatened.

Leaders of these poor countries note that the worsening climate is not their fault.

Historically, most of the carbon dioxide poured into the atmosphere by burning coal, oil, and natural gas has come from the advanced industrial countries of Europe and America, joined in recent decades by China and India.

The remedy the poor countries are demanding is foreign aid.

But direct foreign aid to any country is a delicate matter, because there is always a danger that it will end up in the pockets of corrupt officials.

Foreign aid should therefore, as far as possible, avoid direct transfers of cash.

As poor countries become less poor, their people will be using substantially more energy.

It's important to help them avoid having to burn hydrocarbon fuels as they become richer.

So, like the rest of the world, they need to be converting everything possible to electricity and greening the local production of energy.

A major problem with solar energy is that it is intermittent at the local level, disappearing when the sun goes down. Therefore a vital part of converting the world to green energy will be construction of a worldwide grid.

This grid will allow electricity produced by the sun to be used everywhere, not just where the sun is currently shining.

Like all other countries, the currently poor ones will need to be hooked into this grid.

Solar PV (Photo Voltaic) panels are better investments the larger the grid to which they are connected, since they allow electricity that is more than that needed locally to be shipped to other places rather than simply wasted.

Building the worldwide grid, which will mainly be financed by industrialized countries and private investors, will therefore make an important contribution to the developing countries once they, too, are connected to that grid.

It will make local investments in PV panels and the like in those countries more valuable than they otherwise would be.

Connection to the worldwide grid will also make investments in building local grids inside these poorer countries more valuable. And it is a form of foreign aid that cannot be stolen by corrupt national leaders.

The rich countries could certainly help pay for connecting these countries' internal grids into the worldwide grid.

Some assistance in financing installation of PV panels in the poorer countries may also be needed, but this will be in the interest of the industrialized world because it will benefit from the electricity produced in those poorer countries.

Exporting electricity produced by the PV panels in the developing countries will be a source of income for those countries, just as oil producing countries have benefited from exporting oil. Exporting electricity could become a very substantial source of revenue for today's poor countries.

Paul F. deLespinasse is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Computer Science at Adrian College. Read Professor Paul F. deLespinasse's Reports — More Here.