By: Meir Javedanfar
05/12/2008
Bangladesh is not an oil producing country. It is an oil consumer. However due to its shrinking economy, its government is finding it economically difficult to continue importing oil for its economy.
At a recent round table titled "Future Directions of Bangladesh Foreign Policy", former senior Bangladeshi politicians called for the government to develop the country's alternative energy infrastructure, in order to reduce dependency on oil. This is a sound recommendation. However, Bangladesh and other developing countries are concerned about the cost of alternative energy infrastructure and technology,
The important question to ask is: now that the US is going to invest more money in its alternative energy infrastructure, will new developed technologies be shared with other counties? Or will they be protected like the Microsoft Windows operating code?
This question is important to ask, because if alternative energy technology is unfordable in many countries, in the absence of oil, the lights will go out in factories, schools and hospitals. This could cause internal and possibly external instability. In a globalized world, as viewed recently in the case of Somalia, instability in one area could impact the developing world.
No one is expecting private companies to give away their newly developed alternative energy products and technology for free. On the other hand, if made unfordable, as in the case of AIDS drugs, it could lead to wider gaps between rich and poor, as well as plagiarizing of technology. A balance needs to be found and this is where governments, especially that of the US and EU countries could play a part.
Meir Javedanfar, alongside Gordon Wollgam, is Project Manager and founder of the Beyond Oil project (http://beyondoil.net)
4 comments:
The situation with diffusion of new renewable energy technologies may be similar to the trends in diffusion of any other new technologies. Developing countries cannot afford the newest solutions and most often purchase technologies developed in Europe or US in the 1990s or earlier.
This trend can be influenced by, on the one hand, changes in the multilateral or bilateral trade agreements (offering more favourable conditions for the diffusion of new environmental technologies) or, on the other hand, international funding programmes promoting diffusion of eco-innovations (including renewable energy).
The new technologies may of course be transferred and applied in the developing countries, but only if the production and distribution of the energy produced can be profitable to the investor (e.g. see big plans to invest in a giant solar plant on Sahara). Ideally, the surplus of produced energy could be stored and/or send directly back to the energy importing countries who can sell it at the market prices.
The latter issue touches upon the question of the right to access to renewable energy sources such as solar, wind or notably biomass. The fact that access to renewables varies and is limited by physical distance and political divisions makes them de facto a limited resource. With the framework conditions redefined, this could become a much stronger bargaining point that developing countries can use.
Dear Michal
Your suggestions, especially regarding trade agreements is very solid. Its a great idea. Thank you for your contribution.
Michal's suggestion is indeed a good one and probably relatively easily to be put into action.
However, a key question in this context is, how difficult it will be to replicate the new technologies. If it is a relatively easy technology, identifiable by the end product itself, countries like China will simply buy a stock of it and replicate it (+/- minor changes). This might be an IPR problem, but WTO and first world countries will probably find it difficult to put too much pressure on the countries producing the replicas at a lower prize (see the case of HIV drugs).
It is in contrast far more difficult to reproduce a drug without knowing the details of its production, because the product itself doesn't unveil automatically the technology/formulation used for it and even knowing the formulation is not a guarantee for the ability to produce a generic drug having complete bioequivalence.
Even if IPR should not be a problem, it still can be that a bottleneck might appear in the form of production costs or availability of certain elements necessary in the production process. Such a bottleneck would be actually more difficult to solve with funding programs or trade agreements.
What we must also take into consideration is the transportation infrastructure. Energy produced by solar power can not be transferred by existing wiring infrastructure. Massive amounts of money will need to be invested in this area as well. Which is why its important to use tools such as trade agreements, knowledge sharing and government support in order to reduce set up costs.
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