The world’s most developed economies reached that level by burning coal to power industry. The developing nations of the 21st century can, and should, take a different path, according to a report issued Tuesday by 12 global development organizations including the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), the Catholic international development charity (CAFOD), and Christian Aid. “[T]he coal industry claims that expanding coal use is critical to fighting extreme poverty and improving energy access for billions of people in developing countries. In fact, the opposite is true,” the report says.
Continued use of coal will not eradicate poverty, but instead entrench it, the report says, as the effects of climate change hit the poor hardest: “The immediate human health impacts of coal in the developing world are staggering, particularly for poor people who are the least equipped to deal with the economic burdens of illness, a premature death in the household, or degraded water and land resources.”
Furthermore, nations developing the 21st century have more options for energy than did countries that developed long ago. “For the first time in history, renewable energy options are highly competitive with coal in nearly all markets, and becoming increasingly so. Renewable energy resources have the advantage of being more abundant and lower-cost than coal, and renewable technologies can be flexibly deployed and create more jobs,” the report says.