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Economic pressure in the next few decades will force developing countries
to build fossil fuel power plants and to shun nuclear and hydroelectric
power, predicts Gordon Mackerron of the Science Policy Research Unit at
the University of Sussex. With electricity consumption growing more than
three times as fast in developing countries as in industrialised nations,
emissions of greenhouse gases will grow more rapidly in developing countries.
This gloomy outcome can be avoided only if leading investors such as the
World Bank rethink their priorities, said Mackerron.

Between 1980 and 1986, electricity consumption in developing countries
rose by 7 per cent a year, compared to 2 per cent in the wealthy OECD nations.
Mackerron expects the annual rate in developing countries is likely to climb
to 10 per cent when the world economy recovers from its present slump.

Nuclear energy is unlikely to be a sig-nificant source of new power,
he said. High capital costs and the need to halt nuclear proliferation have
thwarted early hopes. India, Pakistan and China remained optimistic but
others, including Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines, have ‘given up serious
further ambitions’ in nuclear energy.

‘Renewable energy sources are equally unlikely to make a serious impact,’
said Mackerron. Most are expensive, and some operate at low efficiencies.
Those such as wind power which promise to be cheap and to work well are
‘inherently small in scale’. It would be surprising if more than 10 per
cent of new supply in developing countries were to come from nuclear power
or renewables.

Since the mid-1980s, large lenders such as the World Bank have grown
wary of backing giant hydroelectric schemes because of the social and ecological
upheavals created by earlier projects. Gas and coal are seen as cheap and
plentiful, and the technologies tried and tested, making them attractive
to investors. ‘We may therefore expect to see a much heavier concentration
than in the past on coal and gas as new power sources in the developing
world,’ said Mackerron.

To avoid this ‘we need to rig the economic signals being sent to developing
countries’, he added. Instead of funding new power plants, the World Bank
should support energy efficiency drives. Some 60 per cent of electricity
in developing countries is used in industry and there is tremendous scope
for savings by upgrading existing equipment.

Industrialised countries should be more generous so that developing
nations are not forced to buy the cheapest option. ‘This may be a pious
hope, but you can’t give it up,’ Mackerron said. He also argued that improved
transfer of modern technologies and training to allow developing countries
to maintain and develop their own industries was essential.

The immense pressure on poor countries to accept what they were ‘given’
by the rich nations, whether or not it was appropriate, was stressed by
Trevor Boopsingh, chairman of the Trinidad and Tobago Petroleum Company.
Caribbean islands were forced to take into account the dominant position
of the US, with its attitude that American technology is best. He described
the attitude as: ‘You take a small guy in the Caribbean and lean on him
really hard.’ So, for example, Jamaica had been sold the idea of American
‘clean coal’ technology, despite the large gas reserves in countries around
the Caribbean.