Abstract
China and India are not only the two most populous nations on Earth, they are also two of the most rapidly growing economies. Historically, economic and social development have been subsidized by cheap and abundant fossil-fuels. Climate change from fossil-fuel emissions has resulted in the need to reduce fossil-fuel emissions in order to avoid catastrophic warming. If climate goals are achieved, China and India will have been the first major economies to develop via renewable energy sources. In this article, we examine the factors of projected population growth, available fossil-fuel reserves, and renewable energy installations required to develop scenarios in which both China and India may increase per capita energy consumption while remaining on trach to meet ambitious climate goals. Here, we show that China and India will have to expand their renewable energy infrastructure at unprecedented rates in order to support both population growth and development goals. In the larger scope of the literature, we recommend community-based approaches to microgrid and cookstove development in both China and India.
Highlights
In 1865, Jevons published ‘The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal Mines’ [1]
Walsh et al [44] identified four issues that would influence China and India’s negotiation agendas surrounding the 2009 Copenhagen Accord: first, developing nations need to prioritize the alleviation of emissions or poverty; second, statistical methods should be used for negotiations; third, how to finance mitigation projects; and fourth, how to address repercussions for countries that failed to abide by their Kyoto protocol commitments
If the 2017 populations of China and India had consumed at the American level (289 GJ/person), they would have consumed 1.3 times the 2017 total global energy production
Summary
In 1865, Jevons published ‘The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal Mines’ [1]. The coal question in his work related to the possibility that the United Kingdom might someday run out of coal to fuel the ongoing Industrial. Coal production in the United Kingdom peaked in 1913, and the last deep coal mine there closed in 2015, with only minor surface mining still occurring. Though coal is a non-renewable and finite resource, the 21st century coal question may better be focused on the climate change implications of combusting fossil fuels. In the face of climate change and a slow transition to a renewable energy infrastructure, are the developing nations ( those with large populations) arriving late to the table for cheap, rapid economic development?
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