Are we decarbonising the wrong hemisphere?

By Will Thope

A colleague at a conference said something to me recently that has stuck in my head like a misheard song lyric.

“The global north is really good at decarbonising the global north,” she said. “But all the potential is in the global south.

She was right, of course — and I’ll get into why, and why her remarks have chimed with me so strongly, in a moment — but first I want to briefly illustrate some of the key practical and technical differences that separate these two markets.

North vs. South: Some key differences to consider

Firstly, we know that renewable energy will only achieve mass uptake if our grids can provide sufficient storage to counter the ‘duck curve’ demand problem.

In the UK, we’re retrofitting renewables into a mature grid which has already made one transition — away from coal, to gas — and has almost no coal left in the grid.

Right now, the UK has around 4GWh of battery energy storage installed. Storage capacity is currently used as a quick fix, to respond to frequency upsets and loss of inertia on the grid.

India, meanwhile — a country magnitudes larger than the UK on almost every measure, and the most populous nation on earth — has just 0.2GWh of storage capacity to lean on. Importantly, the country is not retrofitting renewables, but expanding multiple grids as energy demands soar (both from a growing middle class, and in response to fatally high temperatures).

Unlike in the UK, where energy storage primarily maintains frequency stability, we will need longer durations to shape a day’s worth of solar against demand. Building out new grids means, in theory, you can take renewables plus LDES as your starting point and simply lay out green grids.

However, the financial reality of chasing demand in a burgeoning economy is a fair way different also. Investors putting their money up in a frontier market will favour sure things that provide proven returns and ensure the lights go on.

So what we end up with is an incredible duality: India’s expanding grid effectively matching each GW of solar it puts down with a GW of coal. Positive as that may look on paper — for the sheer amount of solar capacity being committed to — those green efforts won’t count for much if you’re still going to be burning coal 30 years from now. And that’s what will happen, because once the coal capacity is built, it stays running for a long time.

Therein lies a big, and existential, challenge. But my friend at the conference — smartly — views this not as a problem, but as untapped potential: for government, investors, and innovators.

Potential, not problems

The first time I stepped off the plane in Delhi over two years ago, the wall of heat hitting my face was something I hadn’t felt before.

The first meetings I had there were also an experience unlike any I was used to.

In the UK, there is a well-trodden roadmap for innovation funding. Deep tech investors know that they are putting money — and faith — into big potential which can take several years, if not a decade, to come to fruition.

The same well-known funding ecosystem doesn’t exist in India, and elsewhere in the global south. In general, where venture capital is scarce, investment returns are expected fast.

But I didn’t get into this in search of a quick sell, or because I thought it would be easy. I don’t see a problem, I see potential.

As cleantech innovators, we should be chasing the best carbon arbitrage and asking how we can align the returns of business with the impact we want to have.

Where can we have the biggest impact?

A cleantech dollar deployed in India will have a far bigger climate impact than if it was spent in California. Not just in CO2 terms, but human experience too: it is people living in the global south who are existing on the sharp end of climate change.

If you’re motivated by impact potential as an investor, innovator, or entrepreneur, then it’s clear that the opportunity hinges on the global south. That’s why we’ve been focusing our efforts in India, where our work is most urgent.

And I’m glad we have.

What we’ve found, over two years, is a huge appetite for this work. Storage is improving. The Energy Systems Catapult and others are putting their weight behind bold ideas that stretch far beyond our borders. And our technology is getting deployed.

That, to me, is what impact looks like. It’s exactly what LiNa is all about.