Latin America is Leading the World in Linking Alternative Energy and International Development. It’s Time the U.S. Paid Attention.
by Sam Downing on October 29, 2008 in Opinion
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (MPA ‘84), speaking at HKS last week, declared the global climate crisis “the defining issue of our time.” This strong pronouncement is not without its critics. Many among us believe our generation’s primary rendezvous with destiny is not to reverse global warming, but to end global poverty. The effort to reverse climate change is important, but it is the global war on poverty that constitutes a truly unprecedented humanitarian challenge and a moral imperative that is, to paraphrase our own Prof. Dani Rodrik, within reach for the first time in human history.
In fact, the two challenges are tightly intertwined. The global climate crisis is fueling research and development into alternative energy sources that have the potential to propel economic growth and cut poverty across the developing world.
The connection between clean energy initiatives and international development is stronger in Latin America than anywhere else in the world. Consider the following facts from the Council on Foreign Relations:
- Latin America is not only the largest foreign supplier of oil to the United States, accounting for 30 percent of imports (compared with 20 percent from the Middle East)…
- … Latin America also far outpaces the United States in the utilization of clean energy, harnessing hydroelectric power to fuel 23 percent of its energy needs (as compared to less than three percent in the United States).
- On the Itaipú Dam of the Paraná River, the governments of Paraguay and Brazil have constructed a hydroelectric plant that is the largest in the world by energy output. The Paraná watershed is likely to become an even more important source of clean energy for the global market as public, private, and international investors continue to harness its power.
- One Latin American nation, Brazil, produces 38 percent of the world’s ethanol supply. Ethanol makes up nearly half of the fuel Brazilian cars use to operate, compared with just four percent in the United States. Brazilians also lead the world in developing flex-fuel technology. Nearly 90 percent of new cars built in Brazil run on flex-fuel.
Even the smallest, poorest countries in the Americas have new potential for linking development and environmental sustainability in a world of global warming. Guatemalan entrepreneur Ricardo Schaeuffler Osorio, in Miami last week for the third annual Sugar and Ethanol Trade Summit of the Americas, described how he turned La Unión, a sugar refining company, into a producer of steam energy and ethanol to meet the needs of the Central American market. Generating energy from sugar cane waste and developing a dehydrated ethanol distillery, his company showed the way for sugar industries in El Salvador and Costa Rica to contribute to national development and environmental sustainability.
So what does the Latin American green energy revolution mean for the U.S.?
The U.S. could provide a major impetus to both development and green energy by dropping the sugar exemption from our free trade agreement with the nations of Central America and the Dominican Republic. The next administration should lower tariffs on Brazilian corn products and partner with regional investors to develop a freer global ethanol market.
Our energy security also hinges on our support for Latin American alternative energy projects. The U.S. will soon be unable to meet its demand for natural gas, which is expected to rise 0.6 percent every year through 2030, according to the United States Energy Information Administration’s International Energy Outlook 2007. Competing initiatives to build continental natural gas pipelines in South America have been shelved for political reasons. Cautious United States leadership and targeted infrastructure investments could break the stalemate on this major economic development initiative and secure U.S. access to the emerging South American market for liquefied natural gas.
Alternative energy has the power to fuel development in Latin America, but by itself, it is not enough to eliminate poverty in the hemisphere. National governments need to redouble their efforts to tackle longstanding structural impediments to growth including insecurity, corruption, and inequality. Major new investments in education, infrastructure, research, and development will be necessary to fuel sustainable growth in the alternative energy sector and across Latin American economies.
Nowhere in the world are the solutions to global warming and global poverty so closely connected, or so compellingly linked to the American foreign policy options of the next administration, as they are in Latin America. Located at the very intersection of the two greatest challenges facing our times, Latin America must not have its vital importance ignored by its neighbor to the north.
Comments
Got something to say?
