The Rand Corporation’s been designing war games with the Pentagon since the 1950s, modelling such hard-nosed security scenarios as a two-front U.S. war with China and Russia. Now the think tank is turning its realpolitik tool kit to a question more often associated with environmental dreamers: How will clean energy change the world? Rand is among the small but growing number of research organizations, universities and at least one European government that have started gaming out the gritty geopolitical implications of a globe dominated by green energy. It’s the latest sign that the once quaint idea of renewable energy displacing fossil fuels has gone mainstream.
Last year was a turning point. China, the world’s biggest polluter, finally joined the cascade of nations and companies setting target dates for carbon neutrality. The European Union for the first time generated more electricity from carbon-free sources than polluting ones. Joe Biden won the U.S. presidency, bringing an ambitious climate agenda to the White House.
Addressing the United Nations Security Council last month, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson ridiculed those who still think of climate change as “green stuff from a bunch of tree-hugging tofu munchers,” unsuited to serious diplomacy.
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Power Surge
Renewables share of global power capacity and generation, 2007-2019
Source: : UNEP, Frankfurt School-UNEP Centre, BloombergNEF
Note: Renewables figure excludes large hydro. Capacity and generation based on BloombergNEF totals
Some experts even predict that the end of an era defined by uneven access to fossil fuel deposits will produce a security dividend, similar to the one that followed the end of the Cold War. After all, a latter-day Saddam Hussein would have little reason to invade Kuwait to seize its solar parks, as he did in 1990 for its oil wells, because there would no longer be anything special about Kuwait’s patch of desert. It would be cheaper to buy panels to put on his own.