Across the Global South, renewable energy is increasingly being used to power new development projects. The aspiration is for education, healthcare, sanitation and other necessities to be fuelled by the sun, wind and tide – a cheap source of unending power.
The theory of a transitional leap that avoids Industrial Age ‘dirty development’ and propels developing economies into a post-carbon world is certainly attractive. However, as Dr Chris Jardine, a researcher at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute found out, matters are not always so simple. Working on solar installation projects in Ghana, he fitted several hospitals with solar power arrays. Problems soon reared their head – the biggest of which was the almost complete lack of healthcare professionals at the hospital.
