Oxfam recently released a report, “Powering up against poverty: why renewable energy is the future,” which argued that advances in renewable energy mean there is “no tradeoff between improving lives and tackling climate change.” Comforting as this message is, it is also fundamentally inaccurate. Given existing technologies, expanding access to electricity almost always increases CO2 emissions. There are real tradeoffs between addressing poverty and climate change.
Read more: Coal isn’t good for humanity, but renewables aren’t the only answer to energy poverty — Discourse
