‘Global Apollo Programme’ to make renewables cheaper than coal

Initiative aims to galvanise finance to make carbon-free baseload electricity less costly than fossil fuels within a decade

A group of high-profile UK scientists, economists and business leaders have kicked off an initiative that is aiming to emulate the ambition of the moon landings to commit governments to fund a clean energy future.

The ‘Global Apollo Programme’ to combat climate change is calling on countries to commit at least 0.02% of their GDP over ten years into public R&D renewables, electricity transmission and storage research, with the ultimate aim of making new-build renewable baseload power cheaper than coal in sunny areas by 2020, and worldwide by 2025.

The initiative is backed by Sir David King HonFEI, Former UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser; Lord John Browne, Executive Chairman at L1 Energy; Lord Richard Layard, Director of Wellbeing Programme at the LSE Centre for Economic Performance; Lord Gus O’Donnell, Chairman of Frontier Economics; Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal and Former President of the Royal Society; Lord Nicholas Stern HonFEI, IG Patel, Professor of Economics and Government at LSE; and Lord Adair Turner Hon FEI, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of New Economic Thinking.

A report detailing the initiative outlines its methodology. Of the three focus areas – renewable electricity generation, electricity storage, and smart grids – the proposal is that each participating country commits to spending its annual 0.02% at its own discretion. The report says that ‘an enhanced, expanded and internationally coordinated version of many national programmes’ should be able to ‘discover the disruptive new technologies which can help produce clean energy on a massive scale before it is too late.’

In terms of governance, the programme will take inspiration from the semiconductor field. A yearly roadmap to maintain cost reductions is to be drawn up by a committee of technologists and businesspeople, overseen by an overarching Commission consisting of one representative of each member country. This approach has helped dramatically reduce semiconductor costs in computing, says the report.

The rationale behind the 0.02% figure comes from the fact that the 1960s moonshot cost around £150bn at today’s prices. This corresponds to 0.02% of country GDPs each year for 10 years. Around 2% of global R&D is currently invested into clean energy.

The report is accessible at globalapolloprogramme.org