Global trade has also played a huge role in driving down the cost of renewable energy

By Charles Kenny of Cato via Cafe Hayek.

"Global trade has also played a huge role in driving down the cost of renewable energy. Between 2008 and 2013 alone, China’s solar panel industry reduced prices by 80 percent, helping to spark a global explosion in sales. Part of that was to do with tax breaks and subsidies, to be sure, but it was sustained by productivity advances linked to new manufacturing approaches and scale. The technology of fracking combined with global trade in liquid natural gas has already helped ween many countries off coal power, reducing greenhouse gas emissions per gigawatt by about 40 percent. And both solar‐​plus‐​storage solutions (needed to provide power when it is dark) or wind‐​plus‐​storage (for when it is calm) are rapidly becoming cost competitive with both gas and coal, thanks in part to a 97 percent reduction in the price of batteries over 30 years. With such advances, Africa will likely be the first region in the world to become wealthy without a significant coal‐​fired base of electricity supply."