So, after a long grinding couple of weeks marking assignments, my work at Newcastle Business School comes to an end. I have to say I was really impressed with the standard, engagement and thoughtfulness of the students. This was a compulsory module, so they weren’t self-selecting, and some of the topics were quite philosophical (“are trees stakeholders?”), but they clearly ‘got it’, with only one student out of 50 flunking the assignment – and there were some really superb pieces of work.

However, there was one issue that came up again and again in a question about decoupling poverty reduction from resource use: the cost of renewable energy. Far too many students made sweeping statements that poor countries couldn’t afford renewables; sometimes unsubstantiated, sometimes with out-of-date supporting evidence. Of course we know that the costs of renewables are plummeting and are often the cheapest option. Sometimes people mix up capital and through life costs; there are plenty of case studies which show that a PV array may cost more to install in a remote village than a diesel generator, but recoups that cost in a couple of years when you factor in fuel costs for the generator. Sometimes there was an assumption that if you needed more fossil fuel produced electricity, it just magically appeared without any extra infrastructure at all – power stations, fuel handling facilities, distribution networks etc.

I’m not surprised that many students fell into this trap, as the cost of renewables myth is reported so often in the media, and pervades elements of our politics. Just last week, the UK’s populist right party, Reform UK, announced a load of daft policies, such as a windfall tax on renewables, as they wanted to “reduce the public’s energy bills”. It then emerged that one of their five MPs had installed solar panels on his own farm as the, wait for it… “cheapest way to reduce his energy bills.” So they want to make the cheapest energy more expensive to make energy cheaper. You couldn’t make it up.

Obviously it’s going to take time for certain politicians and certain parts of the media, fed nonsense by vested interests chasing ‘predatory delay‘, to catch up with reality, but the plummeting cost of renewables is the most likely short term saviour for the environment as we navigate the current rise in amoral anti-science populism. Long term, I really hope the business graduates from all Universities ‘get’ Sustainability the way my students did. It really did make me feel positive about the future.