(Bloomberg Opinion) — Who decides the future of energy – the producers, or the consumers?
It’s a question that’s been asked at least since the 1970s, when the growing muscle of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and the 1973 oil embargo sparked the founding of the International Energy Agency as a rival group to represent the interests of oil importers.
That same pattern has been playing out in recent days with elections in one of the world’s biggest energy exporters and one of its biggest importers. Both will have a crucial impact on the direction of global energy policies – particularly in its dirtiest form, fossil fuels.
In Australia, Saturday’s election delivered a victory for the government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who now looks likely to be able to form a majority government after fighting off an opposition push that leaned heavily on a more aggressive climate change policy.
In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems headed to a similar victory, but there the situation is reversed: While both his Bharatiya Janata Party and the opposition Congress have both voiced support for renewable energy and plans to reduce the country’s choking air pollution, Congress hasn’t matched Modi’s specific promise to install almost 100 gigawatts of additional renewables by 2022.
For the rest of this column: https://news.yahoo.com/energy-future-splits-indian-australian-210004842.html;_ylt=A2KLfRmkMORcFlEAJR_rFAx.;_ylu=X3oDMTEyZmUwbzRrBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDQjY1NzFfMQRzZWMDc3I-