A new research project that aims to make renewable energy cheaper than coal in the next 10 years has been launched. 

Called Global Apollo Programme, it plans to fight climate change by boosting the use of solar and wind power.

A group of scientists and experts from the energy industry launched a report at the Royal Society in London yesterday which expects to fund $10 billion (£6.3bn) worth of low carbon technologies within the next decade.

They aim to achieve this goal by getting countries that join the programme to spend 0.02% of their GDP on electricity storage, smart grids and renewable energy.

Only $6 billion (£3.78bn) a year is currently spent on renewable energy research, design and development compared to $550 billion (£346.5bn) in annual subsidies for fossil fuels, according to the report.

Frontier Economics Chairman and former UK Cabinet Secretary Lord Gus O’Donnell told ELN: “This project I hope will inspire a new generation of engineers, scientists and economics to come up with solutions as how to solve the problem of making renewables cheaper than fossil fuels and the key in that is reducing the cost of storage and transmission.”

The authors of the report said nations such as the EU, US, Japan, Korea, Mexico, UAE, India and China have already showed their intentions to be part of the project.

Lord O’Donnell added: “We convinced the countries because the technologies that will be developed will be shared. They will be commercially attractive once this gets going. Clean affordable energy source will be something that everyone around the world wants to use because if you look at countries like China or India they are suffering greatly from pollution, from fossil fuels. They know it is in their interest to develop clean energy and that’s why there will be a great demand to be part of this programme.”

The project is a part of a bigger plan to combat climate change and the authors hope this initiative will be supported by the G7 nations in Germany next week to be part of the initiatives at the Paris COP21 conference at the end of the year.

Truong Duy