IP rights exacerbate global inequality
The Agreement on Trade Related aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) is the institutional background for IP enforcement for World Trade Organization member states. Although TRIPS contains methods for technology transfer to low-income countries, these have not remedied the global inequality of access to renewables.7 Instead, IP restrictions have established a renewable energy oligopoly whereby the production of clean energy technologies is limited to a handful of companies, largely in wealthy countries.8 In turn, IP regimes are contributing to the global inequality between the global rich and poor.
Research has indicated that there is a monopoly of climate mitigation technologies and patents in high-income countries, and that lower-income countries are rarely given licences to use patented technologies.9 A broad swathe of policy-makers, activists, and governments have called for the loosening of IP regimes pertaining to low-carbon energy technologies for low- and middle-income countries.10
Four manufacturers (Denmark’s Vestas, Spain’s Siemens Gamesa, China’s Goldwind, and General Electric of the US) accounted for 55 per cent of all wind turbine production in 2019 and 73 per cent of solar photovoltaic (PV) production took place in China in 2017.11 Furthermore, of the top 10 wind turbine manufacturers globally, every single firm was in Europe, the United States, or China.12 This global oligopoly of renewable production is one of the reasons why the entire continent of Africa produces just 1.5 per cent of the world’s solar energy, despite having the greatest potential productive capacity.13, 14 Indeed research indicates that weaker intellectual property reinforcement would likely help local initiatives develop more rapidly within Africa.15
Moreover, IP regimes are contributing to neocolonial extraction in the energy sector. Most renewables are dependent on minerals such as cobalt and copper obtained from the global South,16 and yet only countries in the global North have the IP rights to produce new renewables. Hence, the global South is forced to relinquish its resources for the profits (and energy consumption) of the global North.17