At COP29, which I regard as a failure, 25 countries and the European Union supposedly pledged to commit to no new “unabated” coal power in their next round of national climate plans.
But China and India refused to take the pledge. The US ratted out too.
European commissioner for climate action, Wopke Hoekstra, was bold enough to say: “A large majority of countries have already turned their backs on coal power.”
However, he forgot to mention that China and India alone account for 2.8 billion out of a total human population of 8.2 billion. Chuck in the US and the trio’s population is 3.15 billion.
He forgot to acknowledge that Africa, with a population of 1.3 billion, is essentially coal-free, with South Africa – home to 83% of the continent’s coal generation – being a notable exception; likewise Latin America (440 million) is similarly light on coal use.
Neither can be credibly claimed to have turned its back on coal power. It never dominated in the first place.
Add the above block numbers together and my fingers tell me the total is about 4.9 billion.
So, in population terms, way short of even half of all humankind has taken the coal pledge. So, I would argue that Hoekstra got it wrong and needs to cobble up a more credible claim.
Hoekstra agrued too that the large majority of countries were opting for affordable, reliable, clean energy instead.
Well, yes … sort of. Except it is turning out to be far from affordable as progress tends to be heavily dependent on aid from the wealthy West with its institutions like the World Bank.
As for reliability, low-carbon energy can in fact be very unreliable.
Turning to clean, Hoekstra is living in Cloud Cuckoo Land. There are massive resource and pollution issues attached to so-called clean energies.
But wealthy nations hide that as they are, in the main, the primary exploiters. Clean energy has already accumulated a huge legacy of contradictions and lies behind its manicured façade.
The one bit Hoekstra sort of got right was: “New coal power is one of the biggest threats to keeping 1.5C within reach.”
But did he forget that 2023 had gone down on record as the world’s first year-long breach of the key 1.5C warming limit?
Did he deliberately ignore the multiple warnings ahead of COP29 that 2024 is almost certain to eclipse 2023?
Fossil fuels are roundly blamed, which is a fair comment. However, the coal habit has been far from kicked, with consumption possibly peaking in 2027 at best.
I’ve just received the International Energy Agency’s report on King Coal. It’s a sobering read.
The IEA reminds us that, even since 2020, global coal demand has shot up by more than 1.2 billion tonnes.
It reports that, last year, global coal production came within a whisker of 10 billion tonnes.
However, there is apparently good news; the agency calculates that global coal demand is set to plateau in the next three years, reaching around 8.87 billion tonnes by 2027.
Note the differential between last year’s production and anticipated plateau demand. Is there an error in the IEA’s calculations?
But anything resembling the start of a decline in consumption is consigned to guess where … Cloud Cuckoo Land.
And the blame is placed squarely on dismally slow deployment of carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) technologies in the sector by the energy industry.
The IEA warns too that CO2 emissions from coal are not expected to decline in that period, based on today’s policy settings and market trends.
Regrettably and despite increasing renewable electricity generation capacity, India is expected to see the largest increase in coal use in the coming years, driven by consumption from the power sector and industry.
But the ultimate bête noire remains, as it has for the past 25 years,
China, which consumes 30% more coal than the rest of the world put together and which therefore continue to define global trends.
This is a far from encouraging prospect as we relentlessly go on pushing our world to hell in a hand-cart.