Climate change: What future is there for the coal industry?

E.ON’s proposal to build a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth is the first such application for decades, but if successful will not be the last – at least five more are on hold pending the outcome. E.ON, backed in cabinet by business minister John Hutton and energy minister Malcolm Wicks, argues that the protest is unfounded since the new power station heralds a new age in clean coal which will become part of the solution rather than exacerbating the problem of climate change.

At the Climate Camp Dave Douglass, retired NUM official and NUM leader Arthur Scargill’s right hand man, could be seen each day handing out copies of a special issue of The Miner making the case for expanding the UK coal industry. A well-attended debate took place at the camp, with Arthur Scargill arguing that “Britain needs an integrated energy policy that will produce 250m tonnes of indigenous deep-mine clean coal per year.” He believes that all existing and new coal-fired stations can be fitted with clean coal technology that would “remove all CO2”.

But is he right? Will the climate change challenge actually lead to a revival for coal and reverse the 170,000 job losses and the closure of 192 pits seen since 1980? Is there a bright future for clean coal?

A month after the camp, a jury in Maidstone Crown Court came down squarely on the side of the anti-coal environmental campaigners. In October 2007, six Greenpeace protesters had scaled the tower at Kingsnorth and painted GORDON on the side. At the trial they were cleared of causing £35,000 worth of criminal damage, even though they admitted carrying out the action.

Their defence, accepted by the jury, was that they had ”lawful excuse” since they were actually acting to protect property around the world that was in immediate need of protection from the impacts of climate change, caused in part by burning coal.

It was a remarkable decision. The jury heard from leading climate change scientist Jim Hansen, who convinced them that the maximum safe level of CO2 had already been reached, and that if we carry on as we are sea levels will rise at least two metres this century and one million species will be pushed into extinction (including 400 by Kingsnorth’s CO2 emissions alone).

He concluded that: “construction of new coal-fired power plants makes it unrealistic to hope for the prompt phase-out of coal emissions and thus makes it practically impossible to avert climate disasters for today’s young people and future generations.”

A second expert, Dr Geoff Meaden from Canterbury University, brought the argument closer to home for the Kent-based citizens of the jury. He explained that Kingsnorth power station itself would be “extremely vulnerable” to flooding through climate change, and that things were “so urgent that unless we act immediately to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, by the next century we may have to abandon up to 20% of Kent to the sea.”

Key arguments on climate change appear to have been largely won, namely that the climate is changing, that this is due to the rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and that this is primarily a man-made problem. But the debate about what we do about it is only just really beginning, despite the urgency. This argument over coal, just like those over nuclear power and biofuels, is not as straightforward as some advocates, on both sides, would have us believe.

Scargill, E.ON and the government are all convinced that carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology means that we can have our coal and burn it. Unfortunately, CCS is not that simple. Although some CCS is currently in use for oil and gas, it is not directly applicable to coal, and the optimism of governments and the EU, who concluded that “the possibility exists for a CO2-free energy system based on fossil fuels”, is misplaced.

A German expert, Peter Viebahn of the German Aerospace Centre Institute of Technical Thermodynamics, carried out a systems analysis of CCS – looking at the overall impact, and concluded that “it is not justified to talk about ‘CO2 –free’ power plants or ‘clean coal’ concepts if only 70-80% global warming potential reductions are possible; electricity produced from renewables causes much lower CO2 emissions and greenhouse gas emissions than CCS, and currently CO2 storage can not be guaranteed for a long time – CCS shifts risks to future generations which requires safe and reliable monitoring.” The Future of Coal, a report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last year, predicted that CCS wouldn’t be in place for commercial use for another 20 years.

Also the preferred option for capturing carbon – in flues as the coal burned, then liquified, transported and stored – would cause more CO2 emitting traffic than the present oil industry. While other less polluting options exist they are more expensive and hence not attractive to the private energy companies.

So to base an energy plan on the expansion of coal will increase CO2 emissions in the short run and there is no guarantee that CCS will reduce it later. This is why we should oppose the expansion of coal and call for a moratorium on new plants, while supporting a major expansion of research into CCS.

Of course, the energy companies will not invest in the research unless they can start making money from coal now. That’s why we need to have government funded investment in this kind of research, paid for not just through a windfall tax on the energy companies but through their nationalisation.

If the US government can carry out the biggest ever nationalisation in history to avert the meltdown of the financial system then it is surely reasonable to nationalise the energy industries to save the planet from meltdown. If the shareholders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can be left holding worthless paper due to the mess they made of their business then we can take the same stance with the power monopolies.

But if we are opposed to the expansion of coal, and opposed to the expansion of nuclear, opposed to biofuels, then how are we to ensure that there is enough energy?

Can we reduce the amount of energy used? In a country like the UK the answer is almost certainly yes: through a programme of improved energy efficiency, ending wasteful consumption we could still meet the essential energy needs of all.

But at a global level it is not the case. There is massive inequality in energy use between rich and poor, and like it or not, more energy is needed to improve the living conditions of the two billion people of the world who live in absolute poverty. So we need efficiency, redistribution and expansion.

So how can there be a global expansion in energy production without increasing CO2 to the point where disastrous, irreversible climate change results? Renewable sources such as solar and wind power are not enough. It is therefore essential that other sources are thoroughly explored, including nuclear, carbon capture and storage and newer sources like solar energy and second generation bio-fuels.

Bio-fuels have certainly been a disaster so far, but there are other potential methods that need investment and exploration, such as genetically engineered bacteria that could make ethanol efficiently from waste products of farming and forestry, a sort of oil produced through photosynthesis in algae, or “mining” the heat of the earth’s core.

In the short term an emergency global plan needs to start with a massive investment in those things that are proven to be effective, safe and clean, namely energy efficiency and renewables, shifts in the way we produce and use energy, food and transport. At the same time the other options, including coal with CCS, nuclear and new bio-energy must be explored and researched.

To ensure that this process does not further entrench inequalities it needs to be done in a framework of contraction and convergence. Once a safe limit of CO2 emissions is agreed then big polluters like the US and UK must come down to that level, while allowing those, usually poor countries below it, to produce more.

But once again, the market will not be able to deliver this in an equitable way. Such a plan needs state direction, mobilising the mighty resources of many economies; it also needs the democratic input and creativity of masses of people to conserve energy. In fact it needs everything that runs completely counter to neoliberal free market capitalism espoused by Gordon Brown and his fellow G8 governments.

The urgency of a revolutionary change in the way we plan and run society has never been greater. There is a growing scientific consensus that eight years from now if we have not pushed emmissions down to a safe limit then the feedback loops in place, whereby one aspect of global warming produces even more, will ensure that no matter what we do after that time we will not be able to avert a worldwide disaster of runaway climate change this century. That is just how much is at stake.

Tue 02, December 2008 @ 17:43