Bright Future For Coal May Impact Climate

The future of coal is a widely debated issue between coal traders who believe it offers hope for the 1.6 billion people living without electricity and environmentalists who believe it contributes significantly global warming.

Both are probably right.

Scientists estimate the world may have an extra 3 billion people and 4 times the wealth by the middle of this century, yet somehow it must reduce by half the carbon emissions from its primary energy source — fossil fuels — to ward off dangerous global warming.

Power generation accounts for about 40 percent of global emissions. The burning of fossil fuels, man-made greenhouse gases and coal account for most of this.

"You’ve got to say — ‘Right, here’s the line in the sand, we’re going to stop it here because it’s madness to continue’," said Connor O’Brien, a spokesman for protesters against a proposed new coal-fired power station in southern England.  The facility would be Britain’s first in nearly 30 years.  

Organizers say the Camp for Climate Action in Kingsnorth, Kent, has recruited about 600 people, and will join four similar protests this year that target the coal industry in North America, Australia and Germany.

The goal of the Kent camp protesters is to close the existing coal-fired power station by the UK subsidiary of Germany utility E.ON, which is slated for replacement.

But despite concerns, energy companies are scrambling to meet demand for coal, particularly in developing countries where the fuel is cheap and plentiful. 

"It doesn’t paint a very good picture of the future for carbon emissions but there is no other real choice — coal is one of the few fuel sources which has a real capacity to expand," Francisco Blanch, head of global commodities research at Merrill Lynch, told Reuters.

At the same time, considering the security concerns, industrialized nations want to avoid over-dependence on imported, cleaner gas. Ukraine provides an example; the country is now moving to domestic coal after Russia shut down its gas supplies during a price dispute two years ago.

The choice between benefits and tradeoffs have left the future wide open with respect to the world’s energy.

Nuclear power, opposed by many in the developed world, may face different challenges in developing countries that may be geologically unstable. Other issues, such as political hurdles in agreeing to nuclear non-nonproliferation treaties required for access to imported uranium, exist in countries such as India.

And although they are growing rapidly, expenses related to grid connection remain a challenge, and poorer nations with antiquated networks struggle to manage the volatile power source. Solar power is thriving, but only provides a tiny fraction of all power.

Environmentalists have won some battles emphasizing the benefits of renewable energy, which is often more costly than coal or oil, by pointing to the amount of saved fuel and the avoidance of climate change.

A state court in Georgia overturned an air permit for a new coal plant in June, ruling the plant needed to limit its carbon dioxide emissions. On Monday, environmental groups suspended opposition to a Texas coal plant after the utility agreed to pay for emissions reductions in other locations.  

Last month former U.S. vice president Al Gore called on the United States to undergo a complete conversion to renewable electricity sources within the next 10 years. The idea received support from both Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain.

But despite the seeming setbacks, the future of coal appears safe for now as rising gas prices motivates new interest.  In the United States alone, utilities are building 28 coal-fired plants, with another 66 in the early planning stages.

In Europe, 16 new plants will come on line by 2012 in Germany, despite a European Union emissions trading scheme that penalizes greenhouse gas emissions. In Italy, Enal is converting from oil-fuelled power plants to coal, and Britain has also endorsed new coal.

Growth is unbridled in developing nations.  Lack of grid access, frequent blackouts, rapid economic growth and plentiful fuel have combined to create a frenzy to build new power plants. 

In China, such plants take only 21 months to construct, and every year the nation adds new coal plants equivalent to the entire electricity-generating capacity of Great Britain.

And India has approved eight "ultra mega" plants that will increase its present generating capacity by 50 percent.

Indonesia is increasing its coal-fired power generation by 40 percent, while Vietnam has plans to quadruple capacity by 2020, almost all from coal according to a source at a European utility investing in Asian power.

Amid sever power shortages, South Africa is scrambling to construct new coal-fired plants utilizing with its rich supplies. Nigeria, Mozambique and Botswana also have new coal plants in the planning stages.

Surprisingly, even oil-rich nations such as the United Arab Emirates are making plans for coal, having ordered its first plant, which will be the first in the region, last month.

However, the shortage of steam turbines, not global warming protestors, remains the biggest hurdle on these plans.  Utility firms report a three-year backlog in the U.S. and Europe amid enormous demand, and a 12-18 month lag between order and delivery in China.

To address these challenges, scientists and political leaders are looking at an untested technology known as carbon capture and storage (CCS), which traps and buries carbon emissions from coal plants underground in disused oil wells and coal seams.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) says CCS equipment must be fitted to all the world’s coal plants to halve carbon emissions by 2050, widely held as a minimum climate change goal.

But even the agency’s own experts express doubts this is achievable.

"I don’t think in my lifetime I will ever see more than 50 percent of the coal-fired plants in China being fitted with CCS," Sankar Bhattacharya, a 45-year-old senior coal analyst at the Paris-based IEA, told Reuters. 

Many of China’s new power plants will be in population centers far from potential CO2 storage sites, he added.

There’s a good reason CCS is untested: the technology will add about $1 billion in capital costs to each power plant, in addition to efficiency losses requiring a quarter more coal burn just to maintain output and extra water for steam to compensate for the lost power.

"The Indians are vehemently against it," Bhattacharya added, referring to the cost, efficiency and water concerns.

To date, only a few rich countries, such as Great Britain, have committed to testing CCS.   Officials there will likely spend several hundred million pounds to demonstrate the technology, but only as an addition to a much larger plant that would not be fully operational until 2019 according to E.ON, which bid on the project.

It may in the end require a push from the climate itself to drive a large-scale deployment of carbon-cutting technologies, some of which are still in the lab.

Peter Taylor, a lead author of the IEA’s "Energy Technology Perspectives" report, said the climate would suffer without swift action to reduce greenhouse gasses.

"I think you resign yourself to the fact that you’ll only be able to stabilize temperatures at a higher level, and then we’ll see what the impact is," he said.