The rise in coal prices can partly be attributed to the rising electricity demand, especially in Asian coal-producing countries. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

By Sara Bardhan
MUMBAI, India, Feb 18 2022 (IPS)

Coal—considered to be one of the most polluting fossil fuels and, therefore, one of the biggest contributors to climate change—took centre stage at COP 26. A last-minute intervention by India during the negotiations resulted in a crucial amendment to the coal pledge in the Glasgow Climate Pact.

While earlier drafts of the pact mentioned completely quitting coal power, India’s push for a change in the final text resulted in a watered-down commitment to ‘phase down’ instead of ‘phase out’ coal—this means that India pledged to cut down its total projected carbon emission by 1 billion tonnes by 2030, and achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2070.

At COP 26, India pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2070. However, its coal expansion plans and lack of investment in renewable energy sources tell a different story. What will it take for India to quit coal?

While this controversial decision has sparked acerbic debate worldwide, in India, it comes on the heels of the country’s recent coal shortage. Despite Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s dismissal, recent data by the Central Electricity Authority shows that coal stockpiles have dwindled to their lowest in years and coal-fired power stations have either reported outages or had stock worth only a few days on average.

The reasons cited for the coal crunch include:

1. Increased energy demand during COVID-19
During the pandemic, India’s power demands shifted considerably. While demand dropped during the first lockdown, by September 2020, India’s electricity demand was 3.4 percent higher than in September 2019. This happened primarily because of a rise in demand for electricity from the industrial, agricultural, and commercial sectors.

2. Extended monsoons in coal-rich central and eastern states of India
Spells of heavy rain in India’s largest coal-producing states of Odisha, Jharkhand, and West Bengal disrupted the coal supply chain by affecting mining sites and transportation networks.

3. Global fluctuations in the price of coal
According to reports, coal prices quadrupled during the lockdown. The rise in prices can partly be attributed to the rising electricity demand, especially in Asian coal-producing countries.

This acute power shortage invited unwitting comparisons to countries from the Global North, most of which are currently working towards increasing their use of renewable energy. India’s total annual coal demand in 2021 stood at 1.05 billion tonnes. In fact, the India Energy Outlook 2021 suggests that, in the next two decades, India is set to see the largest increase in energy demand by any country.

In addition, the Climate Action Tracker (CAT) has rated India’s non-fossil fuel electricity capacity target (40 percent) as ‘critically insufficient’ and its emissions intensity (volume of emissions per unit of GDP) target of 33 percent–35 percent by 2030 as ‘highly insufficient’.

Why is weaning off coal so difficult for India?

1. India has a coal-dependent economy
Bhupendra Yadav—India’s minister for environment, forest, and climate change—rationalised the country’s climate strategy by stating, “Every country will arrive at net-zero emissions as per its own national circumstances, its own strengths and weaknesses.

Developing countries have a right to their fair share of the global carbon budget and are entitled to the responsible use of fossil fuels within this scope…Developing countries have still to deal with their development agendas and poverty eradication. Towards this end, subsidies provide much needed social security and support.”

Yadav’s sentiments reverberate across coal-dependent communities in India. According to Sandeep Pai of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, roughly 3,00,000 people are working directly with government-owned coal mines (earning fixed salaries and benefits), another 5,00,000 are reliant on coal for their pensions, and close to 4 million have livelihoods that are directly or indirectly linked to coal.

Evidently, in India’s coal belt, where families have depended on coal extraction for generations, quitting dependency on coal is not an option. This is primarily because these families do not own land where they can farm and, even if they do, research shows that mining operations usually generate acidic and chemically noxious environments that directly impact the quality of agricultural land and groundwater available in surrounding areas.

Consider the coalfields in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region where land is barren and unproductive—covered in rubble, soot, dust, sand, waste, and debris; the Jharia coalfield in Jharkhand where accidental fires have been blazing for years, leaving the ground charred and land, is dotted with fatal sinkholes; or Chhattisgarh’s Hasdeo forest where coal mining has not only caused profound ecological damage but also displaced local elephant populations.

2. India’s energy is still largely coal-based
As millions of homes in the country still lack an electricity connection, Samantha Gross, director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at the Brookings Institution, points to the fact that India’s “energy policy currently focuses on bringing affordable electricity to all homes”.

Consequently, India’s increased investment in coal evacuation, infrastructure, project development, exploration and clean coal technologies is estimated to require 1 billion tonnes worth of coal production by 2023–24. Moreover, the CAT’s projections show that India’s coal capacity is expected to reach almost 266 GW, from the current 200 GW, by 2029–30.

Another key dimension in the discourse surrounding India’s climate policy is the role of energy in improving social development. Union Minister Yadav briefly mentioned it, and research has shown that modern energy services such as electricity and clean cooking fuels are critical in improving health and education outcomes, reducing poverty, and increasing productivity.

This means reliable and continuous access to electricity is crucial in building a better future for India’s marginalised. And since it is cheaper to produce electricity using coal than deploying renewable sources, the immediate trade-off in switching from coal to renewable sources is that we risk putting the country’s health and education outcomes in a precarious position.

Lastly, while India provides subsidies to both conventional and renewable energies, according to the CAT, coal subsidies are still approximately 35 percent higher than those for renewables such as solar energy and hydropower. It is no surprise then that climate professionals find India’s coal expansion plans counter-intuitive to its international climate commitments.

What is the way forward?

In its coal-rich central and eastern states, India has primarily implemented and expanded state-run mining projects by expropriating Adivasi lands. To compensate for the dispossession of land, local Adivasis are guaranteed jobs as assistants or labourers but the state’s compensation policies are famously ill-implemented. According to various reports, women and Adivasi workers have disproportionately suffered the impact of coal-induced displacement.

Repeated displacement and migration also lead to the breakdown of social support networks, cements inequalities and insecurities, and often leads to diminishing intra-community solidarity. As such, in more ways than one, India’s coal industry has always depended on Adivasi lands and labour and, without appropriate compensation or diversification, coal-dependent Adivasi communities are likely to face uncertainty once again in light of India’s energy transition.

While it is difficult to postulate a one-size-fits-all model for the entire country and the coal belt, here are some suggestions for how we can envision a post-coal India that is also sustainable and inclusive:

1. Develop a rehabilitation strategy on closure of coal mines
Since 2008, approximately 123 mines have been closed in India. However, there are still no proper guidelines to address the decommissioning of coal power plants. In 2020, the Supreme Court made it mandatory for mining companies to regrass mining areas on completion of mining projects.

However,  studies note that India still needs to plan a rehabilitation strategy to de-risk coal-dependent regions, rebuild their economies, and deploy adequate social protection measures.

At present, India is developing a framework for dealing with the closures of coal mines and undertaking pilot projects for the socio-economic transformation of the country’s coal mining areas with monetary assistance from the World Bank.

2. Diversify coal-dependent economies
One of the most important steps in building a robust post-coal economy is to invest in strengthening and re-training coal-dependent communities. There are currently no specific schemes that address or assist them in India.

However, American federal programmes such as Solar Training and Education for Professionals (STEP) and the Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization Dislocated Worker Grant set significant precedent for India to formulate its own. Attention also needs to be given to training displaced workers for employment in the renewable energy sector.

3. Promote entrepreneurship in rural coal-dependent regions
The Energy and Resources Institute of India (TERI) recommends the promotion of rural enterprise and microcredit financing, among other measures, to navigate post-coal revitalisation. Studies show that promoting entrepreneurship by microfinancing and adequate funds in rural areas is critical because it helps create networks, encourage community leadership, and build a diverse economy with a variety of employment options.

4. Leverage climate finance
India’s green transition could be financed by budget borrowing mechanisms such as development financial institutions (DFIs) and investments via the Climate Change Finance Unit (CCFU) to help facilitate the release of new policies, promote green finance, and aid capacity building.

There are several nationalised banks throughout the world that specifically focus on financing green technologies in their respective countries. In 2016, the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA) became the first such government-backed agency.

However, it is still unclear how effective it has been in promoting clean energy in India. Overall, there is an urgent need to develop a standardised framework of green finance investments and their monitoring and evaluation in the country.

Sara Bardhan is a multidisciplinary feminist researcher working at the intersection of gender, health, and governance in developing urban spaces. She has previously worked with the Social and Political Research Foundation and Transform Rural India Foundation among others. Her writings have appeared in publications such as The Wire, The Fuller Project, Citizen Matters, and Feminism in India. Find out more about her.

This story was originally published by India Development Review (IDR)

In the Nov. 11 Climate March through the main streets of the German city of Bonn, protesters called for an end to the use of coal as a power source, especially by German companies, such as RWE. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

By Emilio Godoy
BONN, Nov 15 2017 (IPS)

Despite growing global pressure to reduce the use of coal to generate electricity, several countries in Latin America and the Caribbean still have projects underway for expanding this polluting energy source.

These plans run counter to the climate goals voluntarily adopted by the countries in the region and to the commitment to increase clean and renewable sources, as part of the Paris Climate Agreement, approved in December 2015.

“Latín America doesn’t have a major global role in the sector, but it does have influence on the region…Colombia (for example) exports lots of coal. The problem is that there are many projects in the pipeline and that’s a threat of locking-in dependency for years,” Heffa Schucking, head of the non-governmental organisation Urgewald, told IPS in the German city of Bonn.

The Global Coal Exit List (GCEL), drawn up by the German organisation, reflects the use of coal in the region, in a global context.“A speedy coal divestment by the financing industry isn't only a matter of avoiding stranded assets, but keeping a livable planet too.” -- Heffa Schucking

Urgewald presented the report during the 23rd annual Conference of the Parties (COP 23) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), taking place Nov. 6-17 in Bonn, a city that is part of what used to be Germany’s industrial belt, driven precisely by coal.

The list, a comprehensive database of some 770 companies participating in the thermal coal industry, points out that in Latin America and the Caribbean, the installed thermoelectric capacity based on coal amounts to 17,909 MW, most of which operates in Mexico (5,351 MW), Chile, (5,101 MW) and Brazil (4,355 MW).

However, new projects for the use of coal will add an additional 8,427 MW, of which Chile will contribute 2,647, Brazil 1,540, the Dominican Republic 1,070, Venezuela 1,000, Jamaica 1,000, Colombia 850 and Panama 320. These ventures will further expand the use of coal in the region, hindering its removal to combat climate change.

The GCEL identifies 14 companies based in the region, of which five are Brazilian, another five Colombian and one per country from Chile, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

It also identifies transnational corporations that operating in the coal industry in the region such as the U.S.-based AES and Drummond; Italy’s Enel, France’s Engie, the Anglo-Swiss Glencore, the Anglo-Australian BHP Billiton and the British Anglo American.

At COP 23, whose electricity comes partially from the lignite mine Hambach, near Bonn, the protests against coal have resonated, due to the major role it plays in the emission of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.

At the climate summit in Bonn, coal is a main focus of criticism from environmentalists and academics. In the image, a banner reads “coal to museums”, during the hearings of the International Rights of Nature Tribunal, which were held on Nov. 7- 8 in the German city. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Colombia extracts the largest volume of coal in the area – 90 million tons in 2016 – in a sector dominated by Drummond, Glencore, BHP Billiton and Anglo American.

Since 2013, coal extraction in Colombia has ranged between 85 and 90 million tons, mainly from open-pit mines and chiefly for export.

Meanwhile, thermoelectric generation from coal climbed to 1,369.5 MW in 2016.

Brazil produces about eight million tons of coal per year and operates 21 coal-fired thermoelectric plants, generating 3.71 million kilowatts, equivalent to 2.27 percent of the country’s installed capacity.

In 2015, Mexico produced about 7.25 million tons a year, the lowest level in recent years due to the fact that the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) has reduced its coal imports.

The country’s coal-fired power generation totaled 30.124 billion MW/h in 2015, 34.208 billion in 2016 and 24.274 billion in 2017, from three CFE plants.

Chile is one of the largest thermoelectric generators in the region, with 29 coal-fired power plants that produce 14,291 MW, equivalent to 61.5 percent of the national installed capacity.

Carlos Rittl, executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, a network of Brazilian environmental organisations, complained that his country lacks a clear policy on coal.

“There are renewable energy goals for 2030, but the electricity capacity continues to be auctioned for fossil fuels and more thermoelectric plants are being built. There is no link between the energy agenda” and the voluntary goals of reducing polluting gases in Brazil, Rittl stressed.

The Brazilian ecologist is one of the 20,000 participants at COP 23, who include academics and delegates from government, civil society, international organisations and the business community.

The GCEL covers 88 percent of the world’s coal production and 86 percent of coal-driven thermoelectric installed capacity.

In addition, the database identifies 225 companies that plan to expand coal mining, and 282 that project more power plants.

Of the 328 mining companies listed, 30 are responsible for more than half of the world’s coal production, and of the 324 thermoelectric plants, the largest 31 cover more than half of the global installed capacity.

The campaign seeks for investors to withdraw funds from the coal industry, in order to cancel new projects and gradually close down existing plants.

Colombia has 16.54 billion tons in coal reserves. Mariana Rojas, director of Climate Change in the Environment Ministry, acknowledged to IPS the difficulty of abandoning coal.

“Different strategies are being used for the different sectors. We want to encourage the increase of renewables in the energy mix; they have become more competitive due to the lower prices. But we cannot reach all sectors,” she said.

Coal was left out of the carbon tax created by the December 2016 tax reform – a reflection of the industry’s clout.

The report “Coal in Colombia: Who wins? Who loses? Mining, global trade and climate change“, drawn up in 2015 by the non-governmental Tierra Digna Centre for Studies on Social Justice, warned that the Andean country plans to continue mining coal until at least 2079.

Brazil already has another plant under construction with a capacity of 340 MW, and plans for at least six more facilities, that would generate 804 MW.

Mexico is in a similar situation, since the current mining permits would expire in 2062, for over 700 million tons in reserves.

Since 2015, the state-run company CFE has been holding online auctions of coal, to control the supply of more than two million tons per year and regulate the activity.

Urgewald’s Schucking called for turning off the financial tap for these projects. “A speedy coal divestment by the financing industry isn’t only a matter of avoiding stranded assets, but keeping a livable planet too.”

Germany has set a 2018 deadline for shutting down its last coal mines, while Canada announced that it would stop using coal by 2030 and Italy promised to do so by 2025.

“The first step is to eliminate subsidies for coal” and redirect them to solar and wind energy, Rittl proposed.

Anote Tong, President of the Republic of Kiribati, addresses the High-level Event on climate change in July 2015. Credit: UN Photo/Devra Berkowitz

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 13 2015 (IPS)

The tiny island of Kiribati in the Central Pacific, with a population of about 103,000, has long been identified as one of the U.N. member states threatened with physical extinction due to sea-level rise triggered largely by climate change.

Expressing these fears, Kiribati President Anote Tong has called on world leaders, on the eve of a summit meeting at the United Nations next month, for “a global and immediate moratorium on all new coal mines and coal mine expansions.”“I have now seen first-hand what a sea level rise means for the people of Kiribati. It is not some scientific modelling or projection - it is real, it is happening now and it will only get worse." -- Kumi Naidoo

In a letter to the leaders of the 193 member states, he has urged them to back his call to action in the lead-up to the Paris climate talks in December.

Speaking on behalf of “a nation faced with a very uncertain future”, he says: “It would be one positive step towards our collective global action against climate change and it is my sincere hope that you and your people would add your positive support in this endeavour.”

“The construction of each new coal mine undermines the spirit and intent of any agreement we may reach, particularly in the upcoming COP 21 (Conference of Parties) in Paris, whilst stopping new coal mine constructions now will make any agreement reached in Paris truly historical,” he says in the letter.

The president, who is scheduled to address the U.N. General Assembly on September 30, already has strong backing from Greenpeace International,

Asked how coal and coal mining impacts on climate change, Leanne Minshull, Senior Portfolio Manager, Climate and Energy at Greenpeace International, told IPS a third of all carbon dioxide emissions come from burning coal.

“And it’s used to produce nearly 40 percent of the world’s power,” she pointed out.

Coal mining, the first step in the dirty lifecycle of coal, causes deforestation and releases toxic amounts of minerals and heavy metals into the soil and water, she said.

“Coal mining’s effects persist for years after coal is removed. Coal also causes damage to people’s health and communities around the world. While the coal industry itself isn’t paying for the damage it causes, the world at large is,” said Minshull.

To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, including widespread drought, flooding and massive population displacement caused by rising sea levels, she noted, “we need to keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees C (compared to pre-industrial levels). To do this, global greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2015 and from there go down to zero.”

The world’s top hard coal producers include China, the United States, India, Australia and South Africa.

Speaking from Kiribati, where is currently on a visit, the Executive Director of Greenpeace International, Dr. Kumi Naidoo, said the people of Kiribati are refusing to be silenced by reckless governments and corporations that are perpetuating climate change, and which in turn is causing rising sea levels.

“I join President Tong in calling on all leaders of similarly threatened islands to stand together and demand climate justice,” Naidoo said.

“I have now seen first-hand what a sea level rise means for the people of Kiribati. It is not some scientific modelling or projection – it is real, it is happening now and it will only get worse,” he added.

Asked about the power wielded by the coal mining lobby and corporations that are in the coal mining business, Minshull told IPS the fossil fuel industry as a whole has a long history in the U.S. of disseminating misinformation on the impacts of climate change and using underhanded tactics to gain positive legislative outcomes for their industry.

She said Greenpeace put out an excellent report last year exposing the influence of the fossil fuel industry including coal.

The Union of Concerned Scientists says “for nearly three decades, many of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies have knowingly worked to deceive the public about the realities and risks of climate change.”

Their deceptive tactics are now highlighted in seven “deception dossiers“— collections of internal company and trade association documents that have either been leaked to the public, come to light through lawsuits, or been disclosed through Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests.

Naidoo said, “We know the science and we know the end of the age of coal is coming. Scrambling to dig up more dirty coal can only be driven by ignorance or sheer disregard for the millions of people at risk from burning it.”

“We need international leadership on this issue and a planned retreat from coal involving a just transition for existing workers and developed in consultation with affected communities,” he declared.

An assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stressed that the sea level rise projected for this century will present ‘severe flood and erosion risks’ for low-lying islands, with the potential also for degradation of freshwater resources.

Every high tide now carries with it the potential for damage and flooding. In some places the sea level is rising by 1.2 centimetres a year, four times faster than the global average.

This means that 80 per cent of coal reserves must remain unused if we are to have any chance at protecting nations like Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and the Philippines, according to Greenpeace.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Citizens plan to stop the giant coal excavators in the Rhineland coal mines, the world’s biggest land vehicles. Photo credit: ausgeCOhlt

By Dorothee Haussermann and Martin Weis
BERLIN, Jul 2 2015 (IPS)

“If you’re against coal mining, why don’t you just walk into a coal mine and stop the excavators?”

It’s a late June evening in the German town of Mayence and about 40 people are gathered to discuss a coal phase-out and degrowth.

“It’s possible,” continues the speaker. “You just walk up to the excavator and it will stop – at least temporarily. So, if you take the threat of climate change seriously, what keeps you from stopping the destruction right on the spot?”“Large sections of the climate justice movement no longer believe that U.N. negotiations or lobby-ridden governments will come up with the urgent solutions needed to solve our socio-ecological crisis”

To keep coal in the ground and not burn it in order to avert catastrophic climate change, we now know that we cannot rely on the German government. Yesterday, Jul. 1, the partners of the ruling coalition scrapped a proposed climate levy, an instrument that had been proposed by energy minister Sigmar Gabriel to still reach the national climate goals for 2020, an overall emissions reduction of 40 percent.

As it stands, the energy sector is behind on its targets, largely due to the continued use of lignite or brown coal. Four of Europe’s five largest emitters are German lignite power plants and coal accounts for one-third of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The climate levy proposed a cap on CO2 emissions for individual power plants, which would have primarily affected the oldest and dirtiest lignite power stations. The measure was backed by climate scientists and economic experts. It also enjoyed huge public support, with the overwhelming majority of Germans in favour of a coal phase-out.

However, powerful interests mobilised against the measure. These included members of the governing parties, the big power suppliers RWE and Vattenfall which would have been most affected, and IGBCE, the mining industry trade union.

Playing the ‘jobs-will-be-lost’ card, they introduced an alternative proposal, which has been criticised for seeking smaller emission cuts at a higher cost to consumers and taxpayers. Yet, the government agreed yesterday to drop the climate levy in favour of the industry proposal.

Two points are particularly infuriating and in fact quite worrying. There seems to be an absolute disconnect between Chancellor Angela Merkel’s earlier rhetoric of the ‘decarbonisation of the worldwide economy’ at the Jun. 7-8 G7 Summit in Elmau, and the actions of her government at home only a few days later. Secondly, the influence of the coal industry in the democratic process is staggering. Their hastily compiled alternative actually carried the day and the big polluters are let off the hook.

The German example is a case in point of why large sections of the climate justice movement no longer believe that U.N. negotiations or lobby-ridden governments will come up with the urgent solutions needed to solve our socio-ecological crisis.

This is why we are taking the creation of an equitable and ecological society into our own hands instead of relying on promises of green growth or paying lip service to the G7.

This summer, the German and European anti-coal movement will take the fight to a new level. A coalition of grassroots groups and NGOs have called for a mass act of civil disobedience that is intended to bring operations in the Rhineland coalfields – the biggest source of Europe’s CO2 emissions – to a halt.

From Aug. 14 to 16, hundreds of people from across Europe plan to enter an open-pit lignite mine with many more standing outside the mine in solidarity. Under the banner Ende Gelände, which translates into ‘this far and no further’, they will aim to block the mining infrastructure.

During the G7 summit, four people already showed that it can be done when they scaled one of the monstrously huge excavators and stopped work in the mine for two days.

The action this summer is part of a growing and diverse movement against lignite mining, ranging from local citizens’ initiatives against poisonous air pollution, to fights for divestment and the occupation of an old-growth forest that stands to be cleared for the extension of the mines.

Those participating in the discussion in Mayence were convinced that this upcoming action in August is a moral imperative.

“Of course, it’s illegal but civil disobedience is our emergency brake,” said one. “If people thirty years from now were to ask us what we did to prevent the mass extinction of species, heat waves, crop failures, the melting of glaciers and wildfires, can we say: I could have stopped coal mining, but I didn’t because there was a sign saying ‘No Trespassing’?”

Edited by Phil Harris    

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Candlelight vigil co-organised by 350.org, the global grassroots climate movement, held just before the Pope's visit to the Philippines in January this year. Photo credit: LJ Pasion

By Edwin Gariguez
MANILA, Jun 17 2015 (IPS)

My country, the Philippines, is one of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Even though we are among those countries that hardly contributed emissions and benefited least from burning fossil fuels, we find ourselves at the frontline of the climate crisis.

The catastrophe we experienced from Super Typhoon Haiyan [in early November 2013], one of the most powerful storms ever recorded, which killed thousands and damaged billions of properties, is proof to this. Almost two years later, our people are still struggling to recover from its devastating impact.“If it is wrong to wreck the planet, then it is wrong to benefit from its wreckage; a growing global movement to divest from fossil fuels takes this ethos at heart”

It should therefore not come as a surprise that concern about climate change is higher in the Philippines than elsewhere. A recent public consultation showed that 98 percent of Filipinos are “very concerned” about the impacts of climate change, compared with a global average of around 78 percent.

The Church cannot remain a passive bystander. It is our moral imperative to give voice to the voiceless.

The Catholic Church in the Philippines has pronounced its strong opposition to coal mining because it will make our country contribute to climate change, and endanger ecosystems as well as the health and lives of people.

Our churches have often led the struggles against dirty energy. In my hometown of Atimonan, Quezon, for example, more than 1,500 protesters led by church leaders staged a demonstration against a proposed coal-fired power plant last week.

Similarly, Catholic priests in Batangas are at the forefront of the fight against the construction of a new coal power plant. Last month, about 300 priests held a prayer rally ahead of a committee hearing that discussed the project.

Pope Francis also understands that climate change is not only an environmental issue but a matter of justice. His upcoming encyclical is anticipated to bring the link between climate change and the poor to centre stage.

In the Philippines, we are grateful that Pope Francis came to visit and held mass in areas hit the hardest by Typhoon Haiyan.

We admire him for standing in solidarity with us, using his position to inject momentum for faith communities around the world to take a moral stance on climate change.

A papal encyclical is an extraordinary way to send a powerful message to world leaders whose actions to date lag far behind the scale of the response that is necessary.

We hope that the Pope’s message will remind world leaders of their moral duty to act as we approach the climate summit in Paris [in December], where a new international climate agreement is supposed to be reached.

The moral imperative to act could not be stronger and the world now needs to stand united in the face of the climate crisis that knows no geographic boundaries, while the worst impacts still can be avoided.

Through the Pope’s encyclical, the Church will raise critical issues that need to be taken into account in the global response to this unprecedented threat.

Global capitalism has lifted millions out of poverty by burning fossil fuels. On the flipside, it has also created vast inequalities and sacrificed the environment for the sake of short-term gain. Now is the time to break the stranglehold of fossil fuels over our lives and the planet.

If it is wrong to wreck the planet, then it is wrong to benefit from its wreckage; a growing global movement to divest from fossil fuels takes this ethos at heart.

The Pope’s critique of today’s destructive, fossil-fuel dependent economy will not go down well with the powerful interests that benefit from today’s status quo.

But we, the Church and the people of the Philippines, will stand alongside the Pope as strong allies in the struggle for a socially just, environmentally sustainable and spiritually rich world that Pope Francis and the broader climate movement are fighting for.

Edited by Phil Harris    

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Dja Abdullah, just one victim of the gathering pace of climate change fuelled by coal-fired power stations, has walked 300 km with his cattle in search of fresh pasture in the Sahel region of Mauritania. Credit: Pablo Tosco/Oxfam

By Sean Buchanan
LONDON, Jun 6 2015 (IPS)

As heads of state and government of the G7 states prepare for their Jun. 7-8 summit in Germany, Oxfam has released a new report titled Let Them Eat Coal which they may find hard to digest.

According to the report, coal plants in the G7 countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and United States – are on track to cost the world 450 billion dollars a year by the end of the century and reduce crops by millions of tonnes as they fuel the gathering pace of climate change.“Coal-fired power stations … increasingly look like weapons of destruction aimed at those who suffer the impacts of changing rainfall patterns as well as of extreme weather events” – Professor Olivier de Schutter, former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food

Launching the report, which has been endorsed by business leaders, academics and climate experts, Oxfam warns that coal is the biggest driver of climate change, which is already hitting the world’s poorest people hardest and making the fight to end hunger tougher.

Noting that the G7 countries remain major consumers of coal, Oxfam is calling on the G7 leaders meeting in Germany to shift from coal to renewable energy sources which offer a safer and cost effective alternative and the prospect of millions of new jobs around the world.

This, it says, would also be a giant step towards those countries not only meeting current emissions targets but moving closer to what is urgently needed.

The international agency reports that Africa, for example, faces costs of 84 billion a year by the end of the century due to the damage caused by G7 coal emissions. This is 60 times the amount Africa currently receives from the G7 in aid to support agriculture and food production.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that Africa’s food production systems are highly vulnerable to climate change, with declines likely in cereal crops across the continent of up to 35 percent by mid-century. Oxfam warns that seven million tonnes of staple crops could be lost annually by the 2080s because of G7 coal emissions.

Celine Charveriat, Oxfam International’s Director of Advocacy and Campaigns, said: “The G7 leaders must stop using emissions growth in developing countries as an excuse for inaction and begin leading the world away from fossil fuels by starting with their own addiction to coal.

“The G7’s coal habit is racking up costs for Africa and other developing regions. It’s time G7 leaders woke up to the hunger their own energy systems are causing to the world’s poorest people on the frontline of climate change.

Referring to the U.N. Climate Change Conference scheduled for December in Paris, Charveriat said: “Ahead of a new climate deal due to be struck at the end of this year, G7 leaders can give the global fight against climate change the momentum it needs by shifting away from coal. This will make significant additional cuts in their emissions, create jobs and be a major step towards a safer, sustainable and prosperous future for us all.”

Globally, coal is responsible for almost three-quarters (72 percent) of power sector emissions, and while more than half of today’s coal consumption is in developing countries, the scale of G7 coal burning is considerable – if G7 coal plants were a country, noted Oxfam, it would be the fifth biggest emitter in the world.

G7 coal plants emit double the fossil fuel emissions of Africa and ten times as much as the 48 least developed countries.

At the 2009 Climate Change Conference held in Copenhagen, all countries agreed to prevent warming of more than 2°C to avoid runaway climate change. Since then, said Oxfam, five of the G7 countries – France, Germany, Italy, Japan and United Kingdom – have been burning more coal, and the world is now heading for an increase in global warming by 4°C.

Climate experts, business leaders and development specialists who are backing the Let Them Eat Coal report include Professor Olivier de Schutter (former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food), Nick Molho (Chief Executive of the Aldersgate Group of business, political and civil society leaders), Sharon Burrow (General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation) and Dessima Williams (former Ambassador of Grenada to the United Nations and former Chair of the Alliance of Small Island Developing States).

According to de Schutter, “climate disruptions are already affecting many poor communities in the global South, and coal-fired power stations are contributing, every day, to make this worse. They increasingly look like weapons of destruction aimed at those who suffer the impacts of changing rainfall patterns as well as of extreme weather events.”

Oxfam says that the G7 countries must lead the way because they are most responsible for climate change, and because they have the most resources to decarbonise their economies and fund both emissions cuts and adaptation so that developing countries can protect themselves from climate change and develop in a low-carbon way.

Oxfam is also calling on the G7 to stand by existing commitments to jointly mobilise 100 billion dollars a year by 2020, and to make visible progress in both raising public finance over the next five years and increasing the proportion of funding for adaptation to climate change.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Edinburgh Castle, symbol of the Scottish capital, whose university has just decided not to disinvest in fossil fuels. Photo credit: Kim Traynor/CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

By Kirsty Haigh, Eric Lai, and Ellen Young
EDINBURGH, May 17 2015 (IPS)

The University of Edinburgh has taken the decision to not divest from fossil fuels, bowing to the short-term economic interests of departments funded by the fossil fuel industry, with little to no acknowledgement of the long-term repercussions of these investments.

The decision, which was announced on May 12, exemplifies the influence that vested interests have gained over academic institutions in the United Kingdom.“Our university has decided to take a reactionary approach to climate change, failing to make any statement of commitment to the staff and students who have been demanding divestment from fossil fuel companies for the past three years”

Collectively, U.K. universities invest over eight billion dollars in fossil fuels, more than 3,000 dollars for every student. The University of Edinburgh has the country’s third largest university endowment, after Oxford and Cambridge, totalling 457 million dollars, of which approximately 14 million is invested in fossil fuel companies, including Total, Shell and BHP Billiton.

Our university has decided to take a reactionary approach to climate change, failing to make any statement of commitment to the staff and students who have been demanding divestment from fossil fuel companies for the past three years.

Announcing it decision, the university said: ”The university will withdraw from investment in these [fossil fuel consuming and extracting] companies if: realistic alternative sources of energy are available and the companies involved are not investing in technologies that help address the effects of carbon emissions and climate change.”

However, given the fossil fuel industry’s continued destruction of the planet, the university’s approach leaves far too much to the imagination and indeed allows for the potential to not divest from harmful industries at all.

We are going to find our existence completely altered – and in a way that we do not want – if   we do not stop extracting and burning fossil fuels, and we know the big fossil fuel companies have no intention of stopping.

Climate change not only poses a massive economic threat but also presents the world’s biggest global health hazard – and its effects are hitting the poorest parts of the world hardest. The University of Edinburgh is fundamentally failing to acknowledge the part it is playing in funding climate chaos.

Our university claims to be a “world leader in addressing global challenges including … climate change” but if the university had any desire to take the moral lead, it would have divested. Divestment would have seen Edinburgh join a global movement of universities and numerous other forward-thinking organisations in divorcing itself from the tightening grip of the fossil fuel industry.

The University of Edinburgh came down firmly on the side of departments funded by the industry which have been scaremongering throughout the process

Freedom of Information (FOI) requests have revealed, for example, that the university’s Geosciences Department has received funding from a range of fossil fuel companies over the past 10 years, including BP, Shell and ConocoPhillips, as well as grants and gifts of money from Total and Cairn Energy.

Sixty-five students in the university’s School of Engineering have already signed an open letter to the Head of the School, Prof Hugh McCann, angered by his public opposition to fossil fuel divestment.

Their letter states: “The School of Engineering has and will continue to have a pivotal role in the university’s future. It is after all engineers who will be on the frontlines of the transition to a low carbon society.

“By basing its argument against divestment on engineering students’ chances of employment in one dead-end industry, the school appears to be failing to prepare its students for careers in the rapidly changing energy markets of the 21st century, whilst neglecting the faculty’s broader responsibility to the student body as a whole. As a consequence, they gamble employment against our common future.”

Divesting is a way of taking on and dismantling the big fossil fuel companies and the power they hold over our society and governments. We rightly condemn companies that do not pay their taxes or who exploit their workers, and so we must do this to the companies who are threatening our very existence.

Divestment is also about creating more democratic institutions where those who are part of universities can have a say in how their money is spent and invested. The university’s announcement has shown that we still have a long way to go in creating transparent, democratic and ethical institutions. It brings into question the validity of the university’s decision-making process.

For the past three years, students, staff and alumni have supported full divestment – yet the University of Edinburgh has ignored their calls. The consultation run by the university found staff, students and the public in favour of ethical investment. A year later we still have zero commitment to change.

A process which began with promise has been allowed to descend into a complete breakdown in communication between students and the university. Serious questions need to be asked about why the decision was taken in favour of the views from the university’s Department of Geosciences, which freely admits its vested interested in maintaining the status quo for financial reasons.

The University of Edinburgh needs to invest in alternatives to dirty and unhealthy energy sources. These alternatives will create new jobs, so that when the fossil fuel industry ceases to exist there is something to replace it and our students are trained to work in it.

Edited by Phil Harris    

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Vattenfall’s lignite-fired power plant in Jaenschwalde, Germany, is Europe’s fourth biggest CO2 emitter. Credit: ©Paul Langrock/Zenit/Greenpeace

By Hanna Leghammar
STOCKHOLM, Apr 30 2015 (IPS)

The Swedish government is in the process of pondering an important decision — whether to sell the vast lignite reserves of the state-owned Vattenfall energy giant or ensure that they stay in the ground. The decision will define Sweden’s commitment to tackling climate change.

Just a few days ago, on Apr. 27, Vattenfall stockholders gathered for their Annual General Meeting where the issue of selling the company was high on the agenda, according to Swedish radio station Ekot.“States have a responsibility to start leaving their fossil fuel reserves in the ground. What people all over Sweden and Europe are demanding is not only an end to expansion, but also the action of leaving them untouched” – Annika Jacobson, Greenpeace Sweden

“We are in the middle of a process to sell,” Vattenfall’s executive director Magnus Hall, who hopes to reach a deal already this year, was reported as saying. According to Hall, the Swedish government has given a clear mandate and support to Vattenfall in its plan to sell its ‘dirty’ operations.

‘Vattenfall’ translates into ‘waterfall’ and the company’s logo is an image of a sun and beautiful waves. While it plays on this imagery to build its brand, Vattenfall is emitting huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere every day.

The company’s lignite mines and power plants in Germany – including the Jänschwalde coal power plant which is Europe’s fourth biggest CO2 emitter – are responsible for twice the amount of Sweden’s total annual carbon emissions.

The Swedish government is committed to keeping the rise in global temperature below 2℃ which, at global level, requires leaving 82 percent of fossil fuel reserves in the ground. Through Vattenfall, the Swedish state is the owner of more than one billion tonnes of carbon.

Now is the time for Sweden to assume responsibility and ensure that emissions from these unburnable reserves are never released.

Over recent years, Sweden’s actions have shown that it has the potential to play a leading role in transforming our economies to power the renewable future we need. But Vattenfall’s conduct – clinging on to an outdated business model – taints this picture.

Aerial view of Vattenfall’s brown coal (lignite) open pit mine in Jaenschwalde, Germany. Credit: ©Greenpeace/J Henry Fair

When Germany decided to phase out nuclear power in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, Vattenfall faced a major loss of potential profits and sued the German state. The company’s coal operations across Europe are also taking a financial hit as the coal industry worldwide has entered a huge slump. More than half of Vattenfall’s coal power stations are old and particularly polluting.

In the run-up to the Swedish general elections last year, the parties that now make up Sweden’s ruling coalition committed themselves to stop the lignite expansion of Vattenfall, thanks to pressure from Greenpeace and Swedish environmental groups.

“States have a responsibility to start leaving their fossil fuel reserves in the ground,” says Annika Jacobson from Greenpeace Sweden, who has just launched a Europe-wide petition to that effect with partners at 350.org and Skiftet [Democracy in Motion]. “What people all over Sweden and Europe are demanding is not only an end to expansion, but also the action of leaving them untouched.”

In this crucial year for climate action – with the next U.N. Climate Change Conference scheduled in Paris in December – Sweden has the opportunity to raise its head and translate ambition into action by stranding its dirty coal assets.

Not selling Vattenfall and focusing on achieving a just transition to renewable energy would be a bold and unprecedented move by a nation state which has built up its own wealth and climate resilience on a fossil-fuelled economy. This would pose a challenge to other states, considering the impending deflation of the carbon bubble.

If, as Ekot reported, Vattenfall is about to be sold, this would be flying in the face of the overwhelming majority of Swedish people who want strong climate leadership from their government, giving the country the opportunity to act on its moral responsibility to keep fossil fuels underground.

A majority of Germans also want coal to be phased out – and there is fierce resistance to Vattenfall’s lignite mining and power plants in Germany’s Lusatia region.

“The earlier promise by Sweden not to expand lignite mining in Lusatia has given hope to a community of around 3,500 people that faced forced relocations as their villages stood to be destroyed,” says Falk Hermenau, a grassroots activist from Cottbus, the largest town in the region.

“By committing now to keep its coal in the ground, Sweden has the opportunity to be a driving force for a coal phase out in Germany and inject new momentum for climate action across the world,” he argues

The rapidly growing movement against fossil fuel extraction and climate disruption – and a steady flow of news reports indicating the end of the fossil fuel era – have injected a momentum that can change the dynamics in the months before the U.N. climate talks in December.

Any meaningful deal in Paris will need to require all nations to leave fossil fuel reserves in the ground – and people from all over the world are demanding this kind of leadership. Sweden can and must lead the way by committing itself not to sell Vattenfall’s lignite operations and rather #keepitintheground.

Edited by Phil Harris    

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

In response to rising demand for electricity, pressure to keep prices affordable and a need to maintain energy security, the Turkish government plans to increase electricity generation from coal.

According to a report on ‘Subsidies to Coal and Renewable Energy in Turkey’ released on Mar. 24,

Turkey already spent more than 730 million dollars in subsidies to the coal industry in 2013.

This figure, says the report, does not even count subsidies under the Turkish government’s ‘New Investment Incentive Scheme’, which provides tax breaks and low-cost loans to coal projects, so the true figure is likely to be even higher.

The report, by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), says that the Turkish government is planning to triple generation from coal by 2030 despite the fact that renewable energy is already cheaper than coal when external costs, such as health and environmental damage caused by burning coal, are taken into account.

According to the report, the country has developed a strategy “focusing on developing domestic coal resources, such that growth in coal-fired power generation is expected to be highest of all Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.”

Nevertheless, this strategy “also acknowledges the importance of environmental protection and emissions reduction, and foresees a much larger role for renewable energy in the energy future.”

The report comes at a time when public and private institutions are under mounting pressure to stop investing in coal mining companies.

“Subsidies for coal lock in coal power for another generation when renewable sources of energy are less costly for society in economic, social and environmental terms,” said Sevil Acar, Assistant Professor at Istanbul Kemerburgaz University and one of the report’s authors.

The report says that when the costs of coal are compared with the costs of wind and solar energy, taking into account environmental and health costs, electricity from wind power is half the cost of electricity from coal, and solar power is also marginally cheaper than coal.

“This study provides further evidence to support the case for eliminating fossil-fuel subsidies once and for all,” said Peter Wooders, director of IISD’s Energy Programme. “As a G20 country that has already committed to phasing out inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies, this is a call to action for Turkey.”

According to the report, just over half of Turkey’s subsidies are used to provide coal to low-income households and while these serve the important goal of improving energy access, they come at a high health cost and are no replacement for social security programmes.

The report recommends a gradual phase-out of these subsidies in favour of more efficient measures to support access to energy and support social welfare.

Meanwhile, notes the report, coal also remains a significant employer in many areas, and any moves away from coal use would need detailed planning to ensure that affected communities can benefit from compensation measures and additional job creation from new technologies.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Coal mining in India. Coal-fired plants contribute 60 percent of India’s energy capacity and are a large source of the air pollution that is taking a toll on people’s health and their livelihoods. Photo credit: The Hindu

By Chaitanya Kumar
NEW DELHI, Mar 19 2015 (IPS)

In November last year, India’s power minister Piyush Goyal announced that he plans to double coal production in India by the end of this decade and, in an effort to enhance production, the Indian government has started a process of auctioning coal blocks.

Coupled with the auctions is the disinvestment of Coal India Limited (CIL), the world’s largest coal mining company, and both actions can provide short-term reprieve to India’s energy and fiscal deficit woes.

However, there are four reasons why investors and the government should be wary of investing in coal for the long run (10-15 years).

The first stems from the fact that it is rapidly becoming clear to big business and governments around the world that a large proportion of coal and other fossil fuels should be left in the ground. The second is that coal consumption is declining in many parts of the world, with economics increasingly in favour of alternate sources of energy, such as wind and solar.“A systematic effort is now under way to dilute environmental, land and forest laws … The latest land ordinance passed by the [Indian] government has done away with two key pillars of the process of land acquisition: social impact assessment and community consent”

Reasons three and four have to do with growing resistance from tribal and grassroots communities, and the fact that India will be forced to take some form of action as air pollution becomes increasingly dangerous.

Despite its plans for coal production, the Indian government has been giving the right indicators on its pursuit of renewable energy, but this ambition – though welcome – is being counterbalanced by the country’s continued lust for more coal.

Call it an addiction that is hard to let go or sustained pressure from big corporations and their existing investments in coal, the Indian government has turned its eye on the vast domestic reserves in the country.

Growing resistance from tribal and grassroots communities

A systematic effort is now under way to dilute environmental, land and forest laws in the country. The latest land ordinance passed by the government has done away with two key pillars of the process of land acquisition: social impact assessment and community consent. The ordinance is facing stiff resistance from opposition parties and the general masses of India.

Any project, either private or under a public private partnership (PPP), previously required the consent of 80 percent of the community that the project impacted but no such consent is now required.

Social impact assessments that factors in effects on the environment and human health, among others, were mandatory for projects and while such assessments were shoddy in the past, doing away with them completely sets a poor precedent for industrial practices and gives even less of a reason for companies to clean up their acts.

A lack of social impact assessment also adds to the ambiguity that exists in offering the right compensation as part of the rehabilitation and resettlement plan embedded in the land ordinance.

In the context of coal, the efforts of the government to re-allocate 204 coal blocks and begin mining will be met by stiff resistance from impacted communities. “There is a fear that we will witness greater state violence on people as they begin resisting projects that have immediate impacts on their lives and livelihoods”, says Sreedhar, a former geologist who now runs a network of activists called Mines, Minerals & People.

The Mahan coal block, forcefully pursued by the Essar company, is a case in point where local communities have been resisting open cast mining for several years. The mine is located in what is one of the last remaining tracts of dense forests in central India. Mahan has subsequently been withdrawn from the auctions, a victory celebrated by the local communities.

Foreign investors are especially wary of pumping money into projects that can see resistance from local communities. The high profile cases bauxite mining plans by British resources giant Vedanta in ‘sacred’ hills in eastern India and the plans of South Korea’s POSCO steel-making multinational to open a plant in the eastern state of Odisha have become strong deterrents for big money to enter India.

While the government’s efforts at allaying fears may work, there is a difference in rhetoric and on-the-ground reality because it will not be easy to simply wish away people’s concerns.

Visible resistance has taken shape in the state of Chhattisgarh where twenty tribal gram sabhas in the Hasdeo Arand coal field area of the state passed a formal resolution under the forest rights act against coal mining in their traditional forest land.

“There has to be an assessment of India’s energy needs alongside an evaluation of the forests that we stand to lose from coal mining. Allocation of coal blocks in dense forests is imprudent,” says Alok Shukla, an activist from Chhattisgarh who is mobilising tribal communities to uphold their forest rights.

These struggles might only intensify as government efforts are aggressively under way to further dilute tribal rights and open up inviolate forests for coal mining.

Air pollution is becoming hazardous and India will be forced to act

As the pressure to act on air pollution builds, India will have to enforce strict emission norms on coal plants and their operators. Installing flue-gas desulphurisation scrubbers should be mandatory on any new plant that is set to operate in coming years. These devices are very effective in limiting dangerous pollutants from escaping into the atmosphere but come at a heavy cost for investors and coal power generators. 

But why would the government work towards increasing operational costs for power plants in the pipeline? Here’s why – air pollution is killing Indians every year and is now the fifth largest contributor of deaths in the country. The fact that 13 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in India is a cause for great alarm. A study has indicated that one in three children have shown a reduction in lung function in Delhi.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) report, which makes this claim, advises that fine particles of less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter (PM2.5) should not exceed 10 micrograms per cubic metre. Delhi tops the list at 153 micrograms of PM2.5 per cubic metre and it is only getting worse.

In Delhi, for instance, coal roughly contributes 30 percent of recorded air pollution (particulate matter) and the numbers are higher in the coal clusters of the country. Coal-fired plants contribute 60 percent of India’s energy capacity and are a large source of the air pollution that is taking a toll on people’s health and their livelihoods.

A recent report on coal pollution in India by Urban Emissions and Conservation Action Trust reveals a shocking statistic – in another 15 years between 186,500 and 229,500 people may die premature deaths annually as a result of a spike in air pollution caused by coal-fired power plants.

In dealing with air pollution, curbing the effects of harmful pollutants like nitrous and sulphur oxides from coal power plants is critical and there is growing pressure on the central government to introduce strict emission standards. India is the only major coal-powered nation that does not have any concentration standards for these pollutants, a requirement that should soon be in place.

Both domestic and international pressure can move India to clean up its air. The government cannot afford to have an ‘airpocalypse’ on its hands.

All is not well with the coal industry in India  

Undaunted, Narendra Taneja, energy cell convenor of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, has claimed that coal and gas will remain the mainstay of the country’s economy for the next 50-60 years.

The impossibility of this claim becomes apparent when we look at the actual reserves of extractable coal. Only one-fifth of the coal reserves of CIL are extractable and if the ambitious doubling of domestic production happens, the known reserves are expected to last for less than two decades.

Coal mines that expire before the lifetime of new coal plants scream for greater economic prudence from investors.

India’s ambitious renewable energy expansion plans need to be complemented by a phase-out plan of coal. The world needs stronger political leadership from India as it tries to tackle the twin challenges of poverty and climate change.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Indian coal workers. India announced in November last year that it plans to double coal production to a whopping 1 billion tonnes per annum before the end of this decade, a feat that is going to be highly improbable to pull off. Photo credit: Jaipal Singh/EPA

By Chaitanya Kumar
NEW DELHI, Mar 18 2015 (IPS)

India’s Government under Narendra Modi is in overdrive mode to please businesses and investments in the country. The much aggrandised ‘Make in India’ campaign launched in September 2014 is a clarion call for spurring investments into manufacturing and services in India and all eyes have turned to the power sector which is expected to undergo dramatic shifts.

Piyush Goyal, India’s power minister, announced in November last year that he plans to double coal production in India to a whopping 1 billion tonnes per annum before the end of this decade, a feat that is going to be highly improbable to pull off.

In an effort to enhance production, the Indian government has started a process of auctioning coal blocks, which were de-allocated by the country’s Supreme Court as a result of the coal scam that hit the country in 2012 (and resulted in notional losses of 30 billion dollars to India’s exchequer).

With domestic miners already having shown an aggressive interest in bidding at the first auction last month, a total of 204 coal blocks are set to be auctioned over the next 12 months. The first 32 auctioned blocks have yielded more than 35 billion dollars, exceeding the nominal losses from the coal scam.“[Indian] Prime Minister Modi has made it clear that he does not intend to give into … pressure [to take further action on climate change and rethink its energy options] from any nation but he also cannot afford the ignominy of being singled out as a country that is blocking progressive climate action in Paris”

Coupled with the auctions is the disinvestment of Coal India Limited (CIL), the world’s largest coal mining company. A 10 percent stake sale in early February resulted in a mixed bag response. Another state owned firm, LIC India, lapped up 50 percent of the stocks alongside a couple of international investment funds and a few Indian firms. The move generated 3.6 billion dollars in revenues for the government.

The auctions and the disinvestment of CIL can provide short-term reprieve to India’s energy and fiscal deficit woes, but there are four reasons why investors and the government should be really wary of investing in coal for the long run (10-15 years). The following are the first two.

Unburnable carbon

The reality that a large proportion of coal and other fossil fuels should be left in the ground is rapidly becoming clear to big business and governments around the world. By signing on to a global agreement that pledges to limit the rise in the earth’s surface temperature to 2 degrees Celsius, India along with other major carbon emitters have effectively signalled the imminent decline in the use of fossil fuels in order to avoid the worst impacts of global warming.

To achieve this much needed and agreed upon limit on temperature rise, 82 percent of known global coal reserves should remain unextracted. This roughly translates into 66 percent of known coal reserves in India and China that should be left in the ground, according to a study published in the reputed journal Nature.

These stranded assets, or unburnable carbon, is what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the scientific body that informs climate policy around the world, also highlighted in its recent report on climate change mitigation.

This new reality is unravelling quicker than expected and gaining credence from the most unlikely of places. Even the International Energy Agency (IEA), which has faced consistent criticism in underplaying the role of renewable energy in favour of nuclear and fossil fuels, stated recently that “no more than one-third of proven reserves of fossil fuels can be consumed prior to 2050 if the world is to achieve the 2 degrees C goal”.

IEA’s Chief Economist Fatih Birol warned that “we need to change our way of consuming energy within the next three or four years,” because, otherwise, “in 2017, all of the emissions that allow us to stay under 2°C will be locked in.”

Coal is fast losing the rug under its feet. Nick Nuttall, the spokesman for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said of divestment: “We support divestment as it sends a signal to companies, especially coal companies, that the age of ‘burn what you like, when you like’ cannot continue.

This proposition will be contested fiercely by the Indian government as much as by any fossil fuel company, but as nations – under pressure – prepare to deliver a strong global climate agreement at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris in December, long-term investments in coal in this rapidly growing economy will stand on very thin ice.

Even U.S. President Barack Obama’s statements during his recent visit to India suggest diplomatic pressure on India to take further action on climate change and rethink its energy options for the immediate future.

Prime Minister Modi has made it clear that he does not intend to give into such pressure from any nation but he also cannot afford the ignominy of being singled out as a country that is blocking progressive climate action in Paris.

Thermal coal reaches retirement age – it’s time for renewable energy

A new report from Goldman Sachs starts with this gem of a sentence:  “Just as a worker celebrating their 65th birthday can settle into a more sedate lifestyle while they look back on past achievements, we argue that thermal coal has reached its retirement age.”

The latest data reveal that coal consumption is declining in many parts of the world, including across Europe as a whole, the United States and now, surprisingly, even China registered a small but historic decline in its coal consumption last year. The retirement of dirty coal plants in developed economies is set to cement this trend in the coming few years.

The most recent blow comes from the world’s largest sovereign fund, as Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), worth 850 billion dollars, announced that it had dumped 40 major coal mining companies from its portfolio on environmental and climate grounds.

Besides the climate concern, economics is increasingly in favour of alternative sources of energy, such as wind and solar.

In 2014, we saw a precipitous drop in the cost of solar energy in India. Bidding prices came down as low as 6.5 rupees a unit, a 61 percent drop over the last three years, compared with the average unit price of conventional energy like coal at around 5.5 rupees a unit.

Coupled with dramatic drops in costs of solar equipment such as panels, alongside operational, capital and maintenance costs, the path is clearly open for solar to achieve grid parity by 2017.

Meanwhile, onshore wind has in fact become the cheapest way to generate electricity in the world, laying the claims of cheap coal to rest. A report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), an intergovernmental research organisation, has laid bare the facts.

According to the report, the levelised cost of energy or LCOE (that is, all costs considered except externalities like subsidies or environmental impacts) for solar and wind already makes them highly competitive with fossil fuel-based electricity.

The oft cited issues of high capital costs and intermittency notwithstanding, prices of small-scale residential rooftop solar systems also dropped in the range of 40-65 percent between 2008 and 2014 in Europe and the United States.

What does this mean for coal in India? If the above numbers are any measure of the future of the energy sector, heavy investments in coal beyond this decade would be economic suicide.

Coal plants once established have a lifetime of at least 30 years and given the market volatility for coal, owing to rising costs of mining and uncertain fuel supply agreements, greater prices for end consumers is inevitable.

Many pundits in India appreciate this reality and the government has given the right indicators on its pursuit of renewable energy. With a target of 165 GW, India has set an ambitious goal of adding 60 percent to its total current capacity from just solar and wind by 2022.

Edited by Phil Harris    

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Africa’s wetland areas are experiencing immense pressure from commercial development and agriculture, settlements, excessive exploitation by local communities and improperly-planned development activities. Credit: Creative Commons CC0

By Tonderayi Mukeredzi
HARARE, Mar 12 2015 (IPS)

African wetlands are among the most biologically diverse ecosystems on the continent, covering more than 131 million hectares, according to the Senegalese-based Wetlands International Africa (WIA).

Yet, despite their importance and value, wetland areas are experiencing immense pressure across the continent. Commercial development ranks as the major threat for the draining of wetlands, including for tourism facilities and agriculture, where hundreds of thousands of hectares of wetlands have been drained.

Other threats to Africa’s wetlands are commercial agriculture, settlements, excessive exploitation by local communities and improperly-planned development activities. The prospect of immense profits from recently discovered oil, coal and gas deposits has also led to an increase in on-and offshore exploration and mining in sensitive ecological areas.Commercial development ranks as the major threat for the draining of [Africa’s] wetlands, including for tourism facilities and agriculture … Other threats are commercial agriculture, settlements, excessive exploitation by local communities and improperly-planned development activities

In Nigeria, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique, for example, wetlands and estuaries coincide with fossil fuel deposits and related infrastructure developments.

In northern Kenya, port developments in Lamu are set to take place in the West Indian Ocean Rim’s most important mangrove area and fisheries breeding ground.

In KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape of South Africa, heavy mineral sands are located in important dune forest ecosystems, and gas is being prospected for in the water-scarce and ecologically unique Karoo.

In East Africa, oil discoveries have been made in the tropical Congo Basin rain forest and the Virunga National Park – a world heritage site and a wetland recognised under the Ramsar Convention.

The Okavango Delta in Botswana, one of Africa’s most important wetlands and designated as the 1,000th world heritage site by UNESCO, has been home to many threatened species and the main water source of regional wildlife in Southern Africa. Yet it is shrinking due to drier climate, increased grazing and growing pressure from tourism.

“This delta is a true oasis in the middle of the bone-dry Kalahari Sand Basin, a rare untouched wilderness that’s been preserved by decades of border and civil wars in the Angolan catchment,” said National Geographic explorer Steve Boyes in an interview. “Many people along the Okavango River live like communities did some 400 years ago – and from them I think we can learn a lot about how to be better stewards of the natural world.”

Boyes calculated the abundance of life in the delta: more than 530 bird species, thousands of plant species, 160 different mammals, 155 reptiles, scores of frogs and countless insects.

“Everywhere you look you find life. We surveyed bats and we found 17 species in three days. We started looking for praying mantises and found 90 different species,” he said.

A recent survey by the Botswana Department of Wildlife and National Parks and the environmentalist group BirdLife Botswana concluded that that the wetland’s historical zones of dense reed beds and water fig islands were largely destroyed by hydrological changes and fire. Bush fires and a high grazing pressure further reduced the natural shores of the Okavango Delta.

Studies by BirdLife Botswana also showed that the slaty egret, a vulnerable water bird living only in Southern Africa, with its main breeding grounds in the wetlands of Zambia, Mozambique and Botswana’s Okavango Delta, is now estimated to have a total population of only about 4,000 birds.

The egret, which is listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as vulnerable, seems to be losing its main breeding sites in the Okavango.

Environmentalists hope that they can still save the wetland, and pin their hopes on a “Slaty Egret Action Plan” which will be used by the Botswana’s Department of Wildlife and National Parks, BirdLife and other environment stakeholders to guarantee the survival of the Okavango Delta as a safe haven for the birds.

In a further step to save the wetlands, the Botswana government announced this month that from now on, seekers of mobile safari licences would be prohibited from operating in the Okavango Delta because the area in now congested.

The Botswana Guides Association, which represents many of the mobile safaris, is threatening to appeal.

Another example of the devastation of major wetlands occurred in Nigeria with pollution of farmlands linked to the Shell oil company.  The Niger Delta Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration Project, an independent team of scientists from Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the United States, has characterised the Niger Delta as “one of the world’s most severely petroleum-impacted ecosystems.”

In 2013, a Dutch court found the Nigerian subsidiary of Shell culpable for the pollution of farmlands at Ikot Ada Udo in Akwa Ibom state in the coastal south of the country.

The Niger Delta is Africa’s largest delta, covering some 7,000 square kilometres – one-third of which is made up of wetlands. It contains the largest mangrove forest in the world.

Assisted by environmental organisation Friends of the Earth, the court ruling was a victory for the communities in the Niger Delta after years of struggle against the oil company dating back 40 years, although the clean-up still has far to go.

“Destruction of wetlands is prevalent in almost all countries in Africa because the driving factor is the same – population pressure – many mouths to feed, ignorance about the role wetlands in playing in the ecosystem, lack of policies, laws and institutional framework to protect wetlands and in cases where these exist, they are hardly enforced,” John Owino, Programme Officer for Water and Wetlands with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)  told IPS from his base in Nairobi, Kenya.

Owino said that the future of African wetlands lies in stronger political will to protect them, based on sound wetland policies and encouragement for community participation in their management, which is lacking in many African countries.

But very few African governments have specific national policies on wetlands and are influenced by policies from different sectors such as agriculture, national resources and energy.

Edited by Lisa Vives/Phil Harris   

Globally, coal production and coal power account for 44 percent of carbon emissions annually. Credit: Bigstock

By Suganthi Singarayar
SYDNEY, Mar 11 2015 (IPS)

With less than a year to go before the United Nation’s annual climate change meeting scheduled to take place in Paris in November 2015, citizens and civil society groups are pushing their elected leaders to take stock of national commitments to lower carbon emissions in a bid to cap runaway global warming.

Industrialised countries’ trade, investment and environment policies are under the microscope, with per capita emissions from the U.S., Canada and Australia each topping 20 tonnes of carbon annually, double the per capital carbon emissions from China.

“Without changing our energy choices, we are not going to be able to act effectively on climate change.” -- Fiona Armstrong, convenor of the Climate and Health Alliance (CAHA)
But despite fears that a rise in global temperatures of over two degrees Celsius could lead to catastrophic climate change, governments around the world continue to follow a ‘business as usual’ approach, pouring millions into dirty industries and unsustainable ventures that are heating the planet.

In Australia, coal mining and combustion for electricity, for instance, has become a highly divisive issue, with politicians hailing the industry as the answer to poverty and unemployment, while scientists and concerned citizens fight fiercely for less environmentally damaging energy alternatives.

Others decry the negative health impacts of mining and coal-fired power, as well as the cost of dirty energy to local and state economies.

Globally, coal production and coal power accounts for 44 percent of CO2 emissions annually, according to the Centre for Climate and Energy Solutions.

Australia’s reliance on coal for both export and electricity generation explains its poor track record in curbing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reporting last year that Australia’s 2010 carbon emission rate was 25 tonnes per person, higher than the per capita emissions of any other member of the organisation.

Counting the cost of coal: The case of Hunter Valley

A report released in February by the Climate and Health Alliance (CAHA), a coalition of 28 organisations working to protect human health, concluded that the “estimated costs of health damages associated with coal combustion for electricity in the whole of Australia amounts to 2.6 billion Australian dollars [197 million U.S. dollars] per annum.”

CAHA’s convenor, Fiona Armstrong, told IPS that CAHA aims to draw attention to Australia’s health and energy policy in light of its heavy dependence on fossil fuels.

“Without changing our energy choices, we are not going to be able to act effectively on climate change,” she contended.

She pointed out that the Hunter Region, one of the largest river valleys on the coast of New South Wales, is one of the most intensive mining areas in Australia.

“It’s responsible for two-thirds of our emissions,” she explained, “So it’s a good example […] to see what the impacts are for people on the ground, [and] also to see what the contribution of coal from that community has on a global level.”

Hunter Valley produced 145 million tonnes of coal in 2013. Keeping in mind a conversion rate of 2.4 tonnes (2.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted for each tonne of coal produced), experts say that coal mined in the Hunter Valley in 2013 produced the equivalent of 348 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

According to the NSW Minerals Council, mining in the Hunter Region employs over 11,000 fulltime workers. It contributes 1.5 billion Australian dollars in wages and contributes 4.4 billion Australian dollars to the local community through direct spending on goods and services, as well as to local councils and community groups.

But these riches come at a high price.

The Hunter Valley is known for its vineyards, horse studs and farming areas, all of which are threatened by extensive mining in the region.

Addressing a community meeting in the inner Sydney suburb of Glebe this past February, John Lamb, president of the Bulga Milbrodale Progress Association, spoke about the cost of mines on local communities, and the uncertainty wrought by their inability to fight against the rampant growth of the industry.

Lamb’s Association previosly fought the expansion of the Mount Thorley Warkworth coal mine by the multinational mining giant Rio Tinto.

Dust from coal mines, he said, coats the roofs of people’s homes and runs into their rainwater tanks, polluting the community’s water supply. Day and night, noise is a constant issue.

Lamb also noted the impact of mining on land values in the area. The village of Camberwell in the Hunter Valley, for instance, which is surrounded by mines on three sides, only has four privately owned homes – the rest are occupied by miners or are derelict.

Yancoal, the owner of the Ashton mine – 14 km northwest of the town of Singleton in Hunter Valley – owns 87 percent of homes in the area.

Health risks for communities, ecosystem

Wendy Bowman, one of the last remaining residents of Camberwell village who has farmed in the Valley since 1957, is extremely concerned about the extent of mining in the area.

She lives on a farm at Rosedale, between the towns of Muswellbrook and Singleton, and she is refusing to leave the area. She left her previous farm when the dust and water pollution caused by the Ravensworth South open cut mine became impossible to live with.

In a video on the CAHA website, she says that she has dust in her lungs and that she has lost 20 percent of her lung capacity. But she is far more concerned about the health of the children in the area than she is about her own medical condition, and the consequences for the Department of Health in 20 or 30 years time.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), coal mining and coal combustion for electricity generation is associated with high emissions of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, both of which react to form secondary particulate matter in the atmosphere.

Complex air pollutants such as these are known to increase the risk of chronic lung and respiratory disorders and disease, including lung cancer, and pose additional threats to children, and pregnant women.

CAHA states that most health and medical research on coal-related pollution focuses on fine particles measuring between 2.5 and 10 micrometres in diameter (PM 2.5-PM10), which are particularly damaging to human health.

According to the CAHA report, emissions of PM10 increased by 20 percent from 1992-2008 in the Sydney Greater Metropolitan area, an increase that is attributable to the increase in coal mining in the Hunter Valley.

The report states that while at one time the Hunter Valley was “renowned for its clean air”, in 2014 it was identified as an “air pollution hot spot”.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Nov 21 2014 (IPS)

Less than a week after everybody celebrated the historical agreement on Nov. 17 between the United States and China on reduction of CO₂ emissions, a very cold shower has come from India.

Indian Power Minister Piyush Goyal has declared: “India’s development imperatives cannot be sacrificed at the altar of potential climate change many years in the future. The West will have to recognise we have the needs of the poor”.

This is also a blow to the Asia policy of U.S. President Barack Obama, who came back home from signing the CO₂ emissions agreement in Beijing, touting his success on establishing U.S. policy in the region.

Roberto Savio

But, more importantly, will give plenty of ammunition to the Republican Congress, which has been fighting climate control on the grounds that the United States cannot engage on climate control unless other major polluters make similar commitments. This was always directed to China, which had refuse to make any such commitment until President Xi, to the surprise of everybody, did so by signing an agreement with Obama.

India is a major polluter, not at the level of China, which has now reached 9,900 metric tons of CO₂, against the 6,826 of the United States. But India is coming up fast. “The incestuous relations between energy corporations and governments are out of the public's eye. It is yet further proof that, even when nothing less than survival is at stake for islands and coastlines, agriculture and the poor, governments are unable – or unwilling – to see beyond their immediate existence”

Goyal has promised that India’s use of domestic coal will rise from 565 million tons last year to more than a billion tons by 2019, and he is selling licences for coal mining at a great speed. The country has increased its coal-fired plants by 73 percent in just the last five years. In addition, Indian coal is of poor quality, polluting twice as much as coal in the West.

Nevertheless, newly-elected Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced that he will embark on a major programme of renewable sources of energy, and there is an apparent paradox in the fact that many of the climate scientists who form the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control (IPCC) are from India. Its Director-General is an Indian, Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, who is also chief executive of the Energy Resources Institute in New Delhi.

The IPCC’s last report was much more dramatic than previous ones, stating conclusively that climate change is due to the action of man, and providing an extensive review of the damage that the agricultural sector is bound to face, especially in poor countries like India. At least 37 million people would be displaced by rising seas.

Indian towns are by far the most polluted in the world, surpassing several times each year the worst polluted day in China.

But what is more worrying is that governments are reacting too slowly. It would take a very major effort, which is not now on the cards, to keep temperature from rising by more than 2 degrees Centigrade, and therefore to start to reduce emissions by 2020. Emissions in 2014 are expected to be the highest ever, at 40 billion tonnes, compared with 32 billion in 2010.

The consensus is that to limit warming of the planet to no more 2 degrees Centigrade above pre-industrial levels, governments would have to restrict emissions from additional fossil fuel burning to about 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide.

But, according to the IPCC report, energy companies have booked coal and petroleum reserves equal to several times that amount, and they are spending some 600 billion dollars a year to find more. In other words, governments are directly subsidising the consumption of fossil fuel.

By contrast, less than 400 billion dollars a year are spent to reduce emissions, a figure that is smaller than the revenue of one just one U.S. oil company, ExxonMobil.

The last meeting of the G20 in Brisbane earlier this month gave unexpected attention to climate, but the G20 alone is spending 88 billion dollars a year in subsidies for fossil fuel exploration, which is double that which the top 20 private companies are spending to look for new oil, gas and coal.

The G20 spends 101 billion dollars to support clean energy in a clear attempt to make everybody happy but, according to the International Energy Agency, if G20 governments directed half of their subsidies, or 49 billion dollars a year, to investment for redistributing energy from new sources, we could achieve universal energy access as soon as 2030.

Another good example of the total lack of coherence from Western governments is that they have pledged an amount of 10 billion dollars for a Green Climate Fund, whose task is to support developing countries in mitigating and adapting to climate change. That amount is two-thirds of what those countries have been asking for and, since its creation in 1999, the fund has still to become operational.

And it was only after the last G20 meeting that the United States pledged three billion dollars and Japan 1.5 billion, bringing the total so far to 7 billion dollars – one-third is still missing.

And now we have the upcoming Climate Conference in Lima, in December, where opinion is that governments will once again fail to reach a comprehensive agreement on climate change – and the amount of time left for the planet will reduce even further.

Besides the fight to be expected from the Republican Congress in the United States, there will be also be opposition from countries that depend on fossil fuels, such as Russia, Australia, India, Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries.

So, governments show a total lack of consensus and responsibility. If a referendum could be held asking citizens if they would prefer to pay 800 billion dollars less in taxes to avoid subsidising pollution, there are few doubts what the result would be. And there would be same result if they were asked if they would prefer to invest those 800 billion dollars in clean energy or continue to pollute.

But the incestuous relations between energy corporations and governments are out of the public’s eye. It is yet further proof that, even when nothing less than survival is at stake for islands and coastlines, agriculture and the poor, governments are unable – or unwilling – to see beyond their immediate existence. We are direly in need of global governance for this kind of globalisation. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Excerpt:

Governments continue to subsidise exploration for fossil fuels despite pledges to support the transition to clean energy. Credit: Flickr/Leszek Kozlowski

By Shelagh Whitley
LONDON, Nov 11 2014 (IPS)

Just a week after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gave its starkest warning yet that the vast majority of existing oil, gas and coal reserves need to be kept in the ground, a new report reveals that governments are flagrantly ignoring these warnings and continuing to subsidise exploration for fossil fuels.

The report by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and Oil Change International (OCI) shows that G20 governments are propping up fossil fuel exploration to the tune of 88 billion dollars every year through national subsidies, investment by state owned enterprise and public finance.

Shelagh Whitley, Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI)

And this is only a small part of total government support to producing and consuming fossil fuels, which is estimated at 775 billion dollars a year.

The G20 continues to provide these subsidies – mostly hidden from public view – in spite of repeated pledges to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, address climate change, and support the transition to clean energy.

The subsidies provided to exploration by the G20 alone are almost equivalent to total global support for clean energy (101 billion dollars), tilting the playing field towards oil, gas and coal.

The report also shows that G20 governments spend more than double what the top 20 private companies are spending to look for new oil, gas and coal reserves. This suggests that companies depend on public support for their exploration activities.“Fossil fuel exploration subsidies are fuelling dangerous climate change; this support is increasingly uneconomic; and oil, gas and coal will not address the energy needs of the poorest and most vulnerable”

As finding fossil fuels gets more risky, expensive and energy intensive, and the prices of oil, gas and coal continue to fall, companies are only likely to become more dependent on tax payers’ money to continue exploration.  This was also demonstrated by the recent request by the United Kingdom’s oil and gas industry for further tax breaks to address rising operating costs in the North Sea.

Some will claim that although these subsidies are uneconomic, exceptions can be made. After all, the arguments go, we need fossil fuels to provide energy access – and we can keep burning oil, gas and coal if we just use carbon capture and storage.

This simply isn’t true. Doing so will drive dangerous climate change, with the impacts falling first on the most vulnerable people in the poorest countries and regions.

First, when it comes to energy access, it is actually through clean energy that we will be able to provide heat and electricity to the poorest.

According to the International Energy Agency, most new investment needs to be in distributed energy, including in mini-grid and off-grid options that most often rely on renewable energy sources. If G20 governments redirected 49 billion dollars a year – just over half of what they currently provide in support to fossil fuel exploration – we could achieve universal energy access as soon as 2030.

Second, there has only been very limited application of carbon capture technology so far.

The first and only full-scale ‘commercial’ carbon capture and storage project, launched this year in Canada, relies on government subsidies and sells the captured carbon to the oil industry, which uses it to extract even more fossil fuels. It is not a sustainable model.

In short: fossil fuel exploration subsidies are fuelling dangerous climate change; this support is increasingly uneconomic; and oil, gas and coal will not address the energy needs of the poorest and most vulnerable.

The G20 countries have the resources to support a transition to clean energy. They can set an example for the world by shifting national subsidies, investment by state-owned enterprise and public finance away from fossil fuels and toward renewables and efficiency.

G20 leaders meeting in Brisbane this week must recognise this and make good on their existing pledges. Immediately phasing out fossil fuel exploration subsidies would be the right place to start.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Stop Elektrownia Północ campaigners trying to stop investment in Europe’s biggest new coal power plant. Credit: C. Kowalski/350.org

By Diana Maciaga
WARSAW, Oct 27 2014 (IPS)

Pomerania in northern Poland is famous for its unpolluted environment, fertile soils and historic heritage. So far, these valuable farmlands have been free from heavy industry but that situation might change as a shadow looms over the lives of Pomeranians.

Its name is Elektrownia Północ, also known as the North Power Plant and, ever since we learned about it, we have been determined to stop Elektrownia Pólnoc.

If built, this coal-fired power plant would contribute to the climate crisis with 3.7 million tons of coal burnt annually, and lock Poland into coal dependency for decades.

It threatens to pollute the Vistula River, Poland’s largest river, with a rich ecosystem that is home to many rare and endangered species.“The [Polish] government’s energy scenario, ironically labelled as sustainable, is based on coal and nuclear power. It promotes business as usual and hinders any development of renewable energy”

The threat of soil degradation and inevitable drainage keeps local farmers awake at night, not to mention the air pollution from the plant that will be a major health hazard, making the situation in Poland – already the most polluted country in Europe with more people dying from air pollution than from car accidents – even worse.

But this is not just about stopping one of a dozen fossil fuel projects currently under development. This is part of a much broader struggle.

While unemployment soars, the Polish government fails to stimulate green jobs and dismisses renewable energy as too expensive. At the same time, it is pumping billions into the coal industry. Unprofitable and un-modern, it thrives thanks to hidden subsidies that in the past 22 years added up to a mammoth sum equal to the country’s annual GDP.

The government’s energy scenario, ironically labelled as sustainable, is based on coal and nuclear power. It promotes business as usual and hinders any development of renewable energy.

The current government continues to block European Union climate policy, without which we can forget about a meaningful climate treaty being achieved in Paris next year.

All this takes place while we face the greatest environmental crisis in history and leaves us hopelessly unprepared for everything it brings about.

But Poland’s infamous coal dependence is all but given and the policy that granted our country the infamous nickname “Coal-land” is strikingly incompatible with the will of the Polish people. All around the country people are fighting coal plants, new mines and opposing fracking. We want Poland to be a modern country that embraces climate justice.

I went to New York to be part of the People’s Climate March, observe the U.N. Climate Summit and bring this very message from hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens whose voices had been ignored on domestic grounds to the international stage. Yet what I had not expected was how powerful an experience it would be.

With 400,000 people in the streets and thousands more all over the world, New York witnessed not only the largest climate march in history on Sep. 21 but a true change of tide: a beautiful, unstoppable wave of half a million representing hundreds of millions more – the stories unfolding, forming an epic tale not of loss or despair but of resilience, strength, responsibility and readiness to do what it takes to save this world.

For decades world leaders have been failing us, justifying their inaction with the supposed lack of people’s support, their talks poisoned by a ‘you move first’ approach.

The voices of those who marched echoing in the street and in the media, impossible to be ignored, left their mark on the Summit and resounded in many speeches given by world leaders. The march showed it more clearly than ever how strong the mandate for taking action is and, even more importantly, where the leadership truly lies.

Opening the Summit, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appealed to politicians to take action to ensure a low-carbon, climate resilient and better future. “There is only one thing in the way,” he said, “Us”.

The march proved that there is a counter-movement challenging this stagnation. From individuals to communities, from cities to neighbourhoods and families, millions are working to make a better world a reality. Against all adversities, people around the world embrace the urgency of action and lead where the supposed leaders have failed.

For me this is the single most important message and a source of hope to take back home. A new chapter of climate protection has opened written by the diverse, powerful stream which flooded the streets in New York and beyond – not to witness but to make history.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

* Diana Maciaga works with the Polish NGO Workshop for All Beings (Pracownia na rzecz Wszystkich Istot), which specialises in protection of the wildest treasures of Poland. She has participated in Global Power Shift and Power Shift Central & Eastern Europe and is sharing her experience through campaigns and coordinating a training for local Polish leaders – “Guardians of Climate”. She is currently one of the organisers of the Stop Elektrowni Północ (Stop the ‘North Power Plant’) campaign against a new coal-fired facility in Poland.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Survivors of the May 2014 Soma mine disaster, the worst in Turkey's history which left more than 300 people dead. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

By Tessa Love
ISTANBUL, Oct 26 2014 (IPS)

Six days a week, Tahir Cetin spends seven and a half hours hundreds of feet underground on a narrow ledge, mining coal near Soma, Turkey. He breathes in dust that is destroying his lungs, and digs into walls that could collapse on top of him. With one false step, he could fall to his death.

After five years of these conditions, and the low quality of life he faces due to little pay and poor treatment, the father of three says with resignation that it does not matter if he is alive or dead.

“It is slavery,” says Cetin, who lost his nephew in May this year, when an explosion at the Soma coal mine in Manisa in western Turkeycaused an underground  fire, killing more than 300 people in the worst mine disaster in the country’s history. “As workers, we are valuable, but we are despised and mistreated by our country.”“The reason these people died [in the Soma mine disaster of May 2014] is because of the government’s neoliberal policies of subcontracting and making profits. The people really responsible are those in the government who allow privatisation” – Arzu Cerkezoglu, Secretary-General of DISK

According to Hurriyet Demirhan, a board member of the Chamber of Mining Engineers, nearly every miner in Turkey works under such conditions, which are chronic and widespread, and many wonder if or when another Soma disaster will repeat itself.

Both Demirhan and Arzu Cerkezoglu, Secretary-General of the Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions of Turkey (DISK), the union that now represents the Soma workers, believe that this will inevitably happen in one or more of the 450 mines facing exactly the same threat as Soma unless drastic changes are made.

DISK, as well as the Chamber of Mining Engineers, has filed reports about all of them, warning the government of their lack of safety. In 2010, Demirhan even filed a report on Soma, listing it as the most dangerous, but no changes were introduced.

While a fire that knocked out power at the mine and shut down ventilation shafts and elevators caused the Soma disaster, Cerkezoglu blames the government for the accident, and she points her finger at privatisation as the biggest problem with Turkey’s mining sector.

“The reason these people died is because of the government’s neoliberal policies of subcontracting and making profits,” she argues. “The people really responsible are those in the government who allow privatisation.”

Privatisation of Turkey’s mines began in the 1980s, when there was widespread agreement that the state was incapable of running mines efficiently. Now, private companies apply for permits through the Ministry of Energy and when they are approved, they hire auditors, engineers and safety personnel, all of whom are supposed to ensure the safety of the mines and fair treatment of the workers.

However, according to Demirhan, because it is the company that hires these personnel, they do little when they find something amiss. Add to this a mentality of high production at low cost, and the result is extremely poor conditions and abysmal pay.

It is through this process, says Demirhan, that workers lose their rights – and death is the consequence. “All of this is the responsibility of the state,” he adds, “and it is only through policies written by the state that workers can regain their rights.”

Immediately after the Soma disaster, DISK began working directly with mine workers and the families of the deceased to compile a file listing their demands for Soma and mining safety in general, which they presented to the Ministry of Energy in early July.

These demands include greater job security, higher pay, shorter and fewer shifts, an earlier retirement age, and compensation for the families of workers who died in the disaster, including new homes, double salaries, and forgiven debts, according to Tayfun Gorgun of DISK.

Gorgun is currently stationed in Soma and is working with the state to ensure that these demands are met for the 8000 workers still mining in the Soma area. But while the government has made promises to meet these demands, he says, progress has been slow.

The biggest promise the government has made so far has been to do away with subcontracting in the mining sector, which would stop many of the problems caused by privatisation. However, this issue, along with several others, has not even made it into the draft legislation phase.

According to Gorgun, “the government’s strategy is to decrease rights by letting time pass until people forget. The only way to make these changes happen is for the public to continue to care.”

Demirhan agrees, saying: “The state knows we will forget. We have forgotten before, and we will again.”

Cerkezoglu is confident that change will come, saying she believes that “the resistance of workers will lead to a change of living conditions and collective work agreements.”

For his part, Cetin wryly acknowledges that workers have been displaying this resistance. “We have asked for our rights, we’ve gone on strike and we’ve marched,” he says, but then he describes the violence that workers have faced for their efforts, including being beaten with batons and gassed by riot police.

“We have always known the taste of dynamite dust in our lungs, but we had never known the taste of pepper gas. Thanks to the state, we now know that as well.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Pacific Climate Warriors organised a canoe flotilla in Australia on Oct. 17 to protest against the Australian coal industry and call for action on climate change. Credit: Jeff Tan for 350.org

By Kaio Tiira Taulu
TUVALU, Oct 25 2014 (IPS)

The fate of my country rests in your hands: that was the message which Ian Fry, representing Tuvalu gave at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen five years ago. This is also the message that the Pacific Climate Warriors have come to Australia to bring.

We have come here, representatives of 12 different Pacific island nations, which are home to 10 million people, to ask the people of Australia to reject plans to double Australia’s exports of coal and to become the biggest exporter of gas in the world.

We want Australia (and other industrialised countries which also rely on the burning and extraction of fossil fuels) to understand that for every kilo of coal which they dig, or every gas well they make, there is someone in the islands who is losing their home.“We want Australia (and other industrialised countries which also rely on the burning and extraction of fossil fuels) to understand that for every kilo of coal which they dig, or every gas well they make, there is someone in the islands who is losing their home”

My home, Tuvalu, is a series of three islands and six atolls halfway between Hawaii and Australia. Tuvalu is the fourth smallest country in the world and home to 11,000 people and most of us have been there for generations

Tuvalu, like many of our island neighbours, is living on borrowed time with climate change expected to displace over 300 million people worldwide before 2050. The displacement has already started to happen with thousands of my countrymen forced to leave by the rising King Tides and the long drought affecting our food supplies.

One family drew international attention when they became the first refugees to seek asylum in New Zealand based on grounds of climate change.

Aside from the humanitarian cost, there is also the loss to culture and diversity with several thousands of years of civilisation and history wiped from the face of the planet. And there is nothing that we can do about this except hope that you and your country will see the value of keeping our island above water and make the decision to turn away from fossil fuels.

This is the reason I have joined with the Pacific Climate Warriors to come to Australia and represent my country and our region.

For years our leaders have tried to convey our message in the halls of power to politicians, diplomats and whoever else would listen, but the arguments of economic growth have always taken precedence over the arguments for our survival.

I now come as an envoy to ask the people of Australia to please consider the plight of the 11,000 people in Tuvalu and the further millions in other Pacific islands and other low lying nations which may expect to be wiped out by climate change.

In my time in Australia I have heard plenty about the importance of the Australian coal industry and the jobs and economic growth that it generates, yet it is us in the islands who are paying the price with our land, our culture and our livelihoods. This hardly seems a fair price to pay when we gain nothing from this industry.

This is why it incenses me so much to hear that coal is good for humanity or coal will be the solution to poverty. Coal will benefit only the wealthy whereas it will be the poor, like us, who suffer.

This is why it is the ultimate insult to hear that wealthy corporations are acting in the interests of the world’s poor when they dig and burn coal.

The Australian people have the power to decide the fate of my country and others in the Pacific. You need to let your government know that you have considered the matter carefully that you choose human life over the digging and export of coal.

If you do not, you must be ready to open your borders for the flood of climate refugees who will end up on your doorstep.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Excerpt:

Anti-coal human chain crossing the Niesse river which separates Poland and Germany, August 2014. Credit: Courtesy of Greenpeace Poland

By Claudia Ciobanu and Silvia Giannelli
GRABICE, Poland / PROSCHIM, Germany, Aug 26 2014 (IPS)

“People have gathered here to tell their politicians that the way in which we used energy and our environment in the 19^th and 20^th centuries is now over,” says Radek Gawlik, one of Poland’s most experienced environmental activists. “The time for burning coal has passed and the sooner we understand this, the better it is for us.”

Gawlik was one of over 7,500 people who joined an 8-kilometre-long human chain at the weekend linking the German village of Kerkwitz with the Polish village of Grabice to oppose plans to expand lignite mining on both sides of the German-Polish border.“It's high time to plan the coal phase-out now and show the people in the region a future beyond the inevitable end of dirty fossil fuels" – Anike Peters, Greenpeace Germany

They were inhabitants of local villages whose houses would be destroyed if the plans go ahead, activists from Poland and Germany, and even visitors from other countries who wanted to lend a hand to the anti-coal cause. The human chain – which was organised by Greenpeace and other European environmental NGOs – passed through the Niesse river which marks the border between the two countries, and included people of all ages, from young children to local elders who brought along folding chairs.

At least 6,000 people in the German part of Lusatia region and another 3,000 across the border in south-western Poland stand to be relocated if the expansion plans in the two areas go ahead.

In Germany, it is Swedish state energy giant Vattenfall that plans to expand two of its lignite mines in the German states of Brandenburg and Saxony; state authorities have already approved the company’s plans. In Poland, state energy company PGE (Polska Grupa Energetyczna) plans an open-cast lignite mine from which it would extract almost two million tonnes of coal per year (more than from the German side).

On the German side

Germany has for a long time been perceived as an example in terms of its energy policy, not in the least because of its famous Energiewende, a strategy to decarbonise Germany’s economy by reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80-95 percent, reaching a 60 percent renewables share in the energy sector, and increasing energy efficiency by 50 percent, all by 2050.

Today, one-quarter of energy in Germany is produced from renewable sources, and the same for electricity, as a result of policies included in the Energiewende strategy.

Expanding coal mining as would happen in the Lusatia region contradicts Germany’s targets, argue environmentalists. “The expansion of lignite mines and the goals of the Energiewende to decarbonise Germany until 2050 do not fit together at all,” says Gregor Kessler from Greenpeace Germany.  “There have to be severe cuts in coal-burning if Germany wants to reach its own 2020 climate goal (reducing CO₂ emissions by 40 percent).

“Yet the government so far is afraid of taking the logical next step and announce a coal-phase-out plan,” Kessler continues. “So far both the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats keep repeating that coal will still be needed for years and years to provide energy security. However even today a lot of the coal-generated energy is exported abroad as more and more energy comes from renewables.”

Proschim, a town of around 360 people, is one of the villages threatened by Vattenfall’s planned expansion. Already surrounded by lignite mines, this little community has one feature that makes its possible destruction even more controversial: nowadays it produces more electricity from renewable energy than its citizens use for themselves.

Wind farm in Proschim, Lusatia, Germany. Credit: Silvia Giannelli/IPS

But Vattenfall’s project to extend two existing open cast mines, namely Nochten and Welzow-Süd, would destroy Proschim along with its solar and wind farm and its biogas plant.

“It is such a paradox, we have so much renewable energy from wind, solar and biogas in Proschim. And this is the town they want to bulldoze,” says former Proschim mayor Erhard Lehmann.

The village is nevertheless split on the issue, with half of its citizens welcoming Vattenfall’s expansion project, including Volker Glaubitz, the deputy mayor of Proschim, and his wife Ingrid, who came from Haidemühl, a neighbouring village that was evacuated to make room for the Welzow-Süd open-cast mine. The place is now known as the “ghost-town”, due to the abandoned buildings that Vattenfall was not allowed to tear down because of property-related controversies.

Abandoned buildings in Haidemühl, Lusatia, Germany. Credit: Silvia Giannelli/IPS

Lignite undoubtedly played a major role in Lusatia’s economic development, creating jobs not only in the many open-cast mines spread over the territory, but also through the satellite activities connected to coal processing. Lehmann himself was employed as a mechanic and electrician for the excavators used in the mines. Ingrid Glaubitz was a machinist at ‘Schwarze Pumpe’, one of Vattenfall’s power plants and her son also works for Vattenfall.

“There must be renewable energy in the future, but right now it is too expensive and we need lignite as a bridge technology,” Volker Glaubitz told IPS. “The mines bring many jobs to the region: without the coal, Lusatia would be dead already.”

Johannes Kapelle, a 78-year-old farmer of Sorb origin and at the forefront of the battle against Proschim’s destruction, sees coal in a completely different way: “Coal is already vanishing, it something that belongs to the past.”

His house, right in front of the Glaubitz’s, is covered in solar panels, and from his garden he proudly shows the wind park that provides Proschim with an estimated annual production of 5 GWh.

Johannes Kapelle in his courtyard, with roof covered in solar panels, Proschim, Lusatia, Germany. Credit: Silvia Giannelli/IPS

According to Kapelle, lignite extraction has been threatening the Sorb culture, which is spiritually connected to the land, since the beginning of industrialisation over a hundred years ago. “When a Sorb has a house without a garden, and without farmland, without forests and lakes, then he’s not a true Sorb anymore, because he has no holy land.”

On the Polish side

Poland is Europe’s black sheep when it comes to climate, with 90 percent of electricity in Poland currently produced from coal and the country’s national energy strategy envisaging a core role for coal for decades to come. The Polish government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk has over the past years tried to block progress by the European Union in adopting more ambitious climate targets.

For Polish authorities, the over 100,000 jobs in coal mining in the country today are an argument to keep the sector going. Additionally, says the government, coal constitutes a local reserve that can ensure the country’s “energy security” (a hot topic in Europe, especially since the Ukrainian-Russian crisis).

Coal opponents, on the other hand, note that the development of renewables and energy efficiency creates jobs too (according to the United Nations, investments in improved energy efficiency in buildings alone could create up to 3.5 million jobs in the European Union and the United States). Environmentalists further argue that coal is not as cheap as its proponents claim: according to the Warsaw Institute for Economic Studies, in some years, subsidies for coal mining in Poland have reached as much as 2 percent of GDP.

“In Poland, the coal lobby is very strong,” says Gawlik. “I also have the impression that our politicians have not yet fully understood that renewables and energy efficiency have already become real alternatives and do not come with some mythically high costs.”

The future of coal in Europe

In Europe as a whole, coal has seen a minor resurgence over the past 2-3 years, despite the European Union having the stated goal to decarbonise by 2050 (out of all fossil fuels, lignite produces the most CO₂ per unit of energy produced).

Access to cheap coal exports from the United States, relatively high gas prices, plus a low carbon price on the EU’s internal emissions trading market (caused in turn by a decrease in industrial output following the economic crisis) led to a temporary hike in coal usage. Yet experts are certain that coal in Europe is dying a slow death.

“In the longer term the prospects for coal-fired power generation are negative,” according to a July report by the Economist Intelligence Unit. “Air-quality regulations (in the European Union) will force plant closures, and renewable energy will continue to surge, while in general European energy demand will be weak. The recent mini-boom in coal-burning will prove an aberration.”

“Additional coal mines would not only be catastrophic for people, nature and climate – it would also be highly tragic, as beyond 2030, when existing coal mines will be exhausted, renewable energies will have made coal redundant,” says Anike Peters, climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace Germany.

“It’s high time to plan the coal phase-out now and show the people in the region a future beyond the inevitable end of dirty fossil fuels.”

* Anja Krieger and Elena Roda contributed to this report in Germany

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Mauritians protest against the construction of a 100-megawatt (MW) coal power plant in Pointe-aux-Caves, on the west of the island. They say the project will cause irreparable damage to them and the environment of this Indian Ocean island nation. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jul 7 2014 (IPS)

Landmark new policies that have sharply curtailed U.S. financing for international coal projects may be rolled back, the result of a sudden, polarised fight over a little-known government agency here.

The debate revolves around an entity called the Export-Import Bank, which for much of the past century has made federal money available to promote U.S. exports.

In December, as part of President Barack Obama’s government-wide push to enact federal policies to counter global climate change, the bank voted to significantly limit its financing of overseas coal projects, unless they put in place expensive “carbon capture” technology to store emissions underground."To even have [the Ex-Im Bank] consider this coal project is an example of them going rogue – directly flouting restrictions they never supported in the first place.” -- Justin Guay

Multiple countries and international financial institutions have subsequently followed this model to put in place their own guidelines on energy-related funding.

“When it came to direct U.S. support, that policy change ended our ability to finance new coal plants, except in rare circumstances,” Justin Guay, a Washington representative for the Sierra Club, a conservation and advocacy group, told IPS.

“That was a historic step in curbing financing of the dirtiest and most outdated sources of energy. It was also one of the most significant pieces of progress we’ve had from this administration on fossil fuels.”

The agency did make exceptions for the poorest countries, however, allowing U.S. financing of coal projects in these countries if they use whatever is deemed the cleanest technology available. This loophole may now be significantly expanded to include many more countries, as part of a largely unrelated fight.

In recent months, conservative lawmakers here have seized on the institution, known as the Ex-Im Bank, as an example of government waste and corporate cronyism, given its role in subsidising certain U.S. businesses. The bank’s multi-year authorisation from the U.S. Congress needs to be renewed by the end of September, and in recent weeks a furious campaign has built around whether that approval should go forward.

On the chopping block may be the new coal policies, offered as a sweetener to draw back conservative lawmakers in favour of re-approving the Ex-Im Bank.

Coal compromise

Leading bipartisan compromise proposals in both the U.S. House and Senate would now see the bank’s authorisation extended for several more years but would also largely gut the coal policy, according to multiple reports.

“If we are truly committed to protecting our global environment, the U.S. should lead the world in clean coal technology and export that technology to the rest of the world,” Joe Manchin, a key lawmaker in charge of oversight for the Ex-Im Bank, said in a statement last week.

Manchin, a moderate Democrat from a coal-rich state, has reportedly proposed significantly expanding the number of poor countries that would be eligible for Ex-Im assistance around coal projects. Similar proposals are being worked on in the House of Representatives, though none of these have yet been made public.

Other lawmakers, too, have recently switched their views on the bank’s reauthorisation due to political pressures around coal. Presumably, a change on this issue could woo them to back the agency once again.

“[I]t is inappropriate to use the bank’s financing mechanisms to drive an ideological agenda rather than promote U.S. exports,” Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican in the House, said recently. “The administration’s policies come at a time when we should be ensuring the United States is leading the world in developing new coal plant technologies.”

Still, for some of the Ex-Im Bank’s most ardent critics, the attempt to link the agency’s re-authorisation to a weakening in its coal policies is not working.

“The Obama administration’s targeting of coal is absurd, but it is not important in the debate over the Export-Import Bank,” Dan Holler, communications director for Heritage Action for America, a conservative advocacy group, told IPS.

“While some lawmakers and special interest groups want to talk about coal, the real issue is whether the Bank’s charter deserves to be authorized at all. Heritage Action believes it should be allowed to expire.”

‘Rogue’ actions

The Ex-Im Bank’s new restrictions around coal would likely have a significant impact on overall U.S. support for such projects worldwide.

Of the agency’s massive budget – this year, 32 billion dollars – around a quarter consists of energy-related lending. And while assistance for coal projects has gone up and down over time, during some years the agency has offered some two billion dollars in financing for the industry.

That’s been seen by some as a misalignment of priorities: even as coal plants in the United States have been shutting down around tightened carbon regulation, the U.S. government has continued to finance more and more such projects overseas.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Ex-Im Bank’s new coal policy was controversial from the start – not only among some lawmakers but also, reportedly, among the agency’s management. Just weeks after the new requirements were voted in, lawmakers were able to pass a little-noticed legal provision that temporarily stayed the change through September.

The bank, meanwhile, has used this interlude to begin consideration of a massive and contentious coal-fired power plant in Jharkhand, in northeastern India. That development was announced at the beginning of this month.

“The Bank is in the process of conducting a full due diligence review of the financial, technical and environmental aspects of the project,” Stevan M. Horning, a spokesperson for the agency, told IPS. He confirmed that, because of the recent legal wrangling, “no analysis is being performed with respect to the … project’s compliance with” the new coal guidelines, though it will be reviewed for the agency’s pre-existing safeguards.

Horning noted that no decision would be forthcoming on the project, known as Tilaiya, until next month at the earliest.

Environmental advocates, meanwhile, say the Ex-Im Bank is operating on its own, disregarding President Obama’s climate priorities.

“President Obama pushed for this new rule over the agency’s objections, and now we’re seeing them openly defy the president’s actions,” the Sierra Club’s Guay says.

“The agency operates under the president’s administration and is part of the push to fulfil his agenda. So to even have them consider this coal project is an example of them going rogue – directly flouting restrictions they never supported in the first place.”

He continues: “The administration and Congress will have to actively rein them in.”

The new U.S. effort to reduce carbon emissions sends a powerful signal to the business and energy sectors that the country is moving away from coal and embracing energy efficiency and renewables, says the WWF’s Samantha Smith. Credit: Rennett Stowe/CC by 2.0

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jun 3 2014 (IPS)

New efforts by the U.S. to reduce its carbon emissions are being welcomed around the world. On Monday the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a plan to cut carbon emissions from power plants 25 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.

This “is the strongest action ever taken by the U.S. government to fight climate change,” said Connie Hedegaard, the European Union’s Climate Action Commissioner.

Hedegaard said it’s an important step for “a president really investing politically in fighting climate change.”

“We’ve been waiting a long time to see who will be the first through the climate action doorway,” said the Seychelles Islands Ambassador Ronald Jumeau, who is a spokesperson for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). The very existence of many of these low-lying islands is threatened by sea level rise from a warming climate.

As the largest carbon emitter historically it’s important for the U.S. to take the lead, Jumeau told IPS.

“Now its time for other major carbon-emitting countries to step up,” he said. This is especially true for Japan, Canada and Australia, as well as China and India. “Small islands states are moving quickly to reduce our emissions and we cheer anyone who joins in.”

Several Pacific island countries hope to have their electricity from 100 percent renewable energy by 2020. Just last year the tiny country of Palau near New Zealand became the first nation to achieve this.

Other countries have also stepped up. China recently increased its renewable energy target and has banned new coal power plants in many urban regions. Just two weeks ago, Mexico increased its ambitious renewable energy target from 15 to 25 percent by 2018.
The U.S. announcement is one of a series of recent steps by a few countries to reduce emissions, said Samantha Smith, the leader of the WWF Climate and Energy Initiative.

“This is very encouraging and ought to inspire others to act,” Smith told IPS in an interview from Oslo.

In taking a strong public stance on emissions, the U.S. is sending a powerful signal to the business and energy sectors that the country is moving away from coal and embracing energy efficiency and renewables, Smith said.

“There are already more jobs and better jobs in the U.S. solar industry than in coal,” she added.

A recent study found that employing energy efficiency alone would create more than 600,000 skilled jobs, cut air pollution, fight climate change and result in 17 billion dollars in energy savings.

Jumeau said many countries will closely watch to see if the EPA can actually deliver on its promise given the contentious politics in the U.S.

The coal industry and its supporters in the Republican party will try to block the EPA, but they’re unlikely to be successful, said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, DC.

While the EPA action on power plants is a positive sign by the U.S., it’s not ambitious enough to prevent global warming from rising well beyond 2 degrees C, Meyer told IPS.

New and larger commitments to cut carbon are what U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wants leaders to bring the Climate Summit 2014 in New York City in September.

“Ban Ki-moon has made it clear he wants commitments not speeches in New York. But it’s not clear what will happen,” said Meyer.

The European Union is the leader in cutting emissions – but it could and needs to do far more, said Smith.

“The EU has already reached its 2020 target but is unwilling to go further, when it could do more on renewables and energy efficiency,” she said.

She hopes the U.S. announcement will encourage the EU to be more ambitious in the run-up to the new global climate treaty to be finalised in Paris in 2015. Short-term reduction targets like 2020 are very important from an energy investment perspective, since they spell out where a country or region is going, she said.

Equally important is the scientific reality that carbon emissions must peak before 2020 to have a reasonable chance of staying below 2 degree C of global warming.

Jumeau says his colleagues at AOSIS are cautiously optimistic. They sense a change in the wind regarding public concern about global warming.

“Everyone around the world is suffering and its getting worse. The public is beginning to notice and see the impacts support scientists’ warnings.”

Power plants are the single largest sources of carbon pollution in the United States. Credit: Bigstock

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON , Jun 2 2014 (IPS)

U.S. power plants would be required to reduce their carbon-dioxide emissions by almost a third in coming decades, under a landmark proposal that constitutes President Barack Obama’s most significant attempt to counter climate change.

While the federal government has long regulated a spectrum of airborne pollutants from power plants, the rule marks the first time that carbon would be added to this list. That’s particularly important given carbon-dioxide’s outsized role in fuelling climate change, and the fact that the U.S. power sector is responsible for some 40 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Indeed, carbon alone accounts for more than four-fifths of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to government estimates.

“In that we’ve never had carbon pollution standards, this proposal is revolutionary,” Nikki Silvestri, executive director of Green For All, an advocacy group, told IPS. “If we can really make this rule work, and if it is enforced well, it could have the potential to phase in a clean-energy economy – and that’s really what we’re going for.”

The new proposal, unveiled Monday and known as the Clean Power Plan, would seek to bring down carbon emissions from power plants by 30 percent (below 2005 levels) by 2030. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which proposed the rule, that’s equivalent to half of the emissions produced from powering every home in the United States for a year.

The plan does not necessitate action from the U.S. Congress, which has refused to touch any climate-related legislation since early on in Obama’s tenure. The administration has already tightened emissions regulations for future power plants as well as automobiles and transport trucks, though Monday’s announcement has received by far the most intense anticipation from both environmentalists and industry.

The 645-page proposal is twofold, laying out broad carbon-reduction goals but also leaving it up to each state to figure out how to meet those goals. As such, states would have available a variety of options, including bolstering efficiency, investing in renewable energies, fashioning a tax on carbon, building up so-called carbon-trading schemes, or phasing out older or coal-fired power plants.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, coal made up 39 percent of the U.S. energy mix last year, while hydropower and other renewables accounted for just 13 percent.

“The EPA’s proposal to limit carbon pollution from power plants for the first time ever is a giant leap forward in protecting the health of all Americans and future generations,” Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a prominent watchdog group, said Monday.

“It sets fair targets for each state and empowers the states with the flexibility to craft the best local solutions, using an array of compliance tools. And if states embrace the huge energy efficiency opportunities, consumers will save on their electric bills and see hundreds of thousands of jobs created across the country.”

Still, the new rule would not actually bring U.S. emissions below levels urged by the United Nations.

“The targets aren’t ambitious enough for real emissions reduction,” Janet Redman, director of the Climate Policy Program at the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington think tank, told IPS. “But they are a piece of the puzzle, and it would be a real win if this rule restricts emissions from coal-fired power plants.”

Environmental justice

While the global ramifications of Monday’s announcement will become clearer in coming months, the Obama administration has thus far sought to highlight the proposed rule’s domestic impact, especially in terms of public health.

Achieving the carbon-reduction goal by 2030 would also cut smog-producing pollution by a quarter, the government says. And those benefits would likely be felt in particular by African-American, Hispanic and low-income communities.

“This is about environmental justice, too, because lower income families and communities of colour are hardest hit,” Gina McCarthy, the head of the EPA, said Monday in unveiling the rule’s details.

“Rising temperatures bring more smog, more asthma, and longer allergy seasons … The first year that these standards go into effect, we’ll avoid up to 100,000 asthma attacks and 2,100 heart attacks – and those numbers go up from there.”

McCarthy said that by reducing soot and smog, the administration’s plan will create climate and health-related benefits worth some 90 billion dollars in 2030, versus costs of around eight billion dollars a year. “For every dollar we invest in the plan, families will see seven dollars in health benefits,” she noted.

During a conference call hosted by public health groups on Monday, Obama noted that African-Americans are four times as likely as others to die of asthma, while Latinos are 30 percent more likely to be hospitalised for related problems. And according to Green For All’s Silvestri, some 68 percent of African-Americans live within 30 miles of a coal plant.

“Thus far, people really aren’t connecting these health issues to pollution and to climate change – they just know that each of their kids has asthma,” she says. “So we really need to connect these dots for people, to focus on these things that are already affecting our communities every day and then explain how climate change is contributing.”

Some worry that such an effort could be undercut if the new EPA rule pushes states towards carbon-trading schemes, under which emissions permits can be bought and sold. While such systems do allow policymakers to establish overall caps on emissions, critics say carbon trading can actually help dirty industries resist change.

“While the idea is that such a programme makes it more economical for polluters to clean up their act, those that are the hardest to clean up can simply pay to continue polluting,” the Institute for Policy Studies’ Redman says.

“That’s a major problem for those living next to power plants – people of colour, poor communities and others who are already feeling the effects of this pollution.”

Following four months of public comment and what will certainly be extensive legal challenges, the EPA is slated to finalise the new carbon-emissions rule by June 2015. Thereafter, states would have until mid-2016 to finalise their own plans on compliance, though that deadline could be extended by another two years if requested.

Environmentalists protesting against coal outside the Polish Ministry of Economy. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS.

By Claudia Ciobanu
WARSAW, Apr 20 2014 (IPS)

A European ‘energy union’ plan proposed by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk as an EU response to the crisis in Ukraine could be a Trojan horse for fossil fuels.

On account of Poland’s proximity and deep historical ties to Ukraine, the country’s centre-right government led by Donald Tusk has assumed a prominent position in attempts to ease the crisis in Ukraine. Notoriously, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski helped negotiate a February deal between then Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych and opposition leaders of Euromaidan, the name given to the pro-EU protests in Kiev.Asking for a prominent role for coal and shale gas is mostly a Polish game.

The Polish government’s assertiveness came with quick electoral gains. According to a poll conducted in early April by polling agency TNS Polska, Tusk’s Civic Platform for the first time in years took a lead in voters’ preferences over the conservative Peace and Justice Party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

“Not only is Civic Platform back in the lead, but also more Poles are ready to vote and vote for the government,” Lukasz Lipinski, an analyst at think tank Polityka Insight in Warsaw, told IPS. “All opposition parties now want to move the debate [ahead of the May 25 European elections] to domestic issues because on those it is much easier to criticise the Civic Platform after six years of government.”

Yet Tusk’s executive insists on Ukraine because of the benefits the topic can still bring. In the last weekend of March, the prime minister announced a Polish proposal for a European energy union that would make Europe resilient to crises like the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

“The experience of the last few weeks [Russia’s invasion of Ukraine] shows that Europe must strive towards solidarity when it comes to energy,” said Tusk speaking in Tychy, a city in the southern coal-producing Silesia region.

He went on to outline the six dimensions of the ‘energy union’: the creation of an effective gas solidarity mechanism in case of supply crises; financing from the European Union’s funds for infrastructure ensuring energy solidarity in particular in the east of the EU; collective energy purchasing; rehabilitation of coal as a source of energy; shale gas extraction; and radical diversification of gas supply to the EU.

“It is very disappointing to note the total absence of energy efficiency measures from this vision, even though it featured centrally in the March European Council on Crimea conclusions,” Julia Michalak, EU climate policy officer at the NGO coalition Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe, told IPS. “If the Crimea crisis did not make the government realise that energy efficiency is the easiest and cheapest way to achieve real energy security for Europe, I’m not sure what would.”

While some of the measures proposed by Tusk would indeed lead (assuming they could be implemented) to increased European solidarity in the energy sector, asking for a prominent role for coal and shale gas is mostly a Polish game.

At the moment, the EU has no common binding EU policies on shale gas – various EU countries such as France and Bulgaria even have moratoriums on exploration. And the EU’s long-term climate objectives, primarily the 2050 decarbonisation goal, make a true coal resurrection unlikely.

According to Michalak, the coal and shale gas elements of the Polish six-point plan must be understood, on the one hand, as aimed at domestic audiences who want to see their government play hard ball and, on the other, as a negotiating tool meant to draw some specific gains out of Brussels.

The Tusk government has made herculean efforts to persuade foreign companies interested in shale gas to stick to the country, including firing environment minister Marcin Korolec during the climate change talks COP19 last year for reportedly not being shale gas friendly enough. Nevertheless, in April this year, France’s TOTAL became the fourth company to announce dropping exploratory works in Poland, as shale gas here is proving more scarce than initially thought.

The Polish national consensus on coal too is starting to show minor cracks.

Nearly 90 percent of electricity used in Poland comes from coal, and the government’s long-term energy strategy envisages a core role for coal up to 2060. Tusk’s executive has been unsuccessfully trying to torpedo the EU’s adoption of decarbonisation targets, so at the moment it is unclear how authorities will reconcile EU commitments with a coal-dependent economy.

Last year, the chief executive of state energy company PGE resigned, arguing that an expansion by 1,800 MW of Opole coal plant in south-western Poland is unprofitable. The government chose to go ahead with expansion plans anyway.

Despite the generalised perception in Poland that coal is a cheap form of energy, this month saw leading newspapers (including the conservative Rzeczpospolita) discussing externalities of coal following a study by think tank Warsaw Institute for Economic Studies showing that, between 1990-2012, Polish subsidies for coal amounted to 170 bn PLN (40 billion euros).

In 2013, a series of international financial institutions, including the World Bank and the European Investment Bank, announced significant restrictions to their financing of coal – lending to Polish coal, for instance, would be impossible for these institutions under the new guidelines.

Poland also has to implement the EU’s Industrial Emissions Directive which calls for stricter pollution standards at energy producing units as of 2016 or closure of plants which do not comply. And it is potentially in this space that some of the benefits of Poland’s tough game on coal in Brussels could be seen.

In February, the European Commission allowed Poland to exempt 73 of its energy producing units from the requirements of the Directive, including two outdated units at Belchatow coal plant in central Poland, Europe’s largest thermal coal plant (5,298 MW) and biggest CO2 emitter.

Additionally, it has emerged this month that Poland intends to use regional funds meant for tackling urban air pollution from the next EU budget (2014-2020) to finance modernisation measures at the country’s biggest coal and gas producers, both private and state-owned.

Advocates say that public opinion, both domestically and internationally, is already in the midst of broad changes regarding dirtier forms of energy production. Credit: Bigstock

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jan 14 2014 (IPS)

Environmentalists and some lawmakers are decrying a surprise move by conservative members of Congress to roll back landmark “clean energy” policies guiding U.S. investments in overseas power projects.

Two federal agencies have new guidance in place largely barring government investment in power-generation projects that fail to adequately cut carbon emissions. The rules, by the Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), which facilitate U.S. private investments into foreign projects, would essentially discontinue U.S. funding for overseas coal-fired power generation."Industry and the politicians that represent them are panicking." -- Janet Redman

Yet a surprise addendum to a massive U.S. government spending bill would disallow the Export-Import Bank from implementing its new rule, which was unveiled in December. The provision, made public Monday evening, also guts a court-ordered greenhouse gas cap put in place in 2009 to force OPIC to set limits on the carbon emissions of its investments.

“In our view, this is a direct attack on one of the key achievements of the president’s Climate Action Plan,” Justin Guay, a Washington representative for the Sierra Club, a conservation and advocacy group, told IPS.

“This was the coal industry striking back symbolically at what it saw as a very serious set of political headwinds, as the overseas markets represent their lone opportunity to remain a relevant industry.”

According to media reports, the new provision was offered by Hal Rogers, the top Republican lawmaker in charge of crafting the massive appropriations bill, which allocates funding for nearly all parts of the federal government. On Tuesday, Rogers touted the passage of “A provision to prohibit the Export-Import Bank and OPIC from blocking coal and other power-generation projects, which will increase exports of U.S. goods or services.”

Rogers is a representative from the state of Kentucky, where the coal industry has traditionally been particularly strong.

An OPIC spokesperson told IPS that, for fiscal year 2014, the new legislation “permits OPIC to consider power projects in poor countries that would otherwise be subject to its [greenhouse gas] portfolio reduction goals, while preserving other pre-existing environmental, labour, human rights and credit criteria.”

Ex-Im model

The second half of last year saw a flurry of high-level activity on environment issues here, following a major climate-related speech given by President Barack Obama. One element of this was the administration’s move to severely curtail U.S. funding streams, both public and private, for coal projects abroad.

Following on new regulatory proposals for future power plants here, the Export-Import Bank in December announced that it would only finance overseas power projects if they put in place “carbon capture and sequestration” technologies, to store emissions underground.

“The Export-Import Bank was the world’s first export credit agency to have announced restrictions of this type,” Guay says.

“They really went out on a limb to put these guidelines in place, but then also worked with governments around the world to replicate those policies. The subsequent successes we’ve seen are almost entirely due to the leadership and pressure from the Obama administration.”

Seven countries and four international financial institutions have now passed some form of the Export-Import Bank’s guidelines on energy-related funding. Guay says this is seen as an important success for the Obama administration – and an indication that the president is taking on stronger international leadership on the issue.

For now, however, this victory appears to have been snatched away. While U.S. legislative proposals are typically open to debate and changes, the new appropriations bill will likely not see such a process.

The bill not only covers a huge swath of issues, but is also seen as an important – and uncommon – result of negotiations between the two political parties. On Tuesday, the White House indicated that it supported passage of the bill in its current form.

Yet nearly all lawmakers over the past day have noted that there is much to dislike in the proposal, with some specifically highlighting the new OPIC and Export-Import provisions.

“There are also some things I wish were not in here, particularly a House provision that would weaken limits on carbon emissions from projects financed by the Export-Import Bank and Overseas Private Investment Corporation,” Senator Patrick Leahy said on the Senate floor on Tuesday. “We should be using public funds to support exports of clean, renewable technology, not to fund power projects that worsen global warming.”

Altruistic appearances

Still, advocates say that public opinion, both domestically and internationally, is already in the midst of broad changes regarding dirtier forms of energy production. This is particularly the case with coal, which many analysts see as a dying industry in the United States.

“In a sense, industry and the politicians that represent them are panicking,” Janet Redman, director of the Climate Policy Programme at the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington think tank, told IPS. “Because of this, we’ve seen an overall attack on the ongoing shift away from fossil fuel. Part of this is industry players pushing new ideas like ‘clean coal’ or natural gas as a ‘bridge’ fuel.”

Redman draws a link between these new, ostensibly more progressive, campaigns and a tactic she says is part of the push against the OPIC and Export-Import guidelines.

“We’re seeing some folks say that the idea here is about development goals and reducing poverty,” Redman says. “But I’m concerned that fossil fuels interests are hiding behind what looks like an altruistic motive as a way to build up the industry.”

In mid-December, two Republican lawmakers, including another representative from Kentucky, decried the restrictive new U.S. policies on overseas energy investment.

“The actions raise questions … [about] the practical impact of U.S. international humanitarian goals, trade policies, and foreign commerce,” the lawmakers, Fred Upton and Ed Whitfield, stated in a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew.

“Requiring [carbon capture and sequestration] would constitute a de facto ban on construction of state-of-the-art new coal-fired power plants – projects that some of the countries in greatest need of reliable and affordable electricity seek today.”

Such warnings notwithstanding, the Sierra Club’s Guay says the new provisions appear to have caught by surprise many proponents of cleaner overseas energy investments.

“We weren’t expecting such a problematic set of language around these provisions – it seems to have been kind of snuck in during the dead of the night,” he says.

“The [Obama] administration is not going to be happy. But one silver lining could be that this attack will have woken up both the administration and the activist community to how important this [provision] was and how much defence it will require going forward.”

Activists say the coal trains lose one pound of toxic dust per car per mile. Credit: Scott Granneman/cc by 2.0

By Matthew Charles Cardinale
SPOKANE, Washington, Dec 27 2013 (IPS)

Citizens and activists in the U.S. Pacific Northwest are fighting three different proposed coal terminals, including one in Oregon and two in Washington.

Meanwhile, three formerly proposed coal terminals have already been defeated. Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign recently cited these defeats as signs of progress in the broader campaign to retire the use of coal plants across the U.S. altogether."If we allow corporations to export… it undercuts all the work that we’ve done to address the climate crisis." -- Trip Jennings

“There are three main reasons we oppose coal exports,” Trip Jennings, organiser for Portland Rising Tide, told IPS.

“The first reason – I think the most important for us – is the fact that we’re closing down power plants in the U.S.,” he said. “Oregon and Washington will be totally coal-free in a number of years. We as a community and as citizens decided we didn’t want to burn coal. If we allow corporations to export… it undercuts all the work that we’ve done to address the climate crisis.”

“Second, this has a huge impact on the number of trains that are coming through this area. It creates a situation where we’re committed to shipping highly destructive commodities, rather than shipping people or clean resources on our rails,” Jennings said.

“Third is the dust that is created when these cars lose one pound of dust per car per mile. They’re sprinkling the countryside, the rivers, streams, and communities with toxic, dirty coal dust [leading to asthma and lung disease].”

On May 8, energy company Kinder-Morgan abandoned plans to build a massive export terminal near Clatskanie, Oregon along the Columbia River, which would have exported 15 to 30 million tonnes of coal overseas each year from the Powder River Basin.

On Apr. 1, energy company Metro Ports, the last remaining investor in a proposed Coos Bay Terminal, in Coos Bay, Oregon, allowed its negotiating contract to expire.

International investors Mitsui & Co. of Japan and the Korean Electric Power Corporation had already withdrawn from negotiations. This terminal would have allowed for the shipment of eight to 10 million tonnes of coal each year.

The third victory for activists occurred last August, when Rail America withdrew plans for a coal terminal at the Port of Greys Harbor in Hoquiam, Washington, that would have transported about five million tonnes of coal each year.

The terminals still pending include a two-port plan called Morrow Pacific, in Morrow and St. Helens, Oregon; the Millennium Bulk Terminal at the Port of Longview, Washington; and the Gateway Pacific Terminal in Bellingham, Washington.

The Power Past Coal coalition, Portland Rising Tide and Idaho Rising Tide, the Backbone Campaign, Occupy Spokane, Spokane Riverkeeper, and the Sierra Club, are groups that have been involved in opposing these projects.

Portland Rising Tide, founded in 2007, is part of an international network of groups that works to address the root causes of climate change. It started in Europe and expanded to the U.S. in 2006.

According to Jennings, “[The coal dust from the trains] also blankets the rivers and streams with toxic dust, killing salmon, preventing salmon from continuing to spawn where they’ve spawned for millions of years. We’ve spent so many resources in the Northwest rehabilitating and protecting our salmon runs. These trains come in and they’ll be blanketing our salmon spawning beds with toxic coal dust.”

The coal would come from mines at the Powder River Basin in northeast Wyoming and the Tongue River Basin in eastern Montana. The proposed trains would bring the coal through the Columbia River Gorge, to boats. It would then be brought by train south through Portland and Vancouver, Washington, where the trains would turn north or continue west to one of the proposed port terminals.

Spokane, Washington would be impacted by any one of the three current coal train proposals, because they would all come through the city. Many residents there are concerned the increased train traffic will increase the number of times each day that traffic is stopped, meaning that emergency vehicles will not be able to get through.

Over 400 people attended a public hearing regarding the Millennium Bulk Terminal proposal in September 2013; most who attended were in opposition to the train.

At the hearing, Spokane City Council President Ben Stuckart held up a bag of coal that he and other residents have collected, containing whole pieces of coal that had fallen off previous coal train shipments. The trains can lose up to one tonne of coal during their journey, advocates say.

Overall, the Millennium Bulk Terminal galvanised some 164,000 citizens to submit comments to the Washington State Department of Ecology and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers prior to the end of the comment period last month.

Meanwhile, the Power Past Coal coalition, which itself is a coalition of groups, has largely spent its time focusing on the regulatory and permitting processes.

One victory from their participation in the environmental impact statement process is that the county and state agreed to consider the environmental impact not only of the carbon emissions in transporting the coal, but also the emissions that will result when the coal is consumed, for the Gateway Pacific Terminal proposal.

However, no government agency has agreed to include in its environmental impact study “what kind of pollutants are going to occur in cities that have no other connection other than that they’re a pass-through city to the ports,” Cullen Gatten, who participated as a legal observer of the protests outside the recent hearing in Spokane, on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild, told IPS.

“China is also slowly moving away from using coal. They’re looking at clean energy, too. They [China] may use it now, but… there is some concern they are going to move on before we excavate all the coal,” Gatten said.

The most significant international investor, involved in two out of three of the proposals, is Ambre Energy, an Australian firm.

At the beginning of this week, Liz Fuller, a spokeswoman for Ambre Energy, asked IPS to email a list of questions, but the company did not respond to them.

Recently, the coal terminal proposals became an issue in the elections for county commissioners in Whatcom County, Oregon, where anti-terminal candidates won a majority of the seats on the board.

As a result, the Gateway Pacific Terminal proposal may be doomed, Gatten said.

Brandon power plant, March 2006, Manitoba, Canada. Coal is the biggest source of climate-heating emissions in 2013. Credit: Bigstock

By Stephen Leahy
WARSAW, Nov 19 2013 (IPS)

Burning of fossil fuels added a record 36 billion tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere in 2013, locking in even more heating of the planet.

Global CO2 emissions are projected to rise 2.1 percent higher than 2012, the previous record high, according to a new report released Tuesday by the Global Carbon Project."Going beyond two degrees C is very risky, it's completely unknown territory." -- Corinne Le Quéré

This increase is slightly less than the 2000-2013 average of 3.1 percent, said lead author Corinne Le Quéré of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the UK.

“This is the second year in a row of below average emissions. Perhaps this represents cautious progress,” Le Quéré told IPS.

Still, these hard numbers demonstrate that the U.N. climate talks have failed to curb the growth in emissions. And there is little optimism that the latest talks known as COP19 here in Warsaw will change the situation even with the arrival of high-level ministers Wednesday.

Global emissions continue to be within the highest scenario of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), she said.

“This is a five-degree C trajectory. It’s absolutely tragic for humanity to be on this pathway,” Le Quéré said.

This year’s 36 billion tonnes of CO2 will raise the planet’s temperature about 0.04 degrees C for thousands of years. Every tonne emitted adds more warming, she said. (If one tonne of CO2 was a second, 36 billion seconds equals about 1,200 years.)

CO2 levels in the atmosphere have risen about 40 percent in the last century. The oceans have absorbed 97 percent of the additional heat from those emissions, which is the only reason global temperatures have not risen much faster. However, the oceans will not continue to soak up all the extra heat forever.

Who is most responsible for the 2013 emissions?

In total volume it’s China, with 27 percent of the total. But Australia’s emissions per person are nearly three times higher than China’s. The other big emitters are the United States at 14 percent, the European Union at 10 percent, and India at six percent, the Global Carbon Project report says. The Project is co-led by researchers from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia.

While emissions grew year on year in China and India, U.S. emissions declined 3.7 percent. This reflects the switch from coal to gas as a result of the boom in natural gas production. Gas contains less CO2 than coal. However, U.S. coal exports soared.

“The shale gas boom in the U.S. is making more fossil fuels available, resulting in greater overall emissions,” said Le Quéré.

A new tool anyone can use to explore where emissions are coming is also being released Tuesday.  The Global Carbon Atlas is an online platform that allows anyone to see what their country’s emissions are and compare them with neighbouring countries – past, present, and future. It shows the biggest carbon emitters of 2012, what is driving the growth in China’s emissions, and where the UK is outsourcing its emissions.

The Atlas clearly shows that coal is the biggest source of emissions in 2013. It is the “dirtiest” fossil fuel by far for the climate. This is true even with the most modern, efficient coal power plant.

Poland generates 86 percent of its energy from coal and hopes to grow this industry even though it is hosting the U.N. climate talks. In a shock to many, it is also hosting the World Coal Summit this week.

“Our people are suffering because of climate change. I can’t believe the Polish government is ignoring this by hosting that summit,” said Robert Chimambo of the Zambia chapter of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA).

“Millions and millions of people are going to die in future just so coal companies can gain profits,” Chimambo told IPS.

“There is no such thing as clean coal. Energy companies should never get a social license to build another coal plant,” said Samantha Smith, head of the global climate and energy initiative at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Although the coal industry talks about carbon capture and storage (CCS), it is too expensive and there are not enough places to store the captured CO2, Smith told IPS.

For developing countries, renewable energy is faster, cheaper, more decentralised and has the benefit of not polluting the air, water or land, she said.

The narrowing carbon budget is another reason to pursue green energy. To have a reasonable chance of staying below two degrees C in coming decades, cumulative emissions must not exceed 2,900 billion tonnes of CO2, the IPCC says, and 69 percent of that is already in the atmosphere. It bears repeating that even two degrees C is not safe given the increases in extreme weather, ocean acidification, melting of Arctic sea ice and other impacts already seen with the 0.8C of current heating.

“We have exhausted about 70 percent of the cumulative emissions that keep global climate change likely below two degrees,” said Pierre Friedlingstein at the University of Exeter in UK.

This knowledge doesn’t seem to make a difference to most political leaders or delegates at the U.N. climate talks. Some like Canada and Japan either don’t care or fail to realise their responsibility, said Le Quéré.

“My message to delegates in Warsaw is for every country to make the most stringent cuts they can now. If we wait till after 2020 it will far more difficult and expensive,” she said. “We have the solutions. Going beyond two degrees C is very risky, it’s completely unknown territory.”

The coal-fired thermoelectric plant in Belchatow, Poland, the largest of its kind in Europe. Credit: Pibwl de Pl:Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0

By Claudia Ciobanu
WARSAW, Nov 12 2013 (IPS)

These are busy days in the Polish capital Warsaw, even if it doesn’t show. The United Nations Climate Change Conference COP 19 has opened at the National Stadium, while on the other side of the river Wisla the Polish far right gathered for their annual march on Independence Day on Monday.

But bar a large banner on the National Palace of Science and Culture in the centre of the city, one of the venues for the COP, hardly any signs inform local residents that an important meeting about the fate of the planet is taking place these days in their city.

Poland is organising this year’s COP because it is the only country in Central and Eastern Europe interested in the job when the region’s turn came to host the U.N. conference. Yet many question Poland’s ability to play a constructive role in the negotiations given the country’s recent history of blocking EU progress on climate targets.Poland is this year hosting COP because it is the only country in Central and Eastern Europe interested in the job when the region’s turn came to host the UN conference.

In the spring of 2012, Poland single-handedly blocked the adoption of an EU low-carbon roadmap for 2050, meant to introduce across the bloc a 40 percent cut in carbon emissions by 2030, a 60 percent cut by 2040 and an 80 percent cut by 2050, compared to 1990 levels.

This fall, Poland announced its intentions to also prevent Europe from setting 2030 climate goals. A bigger emissions cut commitment from the EU could play a positive role in the advancement of climate negotiations.

The reason for Poland’s stance is coal. Almost 90 percent of the electricity used in Poland comes from coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, and the country’s energy strategy does not envisage a significant shift away from this source of energy.

Speaking in September at a mining fair in the southern city of Katowice, Prime Minister Donald Tusk famously said, “The future of Polish energy is in brown and black coal, as well as shale gas. Some wanted coal to be dispensed with, but energy independence requires not only the diversification of energy resources, but also the maximum use of one’s own resources.”

Controversially, the Polish Economy Ministry is organising Nov. 18-19, in parallel to the COP and together with the World Coal Association, an International Coal & Climate Summit. The Warsaw Communique, a document co-authored by the coal lobby group and the Polish ministry, will be delivered to U.N. representatives during the event; it contains a call to invest public resources in ’clean coal’ technologies in order to maintain high coal use around the globe.

Despite sticking strongly to its pro-coal agenda, the Polish government insists it is not opposed to the progress of climate talks. “I am not sceptical about climate change, I am sceptical about some European ways to address it,” twitted Polish Environment Minister Marcin Korolec in the run-up to the COP.

The Polish government’s current attempts to prevent the EU from heightening its own climate ambitions is much to the liking of the Polish and European far right, it was revealed Nov. 10 during an ’anti-climate summit’ organised in Warsaw by the Polish far-right party Ruch Narodowy (Polish National Movement), the Solidarity trade union and the U.S. climate-denialist think tank Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT).

According to Greenpeace research, CFACT has been receiving almost half of its funding over the past years from the Donors Trust, a secretive funding vehicle which between 2002 and 2011 has channelled 146 million dollar to climate denialist groups.

While many of the figures financially propping up the Donors Trust are unknown, Greenpeace has been able to establish that two foundations linked to Charles Koch, the oil and chemical industry baron infamous for bankrolling climate sceptic voices, have been putting money into the Trust.

During the Warsaw conference, CFACT representatives Craig Rucker and David Rothbard made presentations arguing that climate change is not caused by human activity and claiming that climate policies would mean further impoverishment of the poor around the world.

Against this background, the Polish far right represented by Ruch Narodowy outlined their vision of Poland’s climate and energy policy, having at its core a concept of sovereignty understood as rejection of EU and U.N. policies and a reliance on domestic coal.

“We are against de-carbonisation because the Polish economy is a carbon-based economy and we are against climate regulations in the EU,” Michal Putkiewicz, an energy expert at Ruch Narodowy, told IPS. “The Polish government first signed the EU climate and energy package and now they want to prevent the EU from making it more ambitious. The policy of the Polish government now is correct, but we think it should go further and get rid of any EU regulations on emission reductions.”

The EU’s climate and energy package stipulates that by 2020 the block must reduce emissions by 20 percent compared to 1990 levels, give renewables a 20 percent share in the energy sector and improve energy efficiency by 20 percent. Poland’s two biggest political parties, the governing Civil Platform and conservative Peace and Justice party, have been recently engaged in a public game of throwing responsibility on to one another for committing to the package.

On Nov. 11, far-right groups attending the anti-climate conference joined the Independence March organised by two of the most important far-right organisations in Poland, the All-Polish Youth (Młodzież Wszechpolską) and the National-Radical Camp (Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny), which in 2011 joined to form Ruch Narodowy. Over 10,000 people joined Monday’s march. The demonstration has become a yearly show of strength by the Polish far right.

Some of the participants got involved in scuffles with one another and the police; a squat in the centre of Warsaw was attacked by participants; and a rainbow flag symbolising diversity was burnt.

“Climate change denialism is becoming a new part of the identity and narrative of right-wing extremists in Poland,” Polish climate activist Michalina Golinczak told IPS. “So the Polish climate movement should start to collaborate not only with trade unions but also with other progressive social movements, anti-fascist, anti-war, LGBT, feminists etc., to push back the alarming rise of right-wing extremists.”

Artisanal miner panning for gold in Choluteca, Honduras. Small-scale gold mining is a leading cause of mercury pollution. Credit: Thelma Mejía/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Oct 7 2013 (IPS)

A new international convention opening for signatures this week will for the first time offer an agreed-upon roadmap by which to significantly decrease the global use of mercury while offering stronger safeguards for both human health and the environment.

Environment and public health groups are hailing the treaty, a legally binding agreement known as the Minamata Convention on Mercury, the text of which was agreed to in January by 147 countries following four years of negotiations. Proponents are now calling on governments to move quickly to ratify the accord after it opens for signatures, on Wednesday during a four-day summit in Japan.“This is something we’ve worked on for over a decade, so it’s quite an amazing moment." -- Michael Bender of the Zero Mercury Working Group

The convention will come into effect following ratification by 50 countries, though several key parts of the agreement will only be enforced at the end of this decade or even later.

“Overall, this is a really positive step – while we would have liked to have seen a stronger section on health, just having health language in what was considered an environmental treaty is an achievement,” Jane Cohen, a researcher in the Health and Human Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group, told IPS.

“We see mercury exposure in this setting as a critical threat to children’s and women’s health, as well as a major issue around access to information. It’s a prime example of environmental degradation impacting directly on human lives.”

The Minamata Convention (named for the Japanese city that is the site of the worst modern mercury poisoning) will now lead ratifying countries to phase out – and, by 2020, to ban – the use of mercury in a range of consumer items, including certain batteries, light bulbs, medical devices, dental fillings and vaccines. It will also tackle mercury pollution at its two most common sources, small-scale gold mining and coal-fired power plants.

Indeed, it is due to these latter two sectors that the new convention’s effects will likely be particularly pronounced in developing countries. While most industrialised countries have reduced their use of mercury in recent decades, developing economies have seen a steep rise in the toxic metal’s use.

“This is the first time we’ve seen these kinds of protections in a convention, so in addition to requiring real, implementable steps, it also brings much-needed attention to this issue for governments,” Cohen notes.

“Any country that has small-scale gold mining must now have a national action plan to look at alternatives or ensure worker and environmental safety – countries won’t be able to just ignore this convention. In addition, some of the worst forms of this sector’s use of mercury – such as burning it – will be banned outright.”

According to estimates released earlier this year by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), since 2005 mercury emissions have doubled in small-scale mining operations in Africa, Asia and South America. Today, Southeast and East Asia alone account for around half of global mercury emissions, put down to the regions’ rapid economic growth in recent years and rising gold prices.

No alternative to cooperation

International talks on the dangers posed by mercury began in earnest early last decade, and by 2003 countries had struck an initial agreement that the substance deserved to be considered a global pollutant warranting immediate international action. But it took another half-dozen years for serious negotiations, a process that was given new momentum by President Barack Obama’s election in 2008.

As a senator, Obama had urged the U.S. government to enter into negotiations towards a binding international mercury standard. After his election to the presidency, Obama was able to oversee an about-face in U.S. policy on the issue, a change that proved to be a catalyst for other countries, including China and India.

Simultaneously, many industrialised countries were already ratcheting down their own use of mercury, both for consumer and industrial purposes. In late 2011, the U.S. government unveiled strict new standards for mercury emissions from power plants, seen as one of the most important environmental victories of Obama’s first term.

“This is one of the compelling reasons why countries like the United States and other developed countries have moved to adopt the treaty, because they’ve already taken significant steps to phase out their use of mercury,” Michael Bender, a founder and international coordinator for the Zero Mercury Working Group (ZMWG), a network of groups in 50 countries, told IPS from the sidelines of the Japan summit.

“This is something we’ve worked on for over a decade, so it’s quite an amazing moment. No single country can solve the global mercury crisis – while there are alternatives to most products and processes and there are controls for most major sources, there is no alternative to global cooperation.”

Mercury, which can remain in natural environments for years, attacks the nervous system and has been proven to be particularly debilitating for unborn babies and children. According to new research released last week by the ZMWG, mercury levels in many human communities could be far higher than anticipated.

Looking at hair samples of women of childbearing age from nine countries, researchers found that nearly a quarter exceeded a widely accepted safety limit for a certain type of mercury set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Further, higher findings appear to correlate with higher consumption of fish and seafood, with 71 percent of women in Japan, for instance, exceeding this limit, followed by 64 percent of women in Spain.

While Bender expresses satisfaction with the Minamata Convention’s imminent passage, he and others have expressed concern over the agreement’s timeframe.

A new article he co-authored for the Journal of Public Health Policy warns that the convention “is slow to address major sources and uses of mercury. Coal-fired power plants constructed after the Convention enters into force are not required to install controls until 5 years later, with existing facilities given 10 years … Moreover, missing from the Convention are steps to eventually end mercury use in” small-scale gold mining.

Still, Bender and the ZMWG are now turning their attention to encouraging the convention’s timely ratification. They’re hoping to get the required 50 ratifications by 2015, and Bender says he’s optimistic that goal will be met.

“One good indication is the great number of environment ministers showing up here [in Japan], a dozen and a half from Africa alone,” he says.

“We also understand that a significant percentage of countries in the European Union are coming. Between the interest being demonstrated in Africa and the E.U. alone, we feel quite confident that the momentum for this international agreement will continue to build.”

Power plants are the single largest sources of carbon pollution in the United States. Credit: Bigstock

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Sep 20 2013 (IPS)

Regulators here have taken the first major step of President Barack Obama’s second term to scale back U.S. carbon emissions, proposing first-ever rules to dramatically reduce allowable greenhouse gas pollution for future power plants.

Both supporters and opponents of the new proposal, announced Friday by the Environmental Regulation Agency (EPA), say the regulations would make it far more difficult to build new coal-fired power plants in the United States. That has led to sharp criticism from business lobbyists and coal interests, who warn that the EPA is requiring the use of unfeasible technologies that will drive up energy costs and hurt jobs creation."Setting ambitious standards for existing power plants would be the single most important thing the administration can do on climate change." -- Rachel Cleetus of UCS

Under the new guidelines, future coal-fired power plants would need to cut their carbon dioxide emissions roughly in half, while standards for natural gas-fired plants would be similarly tightened. The eagerly anticipated regulations, a version of which was first floated last year, constitute the first major regulatory response to a landmark climate-focused speech President Obama gave in June.

At the time, the president warned that he would direct federal agencies to begin responding to climate change through regulatory and executive actions if the U.S. Congress were to remain unable to respond through legislative means.

“These proposed standards are the first uniform national limits on carbon pollution from new power plants,” the EPA’s head, Gina McCarthy, told reporters here Friday morning.

“Power plants are the single largest sources of carbon pollution. New power plants can minimise their carbon emissions by taking advantage of modern technologies. These technologies offer them a clear path forward, today and in the long term.”

The EPA will now open the proposal to public comments for two months. If the rule is then finalised – and it will almost certainly be subject to legal attack – officials hope to implement it by last next year.

In that case, the emissions rule would be among the first in the world.

“As far as I understand, using mandated emissions limits is unique” on a global level, Kyle Ash, a senior legislative representative for Greenpeace, an advocacy group, told IPS. “The E.U. countries are approaching the problem with a carbon trading system, China is now doing the same, and Australia has a carbon tax, at least for now.”

In the United States, power plants make up roughly a third of all greenhouse gas emissions. During his first term, President Obama oversaw major new regulations on the second-largest sector in this regard, automobiles and transport.

Yet while the EPA has in the past limited the amount of lead, mercury and arsenic that U.S. power plants can emit, the new rules would be the first to regulate carbon pollution.

“These standards are significant, and clearly show the EPA means business on carbon emissions,” Rachel Cleetus, an economist with the Climate and Energy Programme at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a research and advocacy group, told IPS.

“Yet while this is an important step forward, it’s not all the way there, and we’re looking forward eagerly to the next stage – dealing with current power plants. Setting ambitious standards for existing power plants would be the single most important thing the administration can do on climate change in the absence of action from Congress.”

Feasible technology

The new EPA proposal received immediate and widespread praise from environment groups, many lawmakers and even some large companies, even as it was pilloried by others.

“The new standards will reinforce what forward-looking companies already know: that climate change poses real financial risks and opportunities and that the future of the electric power sector depends on investing in cleaner technologies and more efficient resources – investments that create jobs and economic benefits,” 22 major U.S. companies, including the international consumer-goods company Unilever, wrote to President Obama on Friday.

Yet the rules are facing stiff opposition from many industry groups and most Republican lawmakers. Earlier this week the Senate Republican leadership offered a legislative proposal that would have barred the EPA from regulating power plant pollution levels, though this was rebuffed by Democrats.

“It is clear that the EPA is continuing to move forward with a strategy that will write off our huge, secure, affordable coal resources by essentially outlawing the construction of new coal plants,” Bruce Josten, a vice-president with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the country’s largest business lobby group, said Friday.

“The EPA … [has] released yet another major regulation that will hamper economic growth and job creation, and could lead to higher energy costs for American families and businesses.”

For power companies, a key complaint is that bringing coal-fired emissions down to mandated levels would require the use of new technologies collectively known as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). Critics point out that CCS, which is not yet being commercially used, has only been proven effective at federally funded test sites.

Yet researchers who have studied the EPA proposals and the current CCS market say such criticism is overblown.

“The EPA rulemaking documents, which are over 400 pages long, provide quite a detailed description of the state of CCS technology, and demonstrate that both private- and public-sector power companies feel sufficiently comfortable with this technology that they are already installing it on new plants,” Dave Hawkins, director of climate programmes at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a Washington-based legal advocacy group, told reporters Friday.

“The industry is like a broken record on what it takes for the EPA to use technologies to set emissions limits. This goes back over 40 years … and in every instance when the government moved forward and set sensible standards, the industry demonstrated it could comply.”

Indeed, in the context of the recent rise in availability of cheap natural gas – which can result in far lower greenhouse gas emissions – coal advocates have focused on the prospect of “clean coal”. Two power plants using CCS technology are currently being built, while three others are being planned.

“This is a pretty weird reason for the industry to claim to be upset – no one actually expects new coal plants to be proposed,” Greenpeace’s Ash says. “What will actually have an impact will be the next rule, the carbon pollution standards for existing power plants – most likely, that’s what the industry is now trying to head off.”

On Friday, the EPA’s McCarthy announced that the proposal for limiting pollution from existing power plants will be offered by June of next year.

Coal mining in Suesca, Colombia. Credit: Gloria Umaña

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jun 28 2013 (IPS)

The World Bank is set to consider dramatically cutting down its funding for coal-related power projects, according to a draft strategy document leaked this week.

The bank’s continued focus on coal projects, particularly in poor countries, has been a key frustration for environmentalists and some development experts, who have warned that such a stance is at odds with the Washington-based multilateral lender’s attempts to strengthen its focus on climate change mitigation and adaptation.

While the new moves would be applauded if passed, many are now expressing concern about the strategy’s apparent increased focus on natural gas and hydroelectric production.

“The [World Bank Group] is committed to maximising synergies between economic development and climate change mitigation. The WBG will cease providing financial support for greenfield coal power generation projects, except in rare circumstances,” the paper, a copy of which was seen by IPS but which is not available online, states.

“Considerations such as meeting basic energy needs in countries with no feasible alternatives to coal and a lack of financing for coal power would define such rare cases. Even in such cases, only a minimum level of WBG support would be deployed, with recourse to private-sector financing to the extent possible.”

The document, subtitled “Directions for the World Bank Group’s Energy Sector”, is slated to be discussed by the bank’s board on Jul. 19, according to a spokesperson, after which the strategy will be publicly released.

“The World Bank Group’s energy work is aligned with our twin goals of ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity,” Frederick Jones, a World Bank spokesperson, told IPS in a statement.

“The WBG is committed to universal access to electricity and safe household fuels, double the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix, and double the rate of improvement of energy efficiency.”

He noted that the bank approved a record 44 percent of its annual energy lending for renewables last year, valued at some 3.6 billion dollars. In terms of power-generation projects, that figure rose even higher, with renewables comprising 84 percent of financing.

But the bank is also currently considering funding for a 600-megawatt power plant in Kosovo, which would burn a particularly dirty form of coal called lignite. That project has been disparaged by Kosovar and international environmentalists.

Climate bank

“The World Bank is right to say that energy has a crucial role to play in eradicating poverty,” Nicolas Mombrial, head of the Washington office of Oxfam International, a humanitarian agency, told IPS.

“We’re also pleased to see the bank acknowledge that failing to move away from fossils fuels will have enormous environmental costs that ultimately will be born by the poorest and most vulnerable,” Mombrial added.

“Going forward, the bank needs improved environmental and social assessments that are mandatory for all its energy projects, and to make sure that its energy lending benefits the poorest, most vulnerable people,” he said.

With the paper still up for discussion, its content could be altered or voted down entirely. Analysts point out that this has happened with previous attempts to roll back coal-related financing by the bank, actions that have been vociferously opposed by major coal users such as China.

Still, the new coal-related guidelines would constitute a major policy change if they go through and would be in line with a broader new institutional focus on climate change, as pushed by World Bank President Jim Kim.

“[L]eaders around the world must propose even more far-reaching solutions and deliver results … They know there’s no substitute for aggressive national targets to reduce emissions,” Kim wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post published Friday.

“Today, the burden of emissions reductions lies with a few large economies, including the United States, China, India and the European Union. In particular, the moves by the United States and other big emitters to reduce emissions from coal-fired plants are an important step forward.”

The World Bank document was leaked in the immediate aftermath of the first major climate change-focused policy speech given by President Barack Obama on Tuesday in which he laid out a policy vision in part strikingly similar to the World Bank’s new draft proposal.

“Today, I’m calling for an end of public financing for new coal plants overseas,” Obama stated, “unless they deploy carbon-capture technologies or there’s no other viable way for the poorest countries to generate electricity.”

This announcement too would constitute a major policy reversal, as the United States has directly offered billions of dollars in financing for coal-fired power plants in recent years, including in India and South Africa, and is considering a proposed project in Vietnam.

Locked in

The potential moves away from coal-related financing on the part of both the World Bank and the United States are being lauded by environment groups and development agencies.

Yet both of these new approaches would place significant emphasis on natural gas and, in the case of the bank, other contentious forms of electricity production such as hydroelectric dams.

The new World Bank policy noted, “In some cases, natural gas is likely to make an important contribution [to transitioning to sustainable energy] … providing flexible electricity supply where demand and supply fluctuate.”

“It is welcome news that the World Bank is moving away from coal, because we’ve known for some time that bank investments in coal have not helped meet the energy needs of the poorest, but rather have helped some of the richest corporations on the planet,” Daphne Wysham, co-director of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network and the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington think tank, told IPS.

“The bad news is that instead of leading the world towards a truly renewable green-energy future, the bank is once again locking developing countries into carbon-based infrastructure, this time with natural gas.”

While natural gas burns far cleaner than coal, producing natural gas tends to result in significant leakage of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. As a result, scientists say, natural gas can result in similar levels of climate change-causing emissions as coal.

Wysham pointed to a report released this week by the International Energy Agency (IEA), a Paris-based think tank backed by Western countries, that surprised many analysts by forecasting that the price of renewable energy will drop below that of natural gas as early as 2016.

“In our opinion, any significant focus by the bank on natural gas would make no sense,” Wysham said, “from either a climate or economic perspective”.

By Constanza Vieira
TUCURINCA, Colombia, Jun 11 2013 (IPS)

José “Goyo” Hernández has never been given a mask to keep him from breathing in the coal dust blowing off the 13 trains that pass daily through this village in the municipality of Zona Bananera in the northern Colombian department of Magdalena, during his 12-hour shift at the railway crossing.

The trains speed by at 80 kilometres an hour, with nothing covering the 160,000 tons of coal that pass through the village daily, extracted from the open-pit mines 226 kilometres to the southeast, in the neighbouring department of Cesar, by the U.S. mining company Drummond, Swiss-based Glencore Xstrata (through its subsidiary in Colombia, Prodeco) and Colombian Natural Resources, owned by U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs.

Goyo wears the uniform of a private security firm contracted by Fenoco S.A., the private railway company awarded the Atlantic railway concession in 1999, whose shareholders include the same mining companies.

He guards the railway crossing where the coal train tracks cross the main street of Tucurinca.

Signs painted in English on the 120 train cars pulled by three engines indicate that each weighs 19.1 tons and has a maximum cargo limit of 60,750 kilograms.

The cars are filled to the brim with high-grade thermal coal. In compliance with an environmental permit for the coal’s transport, the surface layers have been moistened to minimise the amount of coal particles blown off by the wind.

But a report released by the Comptroller General’s Office in December 2012 concluded that this moistening is not sufficiently effective “in neutralising the release of coal particles.”

Studies have only been conducted on the land-based operations and activities in ports, the report stresses, which means there is no way of determining the “synergistic impacts” of all of the activities related to the export of coal, include its transportation on trucks, trains and ships.

When the train is approaching, Goyo sets up the “crossing signal”: two orange plastic traffic cones connected by a rope, and hanging from the middle of the rope, a small red metal plate with hand-painted white letters proclaiming “PARE” (STOP).

There is nothing even remotely resembling a safety barrier at this level crossing. Only a one-square-metre sign posted six metres from the railway line warns of the danger.

The people of Tucurinca love Goyo. They say that he and his co-worker, who handles the other 12-hour shift, have saved the lives of three people who attempted to throw themselves in front of the train.

Tucurinca has no sewer system, but it does have an aqueduct, although it only operates for six hours every two days. That is why it is not unusual to see women washing clothes at 10:20 in the morning in the ditch that runs alongside the railway tracks.

This is when the day starts heating up, with temperatures rising to 34 or 36 degrees Celsius by midday.

The women stand in the water up to their waists, soaping, scrubbing and rinsing the clothes. They also wash their hair. They smile and chat while they work. One of the women in the water, Amparo Padilla, says the coal dust doesn’t produce soot, so when clothes are hung up to dry they don’t get dirty.

Ana Rosa Figueras explains that the aqueduct does not reach her hut on the other side of the tracks from the ditch. “I live all alone, and where would I get the strength to haul water?” she commented to Tierramérica*.

In her yard there is an air quality meter, housed beneath a metal cover. “A couple of men come every two days, open it up, look at a paper and write something down. They come to check on the coal dust,” says Figueras.

“They study it, to see if it makes people sick,” she added, never pausing in her scrubbing and rinsing, as if worried that the ditch water would run out.

While she is washing, the slender woman picks her way with difficulty across the railway tracks carrying the clean clothes back to her yard. There she hangs them on the scaffolding where the meter is installed, which she uses as a clothesline.

María Josefa Arteaga, an elderly woman in a bright orange t-shirt, points out that the big coal companies do not pay any compensation for disturbing the life of the village.

People now complain of ailments that were not as widespread before, “when there used to be a train” – in other words, when the train was a passenger train, which carried people and goods to and from the village. Now the train comes but it never arrives: it just keeps on going with its cargo of coal.

People in the region say that the trains spread “illness” and that everything is contaminated by the coal dust, which breeds asthma and chronic bronchitis.

But there are no statistics, or they are not reliable, as noted in the Comptroller General’s report with regard to studies on the different impacts of the coal industry.

The environmental permits do not require the monitoring of suspended particulates smaller than 2.5 microns, something that is “essential for the adoption of measures that could decrease or mitigate the effects on human health that could result from the presence of particulate matter produced by coal export activities,” the report stresses.

Other more obvious impacts of the trains are the continual vibrations, which causes cracks in houses, and the noise, with decibel levels between 10 and 85 times greater than “normal” noise.

“The doors and windows shake. There are houses that are cracked. The owners fill in the cracks, and they split open again,” says cattle merchant Luis González, leaning against the wall outside his home across from the railway tracks.

“At night, the train passes every 15 minutes, 20 minutes at most. I’m used to it now and I don’t wake up anymore. It used to blow its whistle at night. You could hear it coming,” he recounts.

“Of course the train bothers me,” says his neighbour Ramona María Moreno, who was born in 1924 and adds that, if she had protested alone, she would never have reached such an old age.

“If the people don’t take action, there’s nothing that can be done. What good would it do me to complain if the others don’t join in?”

Colombia exports between 92 and 95 percent of the coal it produces and is the world’s fifth largest producer. According to the British Petroleum Statistical Review of World Energy 2012, 35.3 percent of the coal consumed in Europe is Colombian.

But the industry’s production chain is minimal, which is why it does not directly stimulate the economy, “at least in any appreciable way relative to the value exploited,” states another report from the Comptroller General’s Office, “Minería en Colombia: Fundamentos para superar el modelo extractivista” (Mining in Colombia: A basis for moving beyond the extractivist model), released in May 2013.

That is why in Tucurinca, as in other towns along the way as Colombian coal travels to the world market, the train passes, but it never arrives.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Excerpt:

Students rally in front of University Hall on Nov. 29, 2011. A special committee on divestment recently suggested that Brown withdraw its investments in the country’s 15 largest coal companies. Credit: Brown Divest Coal Campaign

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Apr 26 2013 (IPS)

Nearly a dozen U.S. cities have announced their interest in withdrawing municipal investments from fossil fuel companies, joining a fast-growing movement among colleges and universities that supporters say is allowing citizens concerned with environmental degradation and global climate change to act in lieu of federal action from the U.S. Congress.

On Tuesday, the San Francisco board of supervisors unanimously voted to recommend that the city’s retirement fund formally “divest” of any oil-and-coal holdings, some 583 million dollars’ worth. Next week, the nearby town of Berkeley is set to vote on a resolution that would request the enormous California state pension system to do the same."It doesn’t make sense to be spending money on my education if that money is also being spent on something that will threaten that future." -- Brown student Daniel Sherrell

Now, these initiatives have coalesced into a nascent movement. On Thursday, 11 mayors and city councils stated that they would be urging their cities to divest from investments in the 200 largest fossil fuel companies, while advocates say similar petitions are reportedly taking hold in 100 additional cities and states.

“This started [Thursday] with eight cities and by the end of the day we were already up to 11, and we’ve seen more interest since then,” James Irwin, a senior associate with the Mayors Innovation Project (MIP), a national network that is organising the new city divestment push, told IPS.  (The group’s municipal divestment guide can be found here.)

“That was after only a light first wave of outreach, so we expect to see more joining on now that the movement has begun,” he continues.

“This is part of building a moral argument that profiting from the wreckage of climate is wrong, that we shouldn’t be benefiting from climate change. Hopefully, this can be the start of a narrative highlighting how these companies are bad actors.”

By any measure, the divestment initiative has taken off surprisingly quickly. Substantive discussion began with regards to university investments only late last year, spearheaded particularly by the environmental advocacy group 350.org, and already petitions have reportedly sprung up at 300 institutions.

Expanding the movement to cities was an obvious next step, and related talks began in January. The following month, the city of Seattle – whose mayor has been at the forefront of the movement – announced that it would be encouraging its two-billion-dollar retirement fund to shed its stocks in companies that contribute to climate change.

“It’s the cities that will take the brunt of climate change, and that’s whether we get any federal or state funding – it’s up to us,” Larry MacDonald, mayor of the small town of Bayfield, Wisconsin, one of the municipalities that has pledged to divest its retirement fund, told IPS.

“A lot of the mayors I’ve spoken with feel very strongly that we only have one chance to act on this issue, and that we really can’t wait for federal or state officials. That said, of course, it’s also easier at the local level than at the federal level to make and act on these types of decisions.”

Trickle-up theory

Thus far, the majority of cities that have expressed interest in the divestment initiative have been politically left-leaning. Yet MIP’s Irwin says he’s confident this is solely an early dynamic, and points to similar experiences in the past.

“We very much view this as the vanguard – it’s the liberal college towns that often lead on issues that end up becoming mainstream, for instance recycling and today’s focus on green energy,” he says.

“These are also the cities where the mayors feel the safest, but really there’s very little downside politically, especially if you look at this issue economically. Staying invested in fossil fuels won’t make sense, for instance, when federal authorities finally do get serious on climate change – say, by putting a price on carbon.”

Indeed, on Thursday the U.S. Senate Finance Committee published a white paper that discusses the possibility of instituting a national “carbon tax”. For now, however, such proposals are still considered dead on arrival at the federal level, but in that void local-level officials are increasingly seeing both an opportunity and a responsibility.

“We certainly believe that cities are where innovation is happening – the politics are less difficult and there is often a greater concentration of people who want to see action on certain issues,” Irwin says.

“Over the last decade, we’ve seen mayors taking many important steps on climate change, and those activities have trickled up to the national level. This new movement is clearly about laying the foundation for working on the larger state and federal levels later.”

Re-alignment

Taking its inspiration from the anti-Apartheid movement of the 1980s, when some 155 U.S. schools came out against the South African government, the current divestment momentum began on college and university campuses. In addition to hundreds of schools currently being petitioned to withdraw their fossil fuel-related investments, dozens have reportedly started administrative processes to look more closely at the issue.

Endowments at these schools can be tens of billions of dollars each, and thus represent very significant potential leverage for those wanting to make both symbolic and substantive statements on behalf of environmental impact and climate change. Further, many of these institutions have notably forward-looking, altruistic mission statements.

“With Congress and international climate talks deadlocked, universities are at the front of this issue in that they have such high visibility – we have the opportunity to break this deadlock and create the political will necessary to help people take action on climate change,” Daniel Sherrell, a student leader with the Brown Divest Coal Campaign, at Brown University, told IPS.

“Right now, Brown’s investments in coal run counter to the university’s commitments to human rights. Those investments are also out of alignment with the science coming out of our own departments, which have consistently reinforced previous findings on human-caused climate change.”

A special committee on divestment recently suggested that Brown withdraw its investments in the country’s 15 largest coal companies. That recommendation may be voted upon by late May, and on Friday Sherrell participated in a preparatory subcommittee meeting to smooth the way ahead of the vote.

“Universities are about investing in both the future and the future of students – it doesn’t make sense to be spending money on my education if that money is also being spent on something that will threaten that future,” he says.

“More fundamentally, universities have long been a source of societal dialogue, and we’re trying to lead here. The more that cities, universities and individuals start standing up and saying this doesn’t make sense anymore, the more Congress will hear. This can shift the dialogue.”

Mauritians protest against the construction of a 100-megawatt (MW) coal power plant in Pointe-aux-Caves. They say the project will cause irreparable damage to them and the environment of this Indian Ocean island nation. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT-LOUIS , Apr 4 2013 (IPS)

Residents of Albion, a small village in Pointe-aux-Caves, western Mauritius, say that by opposing the construction of a new coal power plant near their homes, they are defending their constitutional right to live.

“What a catastrophe is coming to our region,” says Ed Laverdure, as he sits under the veranda of a shop in Albion less than two kilometres away from the site where CT Power (Mauritius) Ltd., the company commissioned to construct and operate the plant, is clearing the land for construction.

For the last six months, the residents of Albion and environmental activists have protested the construction of a 100-megawatt (MW) coal power plant, commissioned by the country’s Central Electricity Board (CEB). They have also petitioned the Supreme Court to halt the project that they say will cause irreparable damage to them and the environment of this Indian Ocean island nation. The court will hear their case on May. 6.

On Thursday, Apr. 4, residents took what they hoped was a significant step in halting the construction of the plant. They presented, during a hearing closed to the public, their objections about the plant to the National Energy Commission, which was set up by the government following the recent public outcry over the issue.

The commission, which comprises high-level government officials, scientists from the Mauritius Research Council and the University of Mauritius, environmentalists and trade unionists, was asked by residents of Albion to halt the project and to ensure the government moves away from using the existing four power coal power plants in the country, which were installed in the early 2000s.

“They should not be allowed to be refurbished and have their usefulness extended with new coal units. Any new power plant must be (built using) renewable energy sources,” residents said in their request.

Presently, Mauritius produces about 438 MW of power, which supplies some 420,000 consumer households and industries.

Some 22 percent of the country’s electricity comes from renewable sources such as hydro, wind and bagasse. But fossil fuel plants generate about 50 percent of all electricity produced locally, with coal plants accounting for 30 percent. According to the CEB, Mauritius needs an additional 100 MW of electricity by 2015 to prevent a power shortage in this country of 1.3 million people.

Environmental engineer Vassen Kauppaymuthoo tells IPS that the impact the plant will have on the population will be significant.

“The environment, the economy and even the social life on the island will be affected,” he says. “About 1,600 tonnes of coal will be transported daily by road from the port to the plant causing: traffic jams and pollution on the road, ash emissions, the release of heavy metals in the air, and contamination of the underground water if the ash is not buried with great care in the soil.

“The sea nearby (will be polluted) and 900 grammes of carbon dioxide for every kilowatt of electricity produced will be released. These are just a few of the consequences,” Kauppaymuthoo adds.

Keshwar Beeharry-Panray, an ecologist and chief executive officer of Environment Protection and Conservation Organisation, an environmental and conservation NGO, says that residents could face serious health risks, including developing respiratory problems such as asthma, and skin rashes.

Beeharry-Panray questions what type of technology will be used at the new coal plant.

“Everybody knows that modern technology to reduce pollution to the maximum is very costly. Will (CT Power) invest in it? Not sure. They (power companies) always say that they’ll take care of the pollution, but when it comes to real implementation, nothing happens and even the authorities forget about it,” he says, questioning whether the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development is equipped to monitor the activities of the operating power companies.

The CEB states on its website that due to restructuring and privatisation, it produces 40 percent of the country’s power, with the remainder being produced by independent companies.

But according to the CEB, Mauritius has limited known exploitable energy sources.

“If this new project is not realised, we will have to use more oil to produce electricity. We need 100 MW of additional electricity very fast because what is most important of all is that the population should get their electricity,” Shiam Thannoo, general manager of the CEB, tells IPS.

He observes that there is a limit to using renewable energy, as the high investment costs are the main obstacle. However, the CEB is planning to construct one 20-MW wind power plant every three years starting from 2017, and one 10-MW solar plant every three years from 2013.

But Suttyhudeo Tengur, director of the NGO Association for the Promotion of the Environment and Consumers, believes a small island like Mauritius has no choice but to use thermal power as only oil and coal are readily available here, which “unfortunately pollute the environment and affect our health…”

Though Khalil Elahee, director of the government’s Energy Efficiency Management Office, points out that the current growth in energy demand is low. He says demand grew by two percent in 2012 compared to a growth of 10 percent in 1980.

“This is due to the evolution of the economy and the fact that the main old pillars like the textile and sugar industries were huge consumers of electricity. Today, the services sector, which is expanding, uses less energy,” he tells IPS.

Meanwhile, Laverdure tells IPS that he and his family want to leave Albion, but cannot. “Who’ll buy my house in which I have invested my savings and am still paying for the bank loan?”

He says that if all the demonstrations, petitions and protests against the construction of the plant do not succeed, he will have to live next to it forever.

“Our kids also,” adds his friend, who only wants to be referred to as Georges.

“We’ll also have to forget about our blue lagoon nearby because of the pollution,” claims Laverdure.

Map of La Guajira peninsula showing the Cerrejón mine, the railroad tracks and Puerto Bolívar. On the left is the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains and on the right, Venezuela. Credit: Felipe Osorio/IPS

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Feb 23 2013 (IPS)

Two weeks into an indefinite strike called by workers at Cerrejón, one of the largest open-pit coal mines in the world, the company has agreed to sit down again and negotiate with Colombia’s National Union of Coal Industry Workers (Sintracarbón).

Negotiations, which had been broken off by Carbones del Cerrejón on Sunday, Feb. 17, are back on track with tentative meetings between company representatives and leaders of Sintracarbón, an affiliate of IndustriALL, a global trade union organisation that represents 50 million workers in a 140 countries in the mining, energy and manufacturing sectors.

Representatives of both sides met in the afternoon of Feb 22 to “discuss the methodology for resuming negotiations,” Sintracarbón president Igor Díaz announced on Twitter.

The decision by Carbones del Cerrejón — a joint venture between the multinational corporations Anglo American, BHP Billiton and Xstrata — to return to the negotiating table was most likely influenced by a change in attitude on the part of the Colombian government, who stepped in to play a role as mediator in this conflict.

In a laconic text message late on Wednesday, Feb. 20, Labour Vice-Minister José Noé Ríos told IPS: “We’re moving ahead. We’re still looking for a way (to solve the conflict) and overcoming the mutual distrust” between the parties.

The following day, Ríos was able to bring two representatives from both sides together to discuss the conditions for reopening negotiations.

A leader of the governing Liberal Party and former peace commissioner, Ríos is an experienced negotiator and in this opportunity he was called on to mediate by Sintracarbón.

Nobody, however, can accuse the vice-minister of “helping” the union, a Sintracarbón advisor told IPS. The source spoke to IPS on condition of anonymity and not as an official spokesperson for the union.

All things considered, after a week of efforts, Ríos’ mediation seems to be yielding results.

Another factor that probably played a role in the company’s change of heart was a social protest demanding a resumption of negotiations, staged on Feb. 21 in the northeastern department of La Guajira, whose economy revolves around the Cerrejón pit and its 9,870 workers.

The protest was initially called by local merchants as a measure apparently against the union, but it was taken up by the population who turned it around. And not just because the demand for dialogue coincides with Sintracarbón’s position.

Carbones del Cerrejón — and with it Guajira politicians and the government — came out of the civic strike looking badly in the eyes of the public, according to the union advisor interviewed by IPS.

During the strike, a usually silent population demonstrated loudly in front of closed stores and businesses, protesting the lack of a healthcare system in La Guajira and the missing royalties paid by Cerrejón to the government, allegedly misappropriated by corrupt local politicians.

Merchants and business operators also decried the environmental damage and health problems caused by coal mining and criticised the scarce development of La Guajira.

The company operates in the area since 1983, mining high-quality thermal coal, but only 10 percent of its purchases and contracts are conducted in Colombia, and less than one percent in La Guajira, the country’s fifth poorest department.

Carbones del Cerrejón established four foundations, with different purposes: strengthening government and accountability in La Guajira; promoting the construction of aqueducts and sanitation works; expanding micro-businesses; and fostering the sustainable development of the Wayuu indigenous people, who represent 42 percent of the Guajira population.

These foundations are financed with the company’s “tax deductions”, Álvaro Pardo, head of the extractive economy analysis centre Colombia Punto Medio, told IPS, and “the work they do has little impact, as is evident from the unsatisfied basic needs index and the alcoholism and illiteracy rates” in La Guajira.

According to his calculations, the almost five million dollars provided by Cerrejón from 1982 to 2002 in compensation to the Wayuu communities, are the equivalent of two and a half days of the company’s coal production.

The Red por la Justicia Tributaria en Colombia, an organisation of Colombian academics and activists who advocate for a fair tax system, mining companies deduct royalties and manipulate prices to lower the sums they are required to pay the government.

The company’s willingness to find a prompt solution seemed in doubt on Feb. 19 when Carbones del Cerrejón’s marketer, Coal Marketing Company (CMC), which exports 90,000 tonnes of coal per day, declared “force majeure” to get out of paying daily fines for not meeting supply contracts.

CMC had 15 shipments scheduled for Turkey and Europe between Feb. 7 –when Sintracarbón called the strike– and Feb. 18.

Force majeure can be invoked in extreme situations, such as natural disasters and strikes. On its website’s home page CMC proudly, and somewhat belatedly, announces: “We have never declared Force Majeure.”

Union records show that from 1986 to date Carbones del Cerrejón and Sintracarbón signed 12 collective bargaining agreements. This is the first work stoppage in the mine in 18 years.

In September 1995, nine workers were fired after a five-day strike called to protest against the quality of the food served by the company’s canteen.

In 1996, Gustavo Palmezano, a unionist who had participated in another Sintracarbón protest against two layoffs, was murdered. Half of the trade unionists murdered in the world over the last four decades were Colombian.

Díaz and another Sintracarbón negotiator have received repeated threats against them and their families since the list of demands was submitted in late November.

Carbones del Cerrejón condemned the threats, backed Sintracarbón when it reported them to the police, and urged the government to grant adequate protection to the unionists and their families.

According to data from Germany’s Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, 30.3 percent of the world’s energy today comes from coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels, whose gas emissions are a leading source of global warming.

With coasts on two oceans and very vulnerable to climate change, Colombia is the world’s fifth coal exporter.

Although in 2011, global coal consumption was up 5.4 percent from 2010, as per information from British Petroleum’s Statistical Review of World Energy, other power sources also increased, pushing international coal prices down.

The 2010-2014 National Development Plan projected an annual production of 124 million tonnes, at prices higher than today’s.

In 2012, 89.2 million tonnes of coal were extracted in Colombia, according to data from the Ministry of Mining and Energy.

In its conflict with Sintracarbón, Carbones del Cerrejón has claimed that prices have dropped 35 percent in the last two years.

The illusion of a development driven by the “mining locomotive”, as President Juan Manuel Santos likes to call it, crashes head on with the government’s weak enforcement of what are already lax regulations.

More than 90 percent of Colombia’s coal comes from fields mined by foreign companies. Carbones del Cerrejón is the single largest producer, with 38 percent.

The company’s operations extend over 800 square kilometres in the Guajira peninsula, bordering with Venezuela. It has its own railway lines running through the isthmus to Puerto Bolívar, a private port on the Caribbean sea which is used exclusively by Carbones del Cerrejón and CMC.

The company reported that in 2012 it exported five percent of global coal production: 32.8 million tonnes. This volume determines the amount of royalties the company must pay the government for extracting non-renewable resources. But the government does not control the volumes actually exported by large mining companies.

Sintracarbón is asking for an eight percent raise in wages — most Colombian workers received a four percent increase in average — and the company is offering five percent.

Carbones del Cerrejón says it agreed to a raise that doubles last year’s inflation and a bonus of 7,250 for each worker, in addition to “maintaining and improving all the benefits enjoyed by workers.”

While the company’s machinery, technology and productivity are on a par with U.S. and European companies, Cerrejón miners are paid five times less than their peers in the North, according to Colombia Punto Medio and other sources.

“Prices have dropped, but the enormous profits of the mining companies have not shrunk. They’re selling coal at about 60 dollars a tonne, but in 2001-2002 coal was 35 dollars a tonne and it was still profitable,” Pardo said.

The vice-president of Sintracarbón, Jairo Quiroz, believes Carbones del Cerrejón is trying to bring down the cost of production per tonne by cutting labour costs.

“That’s what they’re aiming for in this negotiation. Which is why they’re putting up less economic resources to respond to the workers’ list of demands,” Quiroz told IPS.