Update 30: December 3, 2003-10
Copyright © 2003 Earth Policy Institute
COAL: U.S. Promotes While Canada and Europe
Move Beyond
On Monday, November 24, the U.S. Congress abandoned
all hope for this year of passing an energy bill laden with subsidies
for fossil fuels, including coal. While the White House strongly supports
heavy subsidies to expand coal burning, other industrial countries are
turning away from this climate-disruptive fuel, including our northern
neighbor, Canada.
In Ontario, Canada's most populous province, the three major political
parties agreed early this year on the phase out of that province's five
large coal-fired power plants by 2015. This bold plan accelerated with
the early October election of Premier Dalton McGuinty, who has pledged
to close all the coal-fired power plants by 2007, eight years ahead of
the earlier deadline.
The goal is to clean up the air locally and help stabilize climate globally.
In terms of cutting carbon emissions, shutting down just the huge Nanticoke
power station on the shore of Lake Erie would be equal to taking 4 million
cars off Canadian roads.
Ontario is the first Canadian province to turn its back on coal. Its political
leaders simply concluded that the health and environmental costs of coal
burning are too high. Jack Gibbons, Director of the Ontario Clear Air
Alliance, calls coal "a nineteenth century fuel that has no place in twenty-first
century Ontario." Other East Canadian provinces including Nova Scotia
and New Brunswick may soon follow its lead.
Several leading industrial countries are turning away from coal including
the United Kingdom and Germany. The United Kingdom, which used coal to
launch the Industrial Revolution more than two centuries ago, cut coal
use by 40 percent between 1990 and 2001 mainly by substituting natural
gas. (See data.)
Germany, Europe's largest industrial economy, cut coal use by a comparable
41 percent from 1990 to 2001. Reduced subsidies, gains in energy productivity,
and the massive harnessing of wind energy means the use of coal may be
on its way out in Germany as well.
Although some major industrial countries, such as the United States and
Japan, are still increasing their coal use, world use has changed little
in the last 5 years. And the movement to phase out coal is gaining momentum.
The Economist, a business-oriented publication, which surprised
many readers in July 2002 with a cover story entitled "Coal: Environmental
Enemy Number 1," is urging adoption of a carbon tax to discourage coal
use.
If global temperature continues to rise and the world experiences more
crop-withering heat waves of the sort that shrunk the grain harvests of
India and the United States last year and of Europe this year, or the
life-threatening heat wave that claimed 35,000 European lives in August,
the pressure to move away from coal will intensify.
There are two ways of reducing coal use. One is raising energy productivity.
The other is shifting to less carbon-intensive sources of energy. Just
one quick example on the productivity side. If a world increasingly concerned
about climate change were to decide that over the next three years all
of the old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs would be replaced with the
new compact fluorescent bulbs, which use less than a third as much electricity,
hundreds of coal-fired power plants could be closed.
On the renewable side, wind power, now expanding by over 30 percent a
year, is on its way to becoming one of the world's leading sources of
electricity. Europe is the leader with 24,000 megawatts of generation
capacity.
In early October, the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) updated
its projections for wind electric generation, raising them by one-fourth
to 75,000 megawatts by 2010 and to 180,000 megawatts by 2020. In 2020,
EWEA projects that wind-generated electricity will satisfy the residential
electricity needs of 194 million Europeans, half the region's population.
As though on cue, two weeks later the United Kingdom approved construction
of four massive new offshore wind farms. Western Europe, with enough offshore
wind out to a depth of 40 meters (130 feet) to satisfy most of its electricity
needs, is fast turning to this new source. While the North Sea is rich
in both oil and wind, the oil is being depleted; the wind is not.
Solar cell use worldwide also is expanding by over 30 percent a year.
The cost of solar cell generated electricity is falling steadily but lags
the fall in the cost of wind power by roughly a decade.
Unfortunately, the United States is falling behind in both wind and solar
energy development. Once a leader in wind electric-generation, it has
ceded leadership to Europe. And in solar cell production it recently has
been eclipsed by Japan. If Congress resuscitates the energy bill next
year, it should consider the global environmental consequences of its
actions, the job-creating potential of these new energy sources, and the
long term costs of lagging in the development of these new energy industries
.
Copyright © 2003 Earth Policy Institute
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
From Earth Policy Institute
Lester R. Brown, Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003).
Lester R. Brown, Janet Larsen, and Bernie Fischlowitz-Roberts, The Earth Policy Reader (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002).
Lester R. Brown, Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001).
Lester R. Brown, "Wind Power Set to Become World's Leading Energy Source," Eco-Economy Update, 25 June 2003.
Bernie Fischlowitz-Roberts, "Air Pollution Fatalities Now Exceed Traffic Fatalities by 3 to 1," Eco-Economy Update, 17 September 2002.
Bernie Fischlowitz-Roberts, "Sales of Solar Cells Take Off," Eco-Economy Update, 11 June 2002.
From Other Sources
"Coal: Environmental Enemy No. 1," The Economist, 4 July 2002.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis; Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability; and Mitigation. Contributions of Working Group I, II, and III to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press). Text and summaries of each report available at http://www.ipcc.ch.
LINKS
American Wind Energy Association
http://www.awea.org
Energy Information Administration International Coal Consumption
Data
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/coal.html
European Wind Energy Association
http://www.ewea.org
International Energy Agency
http://www.iea.org
Ontario Clear Air Alliance
http://www.cleanair.web.net
Worldwatch Institute
http://www.worldwatch.org