Coalwire: Editor’s Note, Bob Burton, Global Energy Monitor
The outcome of the G20 leaders’ conference in New Delhi on coal amounted to little more than restating last year’s support for “accelerating efforts towards phasedown of unabated coal power”. More significantly, the leaders endorsed a tripling of renewable capacity by 2030. As the International Energy Agency’s Fatih Birol points out, the forthcoming World Energy Outlook will reveal that on current policy settings alone, coal, gas and oil consumption will peak this decade. While that is encouraging news, it still falls far short of the decline in consumption required to reach the Paris Agreement goal of limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees over pre-industrial levels.
While coal use needs to decline rapidly, governments continue to pursue expansion. In Australia, a new report details how the Queensland government alone has 18 coal projects in the pipeline. In southern Africa, Botswana hopes the construction of a long-distance railway will allow a significant expansion of a coalfield, and the Pakistan government has approved a new railway to enable the use of the lignite from the Thar coalfields in some coastal power stations.
In the steel industry, there are some encouraging signs. Companies pursuing different technologies to eliminate coal in steel production in Sweden and the US had successful equity-raising campaigns. Two major steel producers in the UK are contemplating converting existing steelworks to less polluting electric arc furnaces. In the latter cases, the government is reportedly offering public funding for a significant part of the costs, but this is contingent on using electric arc furnaces.
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