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SCIENCEWednesday 18 November
Coal not going away anytime soon despite renewables push
In this Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2015 photo, a worker guides a conveyor month. day by the Institute for this year showed the coun-
as it loads coal into a trailer truck at a coal mine near Ordos in Demand for coal is level- Energy Economics and Fi- try had greatly underesti-
northern China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. ing off, but it will remain nancial Analysis suggests mated its coal consump-
a key energy source for coal consumption peaked tion from 2000 to 2013, but
Associated Press decades, no matter how globally in 2013 and is set still showed a dip last year.
many billions of dollars of to decline a further 2 to 4 Beijing is trying to reduce
LOUISE WATT It is the biggest source of investment go into cleaner percent in 2015 because of dependency on coal to
Associated Press heat-trapping greenhouse energy like wind and solar. declining consumption by ease air pollution by switch-
BEIJING (AP) — Coal: gases that negotiators Too much of the world de- China and other big coal ing to natural gas in major
Can’t live with it and can’t around the world hope to pends on it now for heating consumers. cities.
live without it — at least not limit in an agreement to be and power generation for The institute said China’s
yet. thrashed out in Paris next us to suddenly live without coal consumption had fall- China also has become a
it. en 5.7 percent from Janu- leader in clean energy. Last
There are vast parts of the ary to September. In the year, it invested more in re-
developing world that will U.S., domestic consump- newable power and fuels
continue to see growth tion was down 11 percent and had more hydropower
in demand for electricity, and coal’s share of the and wind capacity than
driven by sales of televi- electricity market has fall- any other country, and was
sions, refrigerators and the en to 35 percent, from 50 second to Germany in so-
construction of highways percent a decade ago. lar capacity, according to
and malls as incomes in- Record-low U.S. gas prices, a report earlier this year by
crease, said Xizhou Zhou, record expansion of renew- REN21, a Paris-based non-
the China chief for energy able energy and a decou- profit group that promotes
consultants IHS Energy. pling of electricity demand renewable energy.
“The cheapest way to pro- from economic growth are The cost of renewable ener-
vide electricity in many of “permanently eroding” gy is becoming more com-
these places is still coal- coal demand in the U.S., petitive every year, while
based,” Zhou said. the Cleveland, Ohio-based coal-fired power plants are
This underlines the chal- IEEFA said. increasingly expensive as
lenge facing negotiators Still, coal provides more air pollution controls grow
who will convene in Paris than 40 percent of the more stringent.
Nov. 30 to agree on how to world’s electricity and 29 “You have got a wave of
limit emissions of fossil fuels. percent of its energy sup- new technologies and in-
Scientists say coal, oil and ply, second only to oil at 31 vestments coming where
gas emissions, including percent, according to the historically power grids
carbon dioxide and meth- Paris-based International were heavily reliant on
ane, are key drivers of rising Energy Agency. The agen- coal,” said Tim Buckley, a
temperatures that could cy projects coal consump- Sydney-based energy ana-
lead to intense droughts or tion to continue growing lyst with the Institute for En-
flooding of island nations. somewhat in coming years, ergy Economics and Finan-
Abundant and cheap, largely owing to increased cial Analysis.
coal emits not only soot but coal demand in India and The continued develop-
double the greenhouse Southeast Asia. ment of wind, solar and
gas emissions per unit of Coal’s future is closely tied hydropower is good for
energy of natural gas. to China, the world’s big- combatting global warm-
In recent years, slowing gest coal user, producer ing, “but that’s almost an
economic growth, gains and importer. It burns 4 ancillary benefit — the
in energy efficiency and billion tons of coal a year, key drivers are econom-
advances in renewable- four times as much as the ics, technology, leadership
energy production have United States. and energy security and air
dampened demand for Coal accounts for nearly and water pollution,” Buck-
coal in key markets. Stricter two-thirds of China’s ener- ley said.
air emissions regulations in gy, but in 2014 its coal con- India, the nation with the
Europe, the production of sumption fell 2.9 percent third-highest carbon emis-
shale gas in the U.S. and year-on-year according sions after China and the
the restructuring of the Chi- to official statistics, or 2.6 U.S., is at a point where
nese economy away from percent according to the both clean and dirty en-
heavily polluting industries IEEFA report — the first an- ergy are being scaled up.
are all weighing down on nual decrease in 15 years. About a fifth of its more
demand. A revision to official Chi- than 1.2 billion people still
An analysis released Mon- nese data released earlier lack electricity.q
