Britain closed down its last coal-burning power station earlier this month. Self-congratulation ensued. Power cuts can wait for another day.
Britain closed down its last coal-burning power station, located in Ratcliffe-on-Soar in the English Midlands, earlier this month. Self-congratulation ensued. Power cuts can wait for another day.
BBC:
In 2008, the UK established its first legally binding climate targets and in 2015 the then-energy and climate change secretary, Amber Rudd, told the world the UK would be ending its use of coal power within the next decade.
Dave Jones, director of global insights at Ember, an independent energy think tank, said this really helped to “set in motion” the end of coal by providing a clear direction of travel for the industry.
But it also showed leadership and set a benchmark for other countries to follow, according to Lord Deben.
“I think it’s made a big difference, because you need someone to point to and say, ‘There, they’ve done it. Why can’t we do it?'”, he said.
Deben, who was Britain’s longest-serving environment secretary, is better known for his climate fundamentalism than for his grip on reality, but to be fair, he is not alone in his delusions. Quite a few British politicians continue to claim that the rest of the world will be inspired by the country’s climate leadership.
And yet, as Bloomberg’s Javier Blas wrote in April:
Global coal-power capacity rose to a record last year, led by a surge in new plants in China and a slowdown in retirements around the world, according to a new report from Global Energy Monitor.
The world’s coal fleet grew by 2% to 2,130 gigawatts, with China accounting for about two thirds of the increase followed by Indonesia and India, according to the climate research firm. China also started construction on 70 gigawatts of new coal plants last year, nearly 20 times more than the rest of the world combined.
As I noted in a Capital Letter in August, China is not alone in increasing its exposure to coal.
Take India:
China is not the only major Asian country that will still be sticking with coal in 2040. As a poorer country, India prioritizes economic growth and development over climate concerns, a rational choice made more so by one indisputable equation. The richer a country becomes, the better it will be able to cope with whatever the climate may send its way.
Or Indonesia:
Indonesia, another large Asian country eyeing a more prosperous future, has also put growth before greenery. A good portion of that will rest on Indonesia’s nickel reserves, the world’s largest, Nickel is a key element in the most effective — wait for it — electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Wanting to move up the value chain, Jakarta banned the export of raw nickel, which now must be processed domestically. New smelters are busily smelting away. And the source of the electricity used to smelt the nickel for the batteries for “clean” cars? You can surely guess by now: Around 62 percent of the electricity generated in Indonesia comes from coal-fired power stations. Coal demand in Indonesia has reportedly doubled in the last five years.
Ah yes, EVs, the “clean” cars. . . .
Bloomberg’s Blas returned to the topic of coal the other day:
[G]lobal electricity demand is soaring everywhere as the world moves to electrify everything. Out go gasoline cars, in come electric vehicles; out go gas boilers, in come heat pumps; and so on and so forth. That’s the energy transition.
There’s a catch, however. As demand for power goes up faster than renewables can supply, the world is turning to a time-tested source to produce it: coal.
The result is twofold. First, the year when coal demand is expected to peak gets pushed further out. Second, what follows the peak now resembles more an elevated plateau that’s getting higher and higher by the year. And if history is any guide, we should expect further revisions.
Blas relates that, in its new World Energy Outlook, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has revised its estimate for global coal production in 2030 up by 6 percent from last year’s forecast. That, he explains, is about the same as adding another Japan to the mix. Japan is the world’s fourth-largest burner of coal. The IEA now believes that in 2030, the world’s coal consumption will be higher than it was in 2010.
This is the same IEA that had a base scenario in 2015 in which meeting the Paris climate targets meant no new coal capacity.
Oh.
Blas:
Coal is needed because power use is accelerating faster than what renewable sources can provide. It’s also dependable: It doesn’t rely on weather conditions like hydropower, wind and solar do. Other than coal, only nuclear power plants and gas-fired stations can provide electricity around the clock. One day, perhaps, solar and wind will be able to do so in combination with batteries. But for now, battery storage is short-lived and tiny when compared with the energy needs of even medium-sized cities.
One notable statistic: Two-thirds of the total increase in energy demand in 2023 was met by fossil fuels, according to the IEA.
Renewables are not “dependable?” Say it ain’t so.
Interestingly, the much-discussed increase in electricity demand forecast to come from AI and data centers is, Blas explains, only “a fraction of the increase in consumption. Demand for power is coming from everywhere, notably electric vehicles, air-conditioning and even water desalination.”
Blas adds:
Under former US climate envoy John Kerry, America reached a sort of détente with China about the energy transition. The unwritten deal involved China giving up coal over time. With hindsight, it feels like Beijing played Kerry, who was desperate for a deal at the COP26 climate summit in 2021 in Glasgow — the first gathering for the Biden administration, when the White House wanted to burnish its green credentials after Trump.
Kerry probably had a more realistic view of China’s climate intentions than he let on, but he needed something to help sustain the fiction that China was our climate partner in order to bolster the efforts by the administration to sell the green transition to Americans. Some might call that dis/misinformation, although Kerry, we can be sure, would not.