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December 3, 2003-10
Copyright © 2003 Earth Policy Institute
COAL: U.S. Promotes While Canada and
Europe Move Beyond
Lester R. Brown
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 .)
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
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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
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