Nina Chestney, Stine Jacobsen Reuters 16 Nov 17;
BONN, Germany (Reuters) - At least 15 countries have joined an international alliance to phase out coal from power generation before 2030, delegates at U.N. climate talks in Bonn said on Thursday.
Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland, New Zealand, Ethiopia, Mexico and the Marshall Islands have joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance, delegates said.
The alliance aims to have 50 members by the next U.N. climate summit in 2018 to be held in Poland’s Katowice, one of Europe’s most polluted cities.
But some of the world’s biggest coal users, such as China, the United States, Germany and Russia, have not signed up.
Powering Past Coal comes just days after U.S. administration officials, along with energy company representatives, led a side event at the talks to promote “fossil fuels and nuclear power in climate mitigation.”
The event triggered a peaceful protest by anti-coal demonstrators and jarred with many ministers who are working on a rule book for implementing the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to move the world economy off fossil fuels.
The alliance was kicked off by Britain, Canada and the Marshall Islands, who urged other nations to join them in a letter seen by Reuters on Wednesday.
A source close to the matter said signatories to the alliance so far had been at least a dozen, in addition to some U.S. states, Canadian provinces and businesses.
“It is a rebuke to (President) Donald Trump from the UK and Canada, two of America’s closest allies, that his obsession for dirty energy will not spread,” said Mohamed Adow, international climate lead at Christian Aid.
Since signing the Paris Agreement in 2015, which aims to wean the world off fossil fuels, several countries have made national plans to phase out coal from their power supply mix.
Reporting by Nina Chestney; Editing by Edmund Blair
'Political watershed' as 19 countries pledge to phase out coal
New alliance launched at Bonn climate talks hopes to signal the end of the dirtiest fossil fuel that kills 800,000 people a year with air pollution
Damian Carrington The Guardian 16 Nov 17;
A new alliance of 19 nations committed to quickly phasing out coal has been launched at the UN climate summit in Bonn, Germany. It was greeted as a “political watershed”, signalling the end of the dirtiest fossil fuel that currently provides 40% of global electricity.
New pledges were made on Thursday by Mexico, New Zealand, Denmark and Angola for the Powering Past Coal Alliance, which is led by the UK and Canada.
“The case against coal is unequivocal,” said UK climate minister Claire Perry, both on environmental and health grounds – air pollution from coal kills 800,000 people a year worldwide. “The alliance will signal to the world that the time of coal has passed.” The UK was the first nation to commit to ending coal use – by 2025 – but the electricity generated by coal has already fallen from 40% to 2% since 2012.
“There is a human cost and an environmental cost but we don’t need to pay that price when the price of renewables has plummeted,” said Catherine McKenna, Canada’s environment minister. “I’m thrilled to see so much global momentum for the transition to clean energy – and this is only the beginning.” The alliance aims to have 50 members by next year.
Asked about Donald Trump’s US administration, whose only event in Bonn was to promote coal, McKenna pointed out that renewable energy already employs 250,000 people in the US, compared to 50,000 in coal, and said this is the clean growth century: “The market has moved on coal.”
But McKenna said it was very important that communities dependent on coal jobs received help. Mohamed Adow, at Christian Aid, said: “It is a rebuke to Trump from the UK and Canada, two of America’s closest allies.”
The current alliance includes a few nations like Fiji that do not use coal and does not include any Asian countries where much of the world’s coal is used. Australia, the region’s biggest supplier of coal, has refused to join. But Nick Mabey, chief executive of the E3G thinktank, said: “The launch of this new alliance is a political watershed moment. Governments have now grasped the reality that coal use can end, and fast. The only way for coal is down.”
Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, who led the UN climate talks in Peru in 2014 and is now at WWF, said: ‘We welcome the first steps countries have taken today but this is only the start.”
The alliance was also welcomed by the most vulnerable states. “I can’t stress enough that coal is by far the largest single barrier to staying within 1.5C of warming, and giving vulnerable countries like mine a chance of survival,” said David Paul, environment minister from the Marshall Islands.
Earlier the Marshall Island’s President Hilda Heine said the country was very disappointed in Australia’s continued pursuit of coal: “We’re neighbours: they should be aware of the issues that are facing small island countries.”
The Australian Greens MP Adam Bandt said the nation was “posing an existential threat to many of our neighbours” and that the countries backing coal phase outs came from across the political spectrum: “A door has been opened for the Australian government here.”
But Australia’s environment minister Josh Frydenberg, said coal was expected to remain the bedrock of Asia’s power supply, providing about a third of electricity in 2040. At the moment, coal generates about 75% of Australian power.
Greenpeace UK lauded the alliance, but Rachel Kennerley, from Friends of the Earth UK, said: “It’s a profound disconnect that the UK is positioning itself as a climate leader but simultaneously green-lighting fracking, which will open up a whole new fossil industry.”
Germany is not part of the new alliance and the pressure for it to announce the phase-out of its large fleet of heavily polluting coal power stations intensified on Thursday. New OECD data shows that its fossil fuel subsidies have increased each year from 2014-16, to €3.9bn. Another new report, part of the G20 peer review process, shows Germany believes only two of its many fossil fuel subsidies need to be removed – both are already being phased out under EU rules.
Shelagh Whitley, at the Overseas Development Institute in the UK, said: “Germany is subsidising climate chaos and is saying it won’t stop.” Alex Doukas, at Oil Change International in the US, said: “Germany should be ashamed of itself.”
Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed the climate summit on Wednesday, saying the response to climate change would determine the destiny of humankind and urging faster action. But she was heavily criticised for not announcing a coal phaseout. Michael Schäfer, at WWF Germany, said: “Internationally, Merkel is often still perceived as a climate champion. But she will lose that reputation if she does not finally act at home.”
That could happen imminently. Merkel’s CDU party is negotiating a three-way coalition to form a new government and talks are due to end on Thursday night. The CDU and Free Democrats have offered to close 10 coal power stations by 2020 but the Greens want 20 shut down to enable Germany to meet its carbon target.
Asked about Germany’s coal, Perry said: “We are not trying to tell other countries what to do, we want to show them it can be done. Every country is different [but] we all know we need to move beyond coal.”
The alliance will work by encouraging new commitments and using financing and shared technology and best practice to encourage others to phase out “unabated coal” – plants where carbon dioxide is not captured and buried below ground. Its national members are Angola, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Fiji, Finland, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Marshall Islands, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Niue, Portugal, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
UK and Canada lead global alliance against coal
Matt McGrath BBC 16 Nov 17;
The UK and Canada have launched a global alliance of 20 countries committed to phasing out coal for energy production.
Members including France, Finland and Mexico, say they will end the use of coal before 2030.
Ministers hope to have 50 countries signed up by the time of the next major UN conference in Poland next year.
However some important coal consuming nations, including China, the US and Germany have not joined the group.
Reducing global coal use is a formidable challenge, as the fuel produces around 40% of the world's electricity at present.
As a highly carbon intensive source, coal contributes significantly to the rising levels of CO2 emissions that scientists reported earlier this week.
Researchers say that if the world is to curb dramatic temperature rises this century then coal use must be limited.
Called the Powering Past Coal Alliance, this new initiative sees countries, regions and provinces, signing up to setting coal phase-out targets and committing to no new investments in coal-fired electricity in their national jurisdictions or abroad.
No sacrifice
The UK has said it will end the generation of electricity from unabated coal by 2025. Unabated means that the coal is burnt without capturing the resulting carbon emissions.
Already, the move away from coal in the UK has been rapid. Around 40% of electricity was still being generated from coal in 2012 but in April this year the UK had its first full day without coal power in 135 years.
"We have not sacrificed growth," said Claire Perry, the UK's minister for climate change and industry.
"Since 1990 Britain has cut its emissions buy 42% and our economy has grown by 67%, that's the best performance in the G7 so this is not something that's a win-lose, it's a win-win situation."
However many of those who have signed up to the alliance have little or no coal production or consumption, among them Fiji, Niue, and Costa Rica. Many of the richer countries involved have already announced their move away from coal and taken together the grouping only represents about 2.5% of global coal consumption.
There are also some significant coal consuming countries including Germany and China, absent from the list at present.
The anti-coal alliance are confident that by the time of the next major UN climate conference in Poland in 2018, there will be closer to 50 countries on board.
The development has been broadly welcomed by environmental groups.
"This is another positive signal of the global momentum away from coal, benefitting the health of the climate, the public and the economy," said Jens Mattias Clausen from Greenpeace.
"But it also puts on notice the governments who lag behind on ending coal or those who promote it that the world's dirtiest fossil fuel has no future."
Closest of allies
Those involved in the coal industry say the alliance needs to put more efforts into developing technology that will allow coal use to continue.
"With the world set to use fossil fuels, including coal, for the foreseeable future, Canada and the UK should direct efforts to advancing carbon capture and storage technology because that's much more likely to achieve global climate objectives than unrealistic calls to eliminate coal in major emerging economies," said Benjamin Sporton, chief executive of the World Coal Association.
With Canada and the UK leading the group, it means that two of the closest allies of the US are moving away from coal at a time when President Trump is talking about a revival for the fuel.
The White House has had a presence at this meeting with the President's special adviser on climate change, George David Banks telling reporters that coal and other fossil fuels were an important part of the solution to climate change.
Mr Banks believes that a so-called "clean coal alliance" involving the US, Japan and others would be something the Trump team would favour.
"I would say that the administration is interested in the idea," he told reporters.
"I'm guessing that would mean a clean coal alliance that would focus on highly efficient low emission coal plants and carbon capture utilisation and storage. I think there would be interest in exploring that."
Many environmental campaigners though, believe that attempts to produce clean coal are essentially efforts to prolong the dominance of the fossil fuel industry.
"People were worried that this summit would see Trump assaulting the Paris Agreement with his coal lobbyists," said Mohamed Adow from Christian Aid.
"But his actions have actually galvanised other nations into action, with a new alliance making it clear that coal's climate change threat must be taken seriously.
"The bottom line is coal is a dirty, unnecessary, polluting fuel that deserves to remain in a more ignorant and backward era. These countries are showing they understand that."
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